Calling themselves “postal protectors,” 10 people blocked the entrance to the Portland Air Cargo Center (U.S. Postal Service) June 15, disrupting several morning mail runs. The 10 were among 40 demonstrators chanting, picketing and holding banners that read “Stop Privatization of the People’s Postal Service” and “Save Family Wage, Union Jobs.”
“Postal truckers, mail handlers and mail processing clerks are losing their jobs to profiteering, private corporations,” said Jamie Partridge, a retired member of Letter Carriers Branch 82, and one of those who blocked the entrance. “We intend to disrupt this attack on our communities.”
The protesters are members and supporters of Portland Communities and Postal Workers United (PCPWU), which has been fighting cuts and closures to the postal service for the past year. In May of 2012, 10 activists were arrested occupying Portland’s University Station post office, which has since been closed. In April, five protesters went to jail for a civil disobedience action at the Salem mail processing plant, which is now being dismantled with mail processing machines moving to Portland.
Postal mail handlers and processing clerks are losing their jobs in Salem as the work is being subcontracted to a low-wage, non-postal, nonunion corporation in Portland.
At the same time, Portland postal truckers are being put on standby while a low-wage, non-postal, nonunion 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, who was part of the June 15 blockade. “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.”
PCPWU and postal unions say 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 to 75 percent in half of post offices, put 30 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.
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, PCPWU said.
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.
