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What's Next for the Presidential Panel

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

At press time, the President's Commission on the U.S. Postal Service had held two public hearings and had scheduled three more.

The full commission will meet next in Austin, TX, on March 18. The focus of this hearing is to be the work of the Technology Challenges and Opportunities Subcommittee, which is studying the impact of new technologies (such as online billing).

The subcommittees meet out of the public eye. The Technology subcommittee is chaired by former congressman Robert S. Walker (R-PA). Walker now heads the Wexler Group, a Washington lobbying powerhouse. Dionel E. Aviles and Joseph R. Wright also serve on this subcommittee.

The focus of the commission hearing in Los Angeles scheduled for April 4 will be on the work of the Private-Sector Partnership Subcommittee, which is analyzing the current role of the private sector in the mail-delivery system. This panel is looking at the possible expansion of negotiated service agreements and "outsourcing."

The Los Angeles session will also feature more testimony on "work-sharing," about which APWU testimony has already been delivered, especially regarding how work-sharing has resulted in excessive postage discounts granted to big presort mailing houses.

The Partnership subcommittee is headed by business executive Wright, a former Reagan administration official. Don V. Cogman and Norman Seabrook are the other members of the subcommittee.

The work of the Workforce Subcommittee is to be the focus of the full commission hearing in Chicago on April 29. The Workforce group is responsible for reviewing current collective bargaining and dispute-resolution procedures, and is also reviewing employee compensation and productivity, workers' compensation claims, and the USPS pension and retiree health-care obligations.

The Workforce Subcommittee is chaired by Carolyn L. Gallagher, a former furniture company owner who then-governor Bush appointed to several government posts in Texas. Aviles and Richard C. Levin also serve on this panel. Levin is the president of Yale University, where he is embroiled in a protracted struggles over wages, benefits, and working conditions with unions representing the school's clerical, technical, service, and maintenance employees, as well as with graduate students and hospital workers' organizations that are trying to win union recognition.

At least two other hearings are expected between May 1 and July 31, the commission's deadline.

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