A postal service white paper spelled out the demand for tearing up contracts with the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers. "It is imperative that we have the ability to reduce our workforce rapidly," the white paper argued. "It is not likely that the Postal Service will be able to eliminate these layoff protections through collective bargaining."
The APWU contract, negotiated this year, runs through 2015. The NALC and a third union, the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, have contracts that expire November 20.
Officials of all three unions have voiced opposition to Donahoe's demands, but continue to support the Obama administration and the congressional Democrats, who are working to ensure these cuts in jobs and benefits are imposed in some slightly modified form.
In the course of the first three years of the Obama administration, USPS has cut costs by some $12 billion and reduced its career workforce by 110,000, despite the no-layoff clause.
The goal of USPS management is to reduce labor costs at the postal service to the level of its two main competitors, United Parcel Service, which spends 53 percent of revenues on labor costs, and FedEx, which spends 32 percent. The two private companies specialize in high-profit package delivery, however, and are not under the legal obligation to provide daily service to 150 million individual addresses in the United States, the mandate that makes the postal service truly universal.
The attack on postal service jobs will have an enormous impact on the most oppressed sections of the population. USPS is traditionally one of the largest employers of African-Americans, who made up 21 percent of its work force, and the largest single employer of military veterans, who make up 22 percent. One third of the veterans who work at USPS are disabled.
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