Indianapolis Star: 2-26-11
By Bill McCleery
ROB GOEBEL / The Star
The West Indianapolis branch post office, where finance clerk Nick Battiato worked, closed at the end of business Friday. He and his co-workers took care of business at 1144 S. Belmont Ave. as usual while reminiscing and saying goodbye to patrons.
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Bring your friends, family, Mail Handler and Letter Carrier brothers & sisters.
From Patti Orndorff:
“…All APWU Members!!!! I just talked to State President Doug Brown---please meet in front of Embassy Suites downtown at 9am. ---parking garages are all around so get there early--- …it’s gonna be cold so dress warm!!!!”
posted by GlennDL
Must read for all Indianapolis Area Local and Indiana State Postal Workers:
Attacks on the postal service from right-wing conservatives and their propaganda machine, FOXNews continue. Look at the headline on the screen shot [click it to see for yourself] and then look at the article they’re referencing from the Daily Caller by clicking this link. Read the original article and see if you can tell where there is any reference to a bailout. You know what’s going on. How is this a bailout?
“…the author claims that the proposed aid for the USPS, which does not involve any taxpayer money “has its critics, with some referring to it as a $4 billion taxpayer bailout of the Postal Service”. But the only expert the author actually bothered to interview said “I do not regard what’s specifically in the budget as a bailout,… I do not think that allowing the Postal Service to reschedule its payment for the retiree health benefits fund is a bailout.”
This is another example of FauxNews dishonestly promoting an anti-Postal, anti-Postal Worker, anti-Union, anti-Federal Worker agenda.
They are slandering you, your job and your future.
The article actually clarifies that IT IS NOT A BAILOUT! But FoxNews knows that many of their viewers and followers won’t bother to read the whole article and will just fixate on the headline. Again go to the FoxNews page and read the malicious, uninformed comments left there by their readers to see for yourself.
If there is any doubt that right-wing conservatives are pro-privatization, anti-union, anti federal worker and specifically anti-Postal Workers then check out these articles from this website and others:
“The President’s budget, released today, provides for $4 billion in relief for the US Postal Service in the current fiscal year. The relief is in the form of a relaxed schedule of retiree health benefits payments. In addition, the Treasury would reimburse the USPS for $6.9 billion in overcharges for FERS retirees. This reimbursement would not, however, be immediate, but would be spread over 30 years. While the budget also refers to the USPS’s need for flexibility in adapting to declining volumes, it still includes the traditional language forbidding the elimination of Saturday delivery or the closure of rural post offices…” read more
from a FaceBook discussion on excessing:
Too many of us senior clerks fall into the 'seniority' is our protection from everything trap. We always think the closer to the top we are the more senior we are, but the truth is that seniority is relative.
If we are losing people above us then yes we move up the seniority ladder, but if no one is being hired below us we seldom really see a gain. Look at vacation schedules. If someone above me retires then I might move from the #4 position in my unit to the #3 position. Yippeee! Now I can get that July 4th weekend! But wait a minute, management eliminates that run causing us to loose a clerk so now instead of their being 3 slots on the vacation schedule there are now only 2. I still don't get July 4th! I moved up but gained nothing.
This happens pretty much across the board in the application of seniority: 'If people above you are are leaving you move up, but if no positions are being filled below you, you are gaining ground at half the rate than if there was a new hire for every retire.' Because we are not hiring, or in some scenarios not filling runs, most of us are actually experiencing a steady 'net loss' of seniority.
I, like the people above, don't want to see you or anyone excessed. In fact the solution to our declining seniority is hiring. Take all those casuals and make them career employees. Those people that are only seeing the gain in overtime foolishly fail to see the long term threat to their jobs. Their seniority is just a pen stroke away from elimination in a labor dispute. Their seniority is just another Tea Party/Republican victory in 2012 away from destruction. Their seniority is a two-tier pay scale casualty waiting to happen. Their job is in serious jeopardy NOW from a weakened and shrinking union membership as a result of out of craft excessing and forced retirements.
