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Public Input Largely Absent
At Commission's 'Public' Hearings

(This article first appeared in the May/June 2003 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine)

None of the panelists testifying before the President's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service at its first two field hearings stood up for the interests of postal workers or consumers.

Omar M. Gonzalez, the APWU's Western Regional Coordinator, described what he witnessed in Los Angeles on April 4 as "alarming."

"The commissioners seemed interested in only two things - limiting 'universal service' and finding ways to eliminate postal workers," Gonzalez said. The focus of that hearing was "Private-Sector Partnerships," yet panelists seemed to favor retaining "only the first mile and the last mile" from the current system, he said. "In other words, collection and delivery. There is a real danger that the commission is just trying to make it easier to privatize the system."

The earlier public hearing (Austin, TX, March 18) focused on the impact of technology on the nation's mail-delivery system. Yet those with the largest stake in the system - ordinary citizens - were able to participate in these "public" hearings only when granted a few minutes to speak at the end of each session.

"I heard a lot today about the importance of advanced technology to helping the Postal Service get back on sound fiscal footing," said Morline Moore, the Texas APWU president, during her brief presentation in Austin. "But it doesn't matter how innovative you've become if it hasn't increased revenues."

"Revenue has been hurt by below-cost postage discounts," Moore told the Commission. "Even with giveaway discounts, the mailers are pushing for even more technological advances so they can better capitalize on the breaks they're already getting."

In remarks offered at the end of the Commission's half-day session after its members had traveled all the way to the West Coast, Yoggi Riley, a 36-year Postal Service veteran and an officer with the San Fernando Valley (CA) Area Local APWU, looked over her notes and suggested that the private sector already seems to have benefited greatly from work-sharing "partnerships."

"It's the USPS that furnishes all the equipment to the pre-sort houses - the trays, sleeves, tubs, hampers, rolling equipment," Riley said. "The Postal Service has always borne this cost. The mailing houses are receiving discounts way above and beyond the costs for doing these mailings."

Also commenting in Los Angeles was Phillip Warlick, legislative director for the California APWU. He told the commission that he was intrigued by a panelist's lament about "public-sector and private-sector tension."

"Examples of this tension that the R.R. Donnelley representative failed to mention," Warlick said, "were the provision of universal service vs. the lessening of service overall; broadening vs. narrowing the opportunities for contact between the low-income, disabled people, and senior citizens, and society at large."

"The most significant tension," Warlick added, "is whether the Postal Service will continue as a 'public good,' or will it instead pursue a 'bottom-line driven' business model? I hope the Presidential Commission will consider these and other tensions and conflicting purposes to which the Postal Service must respond."

Summing up Postal Service management's response to these purposes was Riley, who quoted Postmaster General John E. Potter. During an address to a congressional appropriations committee March 27, Potter said he was proud to say that "service performance across the country is the highest it's ever been."

"Potter praised the work of everyone from local postmasters to clerks," Riley told the commission. "From what I heard today, we risk turning over a mailing industry to others that offer only a mere promise of 'we can do it better.' That is not good enough."

At press-time, the union was preparing for the only other scheduled public hearing, in Chicago on April 29. The focus of that session was to be the work of the Workforce Subcommittee, which was looking at collective bargaining and dispute-resolution procedures.

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