There's a great untruth being circulated on Capitol Hill these days. It contends that postal work sharing is nothing more than a valueless giveaway of postage dollars to greedy mailers. It's the brainchild of those who wrong-headedly believe that the demise of mailer work sharing somehow will improve the fiscal lot of the U.S. Postal Service and its workers.
As we know from history, spreading untruths is part of the world's legacy from the 1930s. Back then, telling the “big lie” was an important part of the tactical game used by Europe's most infamous demagogues as a means for coming into and staying in power. The substance of these lies had no foundation in truth; they were nothing more than scapegoating others for the economic and political ills of the day. This tactic was meant to deflect truth from the public eye to lend credence to a falsehood that otherwise would not stand the light of day. An entire world descended into insanity as a result.
Now I'm sure Bill Burrus, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, is a very fine man. But he's also someone who knows better than the claptrap he's been telling about mailer work sharing. It makes you wonder what Burrus is trying to hide.
What we know is that the postal service is in a financial pickle. Mail volumes in key postal sectors have suffered declines from years past, and electronic communication technologies and private sector rivals have ushered in a competitive market in which the USPS finds itself particularly ill-equipped. According to the General Accounting Office, the postal service's operating model can't work, and the comptroller general and the Board of Governors have called on Congress and the Bush administration to change the postal system's legislative charter.
At the heart of the USPS' dilemma is a $115 billion obligation that, for the most part, reflects a cost that can be rightly termed “labor-related.” How better to deflect any criticism of labor than trying to foist responsibility for the postal fiscal crisis into mailers' laps?
Well, once exposed, the big lie didn't fare well in Europe, and it won't be a success here either. The postal crisis doesn't need the encumbrance of others' lies. It's already bad enough. What it needs is responsible leaders to work together for a reasonable solution.
GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.
