By Mark Wachtler
In January, the US Postal Service is planning to close or consolidate 82 mail processing centers across America. Management insists it’s required to maintain the Service’s balance sheet. But workers warn that the move is meant to sabotage the USPS in the eyes of Americans by cutting services, increasing wait times and eliminating delivery days. The goal, they contend, is a take-over of the 75-billion-dollar per year mail industry by Wall Street corporations.
With a slew Postal closings and cut-backs scheduled to occur on January 5th, Postal Service employees, union members, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation took to the streets a few weeks ago to protest the plan to eliminate so many good, middle class jobs, for no other reason than to prepare the groundwork for a corporate take-over of America’s mail system. Liberation Radio, PSL’s own weekly radio program, interviewed Ken Lerch, President of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Local 3825, to discuss the urgent crisis.
“On January 5th, the Postal Service is planning on consolidating and closing 82 huge mail processing and distribution centers,” Local NALC President Ken Lerch told Liberation Radio host Ernesto Aguilar to start the 30-minute program, “What I think is going on, and many other people think also, is there’s too much support from the American people for the Post Office just to be privatized. They’re trying to – Donahoe and some other very influential people – are trying to destroy the Postal Service from within.”
Lerch goes on to explain, “If they can slow down the mail or if they don’t staff the counters with enough people and there’s a line out the door, then the American people won’t give the continued support that they have for the Post Office.”
Liberation Radio host Ernesto Aguilar then looks ahead to next month and the scheduled mass closings of dozens of Postal facilities across the country. “What does this mean in terms of what the average American will expect of the Postal Service,” he asks, “And what will happen in January?”
“In January, the Post Office is planning on closing and consolidating 82 large mail processing and distribution centers,” NALC’s Ken Lerch details for listeners, “These will be absolutely devastating cuts in service to the American people. In fact, I believe these cuts will be so severe that they will forever damage the United States Postal Service. And all mail – medicine, online purchases, local newspapers, bill payments, all types of mail – will be delayed. And it’s just a shame. It doesn’t have to be.”
Read the full article here.
You’re talking about the PSL, I assume 🙂
This is what happens when an organization becomes top heavy, when wages and employment are dictated by seniority as opposed to merit and job performance and people refuse to adapt to changes that occur around them.
Changes at the USPS are necessary. This is not to say that Donahoe and congress are free from any blame but the postal unions are flat clueless or willfully fibbing. The USPS is a serive, not a job protection racket.