POSTAL WORKERS CONVENTION PREPARES
FOR STRUGGLE AS NEGOTIATIONS LOOM
DETROIT (PAI)--Delegates to the Postal Workers convention prepared for tough struggles with the U.S. Postal Service in contract negotiations that will start Sept. 1.
Meeting in Detroit from Aug. 24-27, the union’s 2,356 delegates spoke out strongly against USPS plans to eliminate Saturday pickup and delivery -- thus cutting jobs -- and the agency’s “excessing” of workers: Involuntarily shifting them around from craft to craft and site to site, sometimes hundreds of miles from their homes.
And, led by union President William Burrus and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the delegates took to the streets on Aug. 25, marching through downtown Detroit to publicize the union’s nationwide “Save Saturday Service” campaign.
Added Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney: “You wanna know who’s on your side? Everyone with a mailbox.”
Like the Letter Carriers, APWU strongly opposes Postmaster General-CEO John Potter’s scheme to eliminate Saturday pickups and deliveries, scheduled to start Sept. 15. Potter, named to the post by a GOP Bush-regime appointed postal board, also wants to close thousands of post offices. He says he needs to cut delivery and offices due to declining mail volume and a $7 billion yearly deficit.
The unions respond that most of the deficit is caused by legal requirements that force USPS to pre-fund retirees’ health care, at a cost of $5.5 billion yearly, even before those covered workers actually retire. No other business faces that requirement.
But Burrus made it clear that saving Saturday service was only one flashpoint between the union and the agency, though that’s the one that will grab public attention.
APWU members will “tell America that we’re not fooled by the USPS plan to close the mailbox on Saturday,” he told the rally after the march. “The public shouldn’t be fooled either.”
In his keynote address to delegates, before being re-elected, Burrus added other negotiating goals: Restricting excessing, gaining information from the USPS without cost, winning more upward mobility for workers, pay increases, and limiting sub-contracting and contracting out of jobs. Subcontracting is a favorite Potter scheme, too.
“We expect a contract that adequately rewards members for maintaining the best postal system in the world,” Burrus said. The present APWU contract with USPS expires on Nov. 20.
Delegates were particularly upset at contracting out and excessing. A search of past records shows the agency’s plans to contract out Postal Workers’ jobs have been discussed at every APWU convention since 1972.
One of several resolutions dealing with excessing, which the delegates approved, told the union’s bargainers to “negotiate with management to ensure that when multiple excessing events impact a craft at the same facility during the same period, management must combine them.” Such combinations strengthen workers’ seniority rights, delegates explained.
Without that protection, senior workers at Palatine, Ill., in the Chicago suburbs, volunteered to be reassigned “in lieu of” junior employees during the first wave of excessing, said delegate Dave Baskin of northeast Illinois. They then lost other rights,. Other senior employees at Palatine who waited ended up being reassigned furthest away from the station. “So it was a double whammy — a no-win situation. We thought this (resolution) would clean this up and give them opportunity for fairness.”
Burrus also noted, however, that while union protection shielded APWU members from arbitrary layoffs due to the recession, the union’s numbers declined, through retirements and attrition. That led to budget-cutting at headquarters, he said.
Though more than 83% of eligible employees are APWU members, the union “launched aggressive budgetary controls, reducing the union expenditures in excess of the membership losses,” he said. APWU has run surpluses every year of his administration, Burrus said, as the union removed from its budget “costs that are unrelated to representation.” ###