Hopefully these heartless senior clerks are really few in number and it is my guess they are the same self-destructive postal workers who voted for the political right foolishly thinking that all those anti-union, anti government worker rants were directed at everyone except them. GlennDL
click graphic to read/print larger version
Plan B is metaphor for a strategy that is used over and over again and as far as I know exist only as a tactic. But the point of this article/series is not investigative reporting to turn up proof. That is beyond the scope of this authors abilities. The point is to get you to stop and think, to pull your head out of the sand to look around and see if that was footsteps you heard or to at least get you to scratch your head and go “Hmmmm…”In order to at least entertain the ideal that a “Plan B” tactic is conceivable we would have to also entertain the possibility of some entities favoring privatization. In the case of the postal service who might those entities be?
“…Once considered among the top political appointments in Washington, the postmaster general is now selected by the Postal Board of Governors, a panel of presidentially appointed officials that currently hail mostly from the corporate world…” The Washington Post
“This is already happening. UPS [not USPS] has filed a NAFTA Chapter 11 lawsuit against the Canadian government saying that Canada's support of its postal service, Canada Post, represents a barrier to trade. UPS is seeking $160 million in damages from Canada, claiming that the government subsidy has prevented UPS from effectively competing for the express mail market. According to The New York Times, the "complaint contend[s] that the very existence of the publicly financed Canadian postal system represents unfair competition that conflicts with Canada's obligations under NAFTA. Critics worry that if the tribunal upholds the U.P.S. claim, government participation in any service that competes with the private sector will be threatened." The FTAA, the WTO, and the Assault on Public Interest, Services, and our Water
“If the Postal Service were provided with the flexibilities used by businesses in the marketplace to streamline their operations and reduce costs, we would become a more efficient and effective organization. Such a change would also allow us to more quickly adapt to meet the evolving needs, demands, and activities of our customers, now and in the future.” The Cato InstituteOf course, Congress has shown virtually no interest in giving the USPS, which is bleeding red ink, the greater flexibility it needs.”
“But for all the ways in which the Postal Service already resembles a private company, it lacks the advantages of any other corporation, such as being able to turn on a dime when it comes to rate changes, perhaps raising prices at times of high demand and lowering prices to entice customers during traditionally slow times, which for the Postal Service means summer. Today, a price change requires the permission of the Postal Rate Commission -- a yearlong process.
And unlike a private company, the Postal Service has a universal service obligation, meaning it must deliver everywhere, six days a week, at a regularly scheduled time, making the delivery even for a single piece of mail, which is not cost-effective. And it means delivering in the Grand Canyon and in rural Alaska and in high-risk neighborhoods and lots of other places where delivery is not cost-effective.
The trade-off is that the Postal Service gets monopoly protection; no private company is allowed to compete with it head to head by carrying letter mail or using the mailbox. It should give up that protection for the greater benefits of privatization.” The Cato Institute
Is it realistic to believe that he came to this conclusion only after leaving the postal service?
“…the Postal Service would have experienced a cumulative surplus of $3.7 billion over the last three fiscal years, despite declining mail volume, an economy in chaos, and electronic diversion….” William Burris, APWU President
All one has to do is look at the math involved over the last 4 years to see how the PAEA [RHB] has impacted net profits.If there is any doubt that right-wing conservatives are pro-privatization, anti-union, anti federal worker and specifically anti-Postal Workers then check out these articles from this website and others: NEW EXAMPLE… FOXNews-Phony Bailout HeadlineWithout the RHB payments 2009 would have been the only year of net losses and those losses would probably be reversed or at least manageable in conjunction with an economic turnaround. The PAEA has saddled the postal service with an obligation that no other public or private entity is burdened with. The only government agency or department that has ever turned a profit, and therefore is financially viable, is saddled with an obligation that no private sector entity could survive. That and the refusal of a modification of the formula for computing the RHB is the ‘smoking gun’ that points to the existence of a Plan B tactic supported and implemented by the republican pro-privatization movement.
