The postal protectors

FIVE PROTESTERS, calling themselves "postal protectors," were arrested July 3 in an occupation of a private air cargo facility slated to handle and process U.S. mail.

"Postal mail handlers and mail processing clerks are losing their jobs to profiteering, private corporations," declared Jamie Partridge, a retired letter carrier who joined the civil disobedience action at the Matheson Flight Extenders facility, just next door to the U.S. Postal Service's Portland Air Cargo Center. "We protest the privatization of the public postal service. We oppose the destruction of family wage, union jobs and the delay of the people's mail. We intend to disrupt this attack on our communities."

Protest organizers, Portland Communities and Postal Workers United (PCPWU), are demanding that Matheson management pull out of negotiations for the subcontracting of postal jobs. PCPWU is also targeting Postal Operations Manager Lisa Shear, demanding that she put a halt to the privatization.

PCPWU HAS been fighting cuts and closures to the postal service for the past year. In May 2012, 10 activists were arrested occupying Portland's University Station post office, which has since been closed. In April of this year, five protesters went to jail for a civil disobedience action at the Salem mail plant, which is now being dismantled with mail processing machines moving to Portland. In June, the Portland-area USPS District had the slowest mail delivery in the nation--83 percent overnight first class compared to the 98 percent goal.

Postal mail handlers and processing clerks are losing their jobs in Salem as the work is being subcontracted to the low-wage, non-postal, non-union Matheson Corp. in Portland. At the same time, Portland postal truckers are being put on standby while the low-wage, non-postal, non-union Dill Star/LAPO trucking company takes their work.

"This privatization and union-busting is being carried out in the name of a phony financial emergency," said Rev. John Schwiebert, one of the protesters occupying Matheson's facility. "The security, safety and timely delivery of the mail are all at risk. Rural communities, seniors and the disabled, small businesses and low-income communities are hit the hardest. Postal management needs to stop and reverse these closures, cuts and subcontracts which are sending our beloved postal service into a death spiral."

Mail-sorting machines being moved from Salem cannot fit into the Portland Air Cargo Center, so space is being leased next door in the Matheson (Asiana Cargo) facility. But when the SWYB machine is moved into the Matheson space, it will be worked by 12 non-postal mail handlers and six non-postal processing clerks, hired by Matheson. USPS management says the sub-contracting is necessary to save labor costs in this "financial emergency."

The "financial emergency" is phony. Since 2006, the USPS has been forced to spend nearly 10 percent of its budget pre-funding retiree health benefits 75 years in advance. No other U.S. agency or private business faces such a crushing financial burden. Not only would the postal service have been profitable without the mandate, the USPS has also over-paid tens of billions into two pension funds.

In the past year, the Postmaster General has closed 30 percent of mail processing plants, reduced hours by 25-75 percent in half of post offices, put 10 percent of post offices up for sale, subcontracted trucking and mail handling, eliminated tens of thousands of family wage, postal jobs and delayed mail delivery.

The USPS's own studies (revealed at the March 22, 2012, meeting of the Postal Regulatory Commission), showed that big mailers leave the system as a result of such delays, costing more in lost revenue than is saved by lowering labor costs, not to mention the dramatic increase in trucking costs as mail is transported hundreds of extra miles to be sorted in the closest still open facilities.

Postal workers have seen their wages cut by 25 percent for new hires. Bottom-tier postal support employees (truckers and clerks) and mail handler assistants now make less in wages and benefits than the non-postal, non-union sub-contract workers.

The postal service is not broke. Subcontracting work is unnecessary and costly. However, the agenda of Corporate America, their friends in Congress and in postal management, according to the CPWU, is to cripple the USPS, to soften it up for union busting and privatization.

The USPS is a $65 billion annual business with over $100 billion surplus in its pension and retiree health benefit funds, over 30,000 post offices and 200,000 vehicles. Postal activists claim that America is being confronted with a huge transfer of public wealth to for-profit, private corporations.