Have you ever wondered why the USPS is so screwed up?
On September 9, 2010, I wrote a blog post titled, “I like my mailman, I hate his union.”
The post was inspired by the loss of one of my postal service clerks who had been serving me for over fifteen years – bumped to another less desirable station because she lacked the formal grade and seniority to hold her position against an interloper. She knew her job well, was intelligent, polite and considerate. She was a member of the community and well-respected by all. Which counted for nothing as she was shipped to one of the largest and most chaotic stations in Los Angeles.
Today, January 6, 2013, I received a comment on my blog post which I declined to publish in comment format. I thought it would be highly instructive to use this comment (without embarrassing the commenter) to illustrate what I believe is wrong with the Postal Service. Primarily, their union which rewards seniority over merit, the status quo over innovation, and demanding ever increasing wages and benefits without a corresponding increase in productivity.
Here is the comment I received (without alteration) …
wisdom may come with knowledge and perhaps a lesson or two is neccessary to understand about the union of the USPS, the United states post office, story can be read free on line at google.books, called The post office, its past record, it present condition and its potential relation to the new world era, 1913- 1917, to read up on why the United States Postal Union is different from most unions. From 1913 to 1917 postmasters were poltical appointees, collective bargaining came about due to the way congress was not listening to the working conditions of the Postal employees , not much has changed since then, since the postal workers are the whipping boy of congress. In 1970 most postal workers were making below wages of the time, and in fact many were on welfare to survive or working 3 jobs, william burras as you mentioned was one of the participators of the great postal strike to get congress attention to the plight of the postal worker at that time, they took a risk of jobs that were not paying much at all, and decicded to have a national stike that changed the nation, and along with that collective bargaining came more into play for postal employees, even though it had been iniated back in 1935 with strikes that led to deaths of american citizens for daring to take on management and protest, often they were shot at by the national guard. The history of labor unions is perhaps needed for your conversation. In 1970 the no strike law was passed for the postal union, so then the union negotiates the laws and rules for managing the postoffice with the main oversight of the postal office, few people realize this is the us labor department. There are 4 unions in every post office generally that have their own issues and work side by side but seldom know what is going on with each others union, the postmaster union is directly tied to management or labor dept . The national assoication of letter carriers or nalc , clerking union or american postal workers union and the rural route association. Each has a union , but the general knowwledge to the public is not known, so in 2000, 2001 postal employees were made to pay in 15 percent more to their federal retirement system under the 1997 budget reconcillation bill ( this was a republcian iniative) and were thanked for thier sacrifice, for budget reasons only. Then the retirement systems were overfunded by this action, making fers overpay 15 billion and civil service retirement system , csrs by 140 billion. Then a 3rd retrirement was set up that no other business in america or federal agency has to do, out of the profits that postal employees earned, since 2006 was a banner year for profits. William burras has written about the phoney excuses for diverting USPS profits and myths versus facts, in his online jounral at www.billburrasjounral.org- misc, previous to that an artical appeared on the AWPU 3800 library website, ( first area tricounty local, PA) a c opywritten work by clerk joy goldberg about the change in management due to the postal accountibility and enhancmeent act, passed in 2006 that gave bounus to the top executieves of USPS while cutting staff below, all republcian iniative. You can also go to the link AlEC/koch cabal the privitization of USPS for Ups and fedex, published in april of 2012 by bob sloan of vltp, then their is the artical from examiner.com, tim mccown author, ' behind all the schemes and lies of the privitzation of USPS' , plus the website www.savethepostoffice.com, perhaps then after accumulating the necccessary information of exactly why postal unions are important and the attack on them you will gain a more thourough understanding of the attack on the postal workers unions and what is basically destroying the USPS and the we the people of the postal union.
Bottom line …
Communication involves much more than stringing words together and parroting the company line. While this person may perform their job functions in a competent manner, one must question whether or not a person with the above communication skills could be retained in the competitive private sector without union protection.
If you can get past the obvious errors, the commenter is making a case for understanding and keeping the postal workers’ union. From my viewpoint, the union is what has kept the United States Postal Service from modernizing, being able to compete with private enterprises such as United Parcel Service and FedEx and keeping pace with technology that is rapidly obsoleting the primary USPS business model.
The postal service had the opportunity to become a technologically-driven enterprise by acting as an official certificate authority for creating encrypted, electronic envelopes with court-acceptable time and date stamps. Unfortunately, like all technology, it did not require an ill-equipped unionized bureaucracy – thus was of little or no use to the unions in generating those massive pension payments necessary to keep the system afloat.
Don’t get me wrong. There were, and still are, problems within the system. Tyrannical bosses, brutal delivery routes and all of the other problems of an ongoing business. But there are now legal measures to redress these grievances without a costly union infrastructure and bureaucracy. But management doesn’t hold all the cards since it is virtually impossible to discipline “connected” union employees who are incompetent and barely literate.
Because of the great sums of money involved in the Postal Service, the great number of voting workers and the chaos and confusion caused by increasing technology – look for the boondoggle to be patched over rather than fixed any time soon. Until the USPS will represent one of the worst possible “use case” reasons for retaining a public employee unions.
In the final analysis, the unions need the money and are willing to use the workers and their pensions as political pawns to retain what little power they still have. The ultimate socialist paradox of using the people’s money to provide a better life for the people – when there are more takers than there are producers.
-- steve
“Nullius in verba”-- take nobody's word for it!
"Acta non verba" -- actions not words
“Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance.”-- George Bernard Shaw
“Progressive, liberal, Socialist, Marxist, Democratic Socialist -- they are all COMMUNISTS.”
“The key to fighting the craziness of the progressives is to hold them responsible for their actions, not their intentions.” – OCS "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane." -- Marcus Aurelius “A people that elect corrupt politicians, imposters, thieves, and traitors are not victims... but accomplices” -- George Orwell “Fere libenter homines id quod volunt credunt." (The people gladly believe what they wish to.) ~Julius Caesar “Describing the problem is quite different from knowing the solution. Except in politics." ~ OCS