Cruel cuts for Black workers

WHEN SUPREME Court Justice Antonin Scalia characterized the Voting Rights Act as an entitlement recently, he declared the intent of radical conservatives to erase the gains hard won by Blacks in the civil rights era. Many of those rights are already as good as gone.

The attacks on Black Americans--in the form of the re-segregation of schools, the school-to-prison pipeline, abolishment of equal-opportunity programs, stop-and-frisk laws, harsh drug-related sentencing of Black men and women, and voter suppression--are not only incredibly racist, but are used to attack the rights of all Americans.

The "emergency manager" system in Michigan is being used to push through austerity measures and override democratic governance in cities that are largely poor and working class and, frequently, have a majority Black population.

The bursting of the housing bubble was disproportionately harsh for Black Americans. An estimated 50 percent of personal wealth for all Blacks in America was lost in what amounts to a grand fraud scheme perpetrated by Wall Street bankers. In fact, white Americans' wealth has tripled compared to that of Black Americans since 1980.

The privatization of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is a less obvious, but still painful, attack on Black Americans.

The USPS has long been the best path to good jobs for Black Americans. In fact, it is the largest employer in the U.S. of Blacks earning over $55,000 a year.

The first Black postal workers were not only Civil War veterans, but also abolitionists, teachers and suffragists. In later years, the USPS was one of the rare good job opportunities afforded to Blacks, and attracted college-educated men--much to the dismay of some of their undereducated white coworkers.

The Black community's best and brightest were brought together in the post office. This resulted in the USPS becoming a hotbed of organization and activism for Blacks. Black postal workers had to fight Jim Crow laws and McCarthyism in the 1940s and '50s. This activism reached its zenith in the civil rights movement, which led to the Voting Rights Act.

The USPS is a rare employer in today's America where all employees are guaranteed equality and a democratic workplace, regardless of race or sex. With workers' pay and benefits being slashed nationwide through the Wisconsin-style, Koch Brothers-fueled governance and the American Legislative Exchange Council's anti-union "right to work" laws, the USPS shames the Wal-Mart-minded employers in America with its fairness towards employees.

It is no coincidence that the USPS has the nation's largest remaining public-sector unionized workforce.

POSTMASTER GENERAL Patrick Donahoe is currently engaged in a series of cuts to service, closures of mail-processing plants and the sale of valuable postal properties.

He has relaxed delivery standards for first-class mail and has sped up the delivery of business or "junk" mail. He has already closed 60 sorting facilities at a cost of 60,000 union jobs. He has begun the closure of another 99 sorting facilities, which will cost another 100,000 union jobs. The end of Saturday delivery will eliminate 80,000 union letter carrier jobs.

That's 240,000 good, union jobs lost in an economic recession. It just doesn't make sense.

Blacks make up about 20 percent of the Postal Service workforce. These proposed cuts, plus the jobs already gone, would mean the loss of 48,000 unionized postal jobs for Black Americans.

In urban areas, such as Chicago, where Blacks can represent as much as 80 percent of the postal workforce, this would prove catastrophic.

Postal closures and restrictions on delivery will hit poor people--especially Blacks, who are disproportionately poor--hardest. Low-income Blacks in the U.S., for example, have a less than 50 percent access rate to broadband Internet service. UPS and FedEx would not bother to serve unprofitable areas. Cuts to the low-cost, universal service provided by the USPS would hinder information flow to their communities--not good in the "information age."

The USPS debt crisis was created and has been almost entirely driven by the pre-funding of future employee health benefits required by the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act of 2006, signed by George W. Bush. This $75 billion obligation is something that no other agency public or private must bear.

The current recession has made the $5.5 billion-a-year installment impossible to pay. The postponement of these payments until the economy recovers would have no effect on USPS operations.

The elimination of Saturday delivery is simply a union-busting move. It opens the door to non-union delivery services to undercut unionized letter carriers and would break the "postopoly" on the mailbox that the Postal Service currently has for the sake of mail security.

Ending Saturday delivery would drive customers away from the Postal Service and into the awaiting, and more expensive, arms of UPS and FedEx.

The postmaster general is using this manufactured debt crisis as a lever to pry open the U.S. Postal Service, a part of our nation's infrastructure written into the First Amendment of the Constitution, to privatization and profiteering.

Because of racism and poverty, Blacks are often the most vulnerable citizens in America. Taking away one of the last footholds to prosperity for them in the name of a phony debt crisis is not what they should expect from a president they had such high hopes for.

It is high time for President Obama to put on his famous "walking shoes" and take action to protect Black Americans. He could most effectively start by saving the USPS from the elimination of six-day delivery.

Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson all took direct action to insure Black Americans the equal opportunity to work at the USPS--and thus to their piece of the American Dream. If President Obama is to be remembered as anything but a Wall Street president, he must take action for Black Americans during his last term in office.

By allowing the destruction of the USPS, President Obama will be destroying one of the best helping hands ever offered to Black Americans.