With bargaining broken down, postal workers to take to the street

APWU poster

WASHINGTON —With bargaining over a new contract having apparently broken down, the Postal Workers and their allies will take to the streets for mass rallies on October 1, demanding respect, a new pact and public input into Postal Service decisions.

So far, dozens of Postal Workers Day Of Action rallies are planned at post offices ranging from Seattle, Spokane, San Diego and Honolulu in the west to Minneapolis, Detroit and Springfield, Ill., in the Midwest to McAllen and El Paso, Texas and Key West, Fla., in the South, Tucson in the Southwest and the Canarsie Station in Brooklyn, N.Y., and Lewiston, Maine, in the Northeast.

An interactive map where people can find local rallies, along with other details about the contract fight, is at https://apwu.org/day-of-action.

Key points in the bargaining are short-staffing, management stiffing the public—and the union—and no progress in talks for a new contract.

“For too long, postal workers have been stretched thin, making miracles happen in understaffed facilities. This has taken a toll on our health, our safety, and our ability to provide the service the public deserves,” APWU states.

The short-staffing shows up in an interactive dashboard from the Postal Regulatory Commission. It notes the national target for on-time deliveries of first-class mail is 93%. But nationally, USPS misses that mark by seven percentage points—and some of its districts are far below that.

For example, on-time delivery in northern Illinois, from Chicago west to the Quad Cities, is 69%. And the on-time percentage for the whole state of Maryland is 76%. That includes Baltimore and its suburb of Pikesville, which the Postal Service’s Inspector General singled out for notably bad service.

The IG also said Detroit gets bad service due to short-staffing. Veteran-Postal Worker-turned-congresswoman Brenda Lawrence raised that with DeJoy several years ago. Detroit also saw only 76% of its mail delivered on time. DeJoy rudely dismissed Lawrence as “out of touch.”

The on-time percentage in Georgia is so bad—dead last at 40%–that Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff demands the board fire DeJoy. Ossoff plans legislation to limit future Postmasters General to two five-year terms and be subject to Senate confirmation—and congressional accountability (see story in September edition III).

The union and USPS customers have raised the same complaints ever since DeJoy took over.

Left unsaid: When former Republican President Donald Trump, now a convicted felon but also the party’s presidential nominee this year, imposed DeJoy on USPS, the agenda of Trump’s right-wing

White House aides was to strip USPS of “unprofitable” routes and sell the remains to Trump’s pals, the Wall Street investor/corporate criminal class.

Union says USPS is a service

But the USPS is a service, APWU emphasizes, so “the Postal Service needs to listen to and heed the overwhelming voices of Postal Workers on the job and at the bargaining table, as well as the needs of the American people.”

A key change freezes the public out. USPS bosses, led by DeJoy—a GOP big giver whose first campaign contribution check was to ultra-racist Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C.–imposed a new policy at board meetings that restricts union participation and allows public comments only once a year.

That lets DeJoy, former CEO of the XPO package delivery company, enforce his policies with little resistance, including from the USPS governing board. The board now has a Joe Biden-named majority, but has shown little inclination to stand up to DeJoy’s high-handed dictates. Indeed, the union notes, the board approved the public comment restriction.

Prime among DeJoy’s disasters, as far as customers are concerned, is his “Delivering for America” scheme. It produces the short-staffing, closes postal sorting centers, lays off workers and leaves first-class mail, including vital medicines and people’s bills, on post office floors in the name of not allowing overtime to sort and deliver it.

DeJoy’s closures also, according to a bipartisan coalition of state election officials, endangers the ability of USPS to deliver mailed-in ballots on time to local county election boards in this fall’s balloting (see story last week).

The ballot delivery issues are not on the bargaining table. The short-staffing is.

“On October 1st, we will stand together and make our voices heard from coast to coast to demand that postal management listens to our voices. At stake is not just our jobs, but the fate of the People’s Post Office,” APWU says.

The restriction on public comments to once a year “isn’t acceptable. We’re demanding the board bring back the public comment period at every quarterly meeting, ensuring postal workers and the public have a say in how the Postal Service is run.”

The short-staffing leads to worse service, APWU adds in its second demand. DeJoy’s Delivering For America scheme lengthened “on time” from three days to five—and large areas flunk even that.

“The public deserves top-quality postal services, and that starts with investing in postal workers. We need management to commit to recruiting and retaining a dedicated workforce to ensure that every community gets the quality mail service they rely on,” APWU says.

“Should management continue to stonewall us, it’s time for” action. Bosses must “recognize the value of our work and agree to a contract that meets our demands.

“We’re ready to take our fight from the bargaining table to the streets if necessary.”

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CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.