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Postal Workers' Pay Did Not Cause Stamp Rate Increase
(On Jan. 10, 2006, APWU President William Burrus submitted the letter below to the Christian Science Monitor in response to an op-ed the newspaper published Jan. 6 by Sam Ryan, "Instead of Raising Stamp Rates, the USPS Should Cut Costs." The Monitor published a shorter version of the following letter on Jan. 18, 2006. )
To the Editor:
In a Jan. 6 op-ed, Sam Ryan of the Lexington Institute, a conservative “think tank,” claimed the Postal Service should cut postal workers’ pay and benefits instead of increasing postage rates, and “outsource” more of its operations to corporate mailers.
Ryan is entitled to his views, but his byline should have disclosed the he runs a PR firm, Keybridge Communications, that ghostwrites and places op-ed pieces for right-wing, anti-labor organizations.
The web of myths and half-truths Ryan spins in the name of postal “reform” keep popping up in his columns in local newspapers across the country, but despite efforts by our union, the U.S. Postal Service, and others to correct the record, he ignores the facts and moves on. We don’t always respond, but this time we cannot let Mr. Ryan off the hook
Ryan’s most flagrant distortions include the following:
He falsely claims that the postal workers earn “substantially more than their private sector counterparts.” The truth is that our compensation falls below that of UPS and FedEx employees. Though many postal clerks, truck drivers and mechanics, and computer and electronic technicians are highly skilled, on average they earn far less than the $65,000 Ryan implied. The Postal Service needs a stable workforce to do the often grinding, difficult job of operating the world’s largest, most dependable, and least expensive mail system. Simply put, Wal-Mart-style wages and benefits won’t get the job done.
Ryan also suggests that the Postal Service should not agree to no-layoff clauses in contracts with its workers because “No organization can effectively control costs if it is barred from adjusting the size of its workforce.” What he fails to mention is that the no-layoff protection many postal workers enjoy has not prevented the Postal Service from reducing its workforce, mostly through attrition, by more than 12 percent (more than 94,000 career jobs) during the last 5 years.
Much of this downsizing has been made possible by a USPS investment in automation — unopposed by the APWU — as well as steady increases in worker productivity.
The Postal Service has fewer employees today than it did in 1985, yet in just the last 20 years its delivery network has grown by 32 million new addresses and its volume has doubled.
Because a reasonable expectation of job security is as important to postal workers as it is to most Americans, our union has negotiated, through a time-honored collective bargaining process, some employment-related peace-of-mind for most of the USPS employees we represent. For the past 35 years, collective bargaining has worked so well that even Postmaster General John E. Potter and former USPS Board of Governors Chairman David S. Fineman told Congress and President Bush’s hand-picked “reform” commission not to tinker with it.
Ryan’s biggest whopper is his assertion that the Postal Service could save consumers money by the increased “outsourcing” of mail-processing operations. The larger “work-sharing discounts” he advocates amount to corporate welfare for business and advertising mailers, many of whom already receive below-cost postage rates.
While the recent two-cent increase means that consumers will pay 39 cents for a first-class stamp, special deals for many corporate mailers mean they will pay as little as 29 cents to send a first-class letter. These discounted postage rates are larger than can be justified by the tasks performed by the “work-sharers.” As former USPS chief financial officer Michael J. Riley testified before the Postal Rate Commission in 2002, one-third of the postage rate increase that hit consumers that year could have been avoided if rates for large mailers were properly set.
By law, the Postal Service runs on a break-even mandate, and despite the corporate giveaway, postal rates have risen less than the rate of inflation for 35 years. Consumers should know that if each mailer paid a fair share, first-class stamps would cost less. Meanwhile, it still costs less to use the Postal Service: USPS package-delivery charges are lower than the competition’s, Express Mail is far less expensive than other expedited letter services, and the Postal Service doesn’t add surcharges for delivery to far-flung locations or to cover fuel costs as its competitors do. What would it cost consumers to send mail via a privatized postal system, which Mr. Ryan seems to advocate?
The Postal Service is the nation’s second largest employer. Cutting pay and benefits like health insurance, as Mr. Ryan advocates, would only add to the growing legions of have-nots in our economy, and hasten the race to the bottom for all but our wealthiest citizens.
William Burrus
President
