An alliance of unions and public interest groups has come together to fight back against the corporate attack on the United States Postal Service.
The group is calling itself A Grand Alliance to Save our Public Postal Service.
“The U.S. Postal Service belongs to ‘We, the People,’” the Alliance says in its mission statement. “But the USPS and postal jobs are threatened by narrow monied interests aimed at undermining postal services and dismantling this great public institution.”
“Even some postal executives have been complicit in the drive toward the destruction of the Postal Service and ultimate privatization. They have slowed mail service, closed community based Post Offices and mail processing facilities, slashed hours of operations, tried ceaselessly to end six-day service as well as door to door delivery, and eliminated hundreds of thousands of living wage jobs.”
“The United States Postal Service is a wonderful national treasure, enshrined in the Constitution and supported by the American people. Without any taxpayer funding, the USPS serves 150 million households and businesses each day, providing affordable, universal mail service to all – including rich and poor, rural and urban, without regard to age, nationality, race or gender.”
In a press briefing at the National Press Club last week, Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said there were two competing visions over the future of the post office.
“One is the philosophy of the Board of Governors, former Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, and some on Wall Street who want to get their hands on the Postal Service’s $68 billion in revenue per year,” Dimondstein said.
“Their philosophy is: Shrink to survive, cut the postal network, dismantle the assets, and privatize key postal functions – that means closing 82 more processing plants, reducing hours, getting rid of door to door delivery, trying to cut six-day delivery, slowing down the mail, and turning over postal retail operations to Staples.”
“Well, I can tell you that is not the vision of the Grand Alliance,” Dimondstein said. “Ours is one of a bright future for the post office. We know that if you get rid of the manufactured crisis created by Congress in 2006, the operating profits have been high. And that means there are many opportunities to modernize the Postal Service so it can thrive in the future. The Postal Service must meet the demands of the ecommerce revolution, which has resulted in an explosion of package volume.”
At the press conference, Alliance organizers played a video featuring actor Danny Glover, who says that his parents were postal workers.
Glover says that as a teenager, he worked the post office during Christmas breaks.
“Some people want to bury the Postal Service,” Glover says. “Shut offices. Reduce hours. Limit delivery. Outsource it. Divide it. And privatize it.”
“The post office is an anchor, a symbol of community,’ Glover said. “The post office bridges political, geographic, and economic divides. It is one of the nation’s largest employers of veterans, women, and minorities, providing equal pay for equal work. Good, decent union jobs.”