8-19-09, 9:38 am
Original source: ILCA WASHINGTON (PAI) – Legislation to help the Postal Service solve its projected $7 billion deficit in the year ending Sept. 30, and a similar deficit in the following 12 months, hit a major problem caused by a Radical Right GOP senator and inattentive Democrats – a rock in the road which led the nation’s two biggest postal unions to say they may have to reverse course and oppose the measure. And if something isn’t done about the agency’s red ink by the end of September, the Postal Service may not have enough money to pay its bills. Its solution: Let 50,000 more workers go, close hundreds of post offices and kill Saturday pickup and delivery. 
 The immediate issue facing postal unions and their allies is an amendment by Sen. Thomas Coburn, R-Okla., to legislation, S1507, to relieve USPS of a $5.4 billion payment it must make, within a month, to cover future retirees’ future health care costs. His amendment would radically change arbitration and bargaining between USPS and its unions, including the Letter Carriers and the Postal Workers, by ordering the arbitrator to put the financial condition of the Postal Service first in any decision. If that condition alone is tacked onto arbitrations when USPS and the unions can’t reach contracts, the unions would have to yank their support of the health care cost bill, veteran APWU President Bill Burrus and new Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando said. The panel hosting the hearing inserted Coburn’s measure last week.
“The Coburn amendment serves only to upset collective bargaining procedures,” Burrus said. Several of the majority Democrats on the panel admitted they did not realize the implications of anti-worker Republican’s measure. “Could you support S1507 if the amendment stays in?” one senator asked. “No,” Rolando replied. 
 But the wider issue is how to restructure the Postal Service to adapt to a radically changed communications environment – one where its longtime bread-and-butter of first class mail, catalogues and bills – are increasingly taken over by the Internet. Some of the discussion at an Aug. 6 hearing, particularly by the non-partisan independent Government Accountability Office, covered the agency’s long-term problems. But most of it was on Coburn’s move. 
 All the witnesses backed restructuring the health care payment plan, which the then-GOP-run Congress approved in 2006. Even one GOP senator, Susan Collins, R-Maine, realized the payment plan is unrealistic. The $5.4 billion discussed at the session is part of a 10-year plan where USPS must cover at least 75 years of future retirees’ future costs, now. Those costs are calculated to be at least $60 billion. But the agency has more problems than the health care payments, witnesses said. Due to the recession, mail volume has slumped by 12% in the last year and the quarter-compared-to-quarter drop is expected to reach 16 percent by the end of fiscal 2009 in September, GAO’s report said.
More basically, Postmaster General John Potter added, the USPS has lost much of its volume to the Internet. Potter, named by a GOP-appointed postal board, has a solution: Cut, cut, cut. That drew the ire of Burrus and Rolando. Potter wants to eliminate Saturday pickup and delivery, close at least 677 postal stations – especially in the nation’s cities – and let another 53,000 workers go. The USPS workforce has shrunk, through retirements and buyouts, to 603,000 workers, from 773,000 several years ago. “The USPS has put forth a blueprint for dismantling its core business” of deliver-ing the mail, said Rolando, who recently succeeded longtime NALC President William Young. “We should not destroy the Postal Service in order to save it,” Burrus added. Both union leaders said they are working with USPS management on efficiencies which could save the agency money. NALC and the agency are reviewing 168,000 city letter carrier routes, looking for consolidations. APWU, said Burrus, is working with postal officials on a plan the union leader estimated would save $1 billion. He couldn’t give details because it isn’t final yet. Two weeks before, on July 24, Rolando, Burrus and other postal union leaders met with Obama administration aides at the White House to discuss the agency’s financial crunch, the Letter Carriers reported. They also covered the Senate bill and its House companion, HR 22, which does not have Coburn’s amendment. “NALC is grateful for the efforts on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue to find solutions to this crisis,” Rolando said then. “We welcome this relief. But any short-term legislation is just the first step. We also need to enact comprehensive reforms to allow the Postal Service to pre-fund its future retiree health benefits on a more reasonable and affordable schedule.” Rolando and Burrus repeated that point at the hearing.
Senators were generally sympathetic to approving the $5.4 billion health care fix, but were non-committal about Coburn’s amendment. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, Ind.-Conn., asked Rolando and Burrus to submit conditions – for both sides – that should be attached to any arbitrations. They declined, not wanting to tie peoples’ hands.
