A coalition of mailers groups and postal employees met for a second time yesterday in Washington in an effort to find common ground for legislation that would reform the U.S. Postal Service and deal with its immediate cash crunch.
Although much remains unresolved, one issue that arose, was the need for the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) to make concessions, “because the mailers have bent over backwards” in trying to come up with ways to cut costs.
For his part, William Burrus, executive vice president of the APWU said that “we’re in favor of postal reform and we think there should be some flexibility in setting rates but we don’t think it should affect collective bargaining.”
Burrus does concede that the USPS should have some flexibility in setting rates and ” they shouldn’t have to wait ten months before they can increase rates.”
Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), current chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, has asked this group of mailer organizations and postal employees to come up with proposals by May 16th. that could be worked into possible new postal reform legislation.
For at least the last six or seven years, Rep. John McHugh,(R-NY) has proposed legislation (formerly HR 22) that would give the USPS greater flexibility in setting prices for services to be competitive with private industry, dividing postal services into competitive and non-competitive entities, and strengthening the Postal Rate Commission.
Separately, the USPS has recently threatened to cut out Saturday delivery service and file additional rate cases for increases to close up budget gaps and the Postal Board of Governors is seriously considering overturning the current postal rates.
Coalition members include the Direct Marketing Association; Magazine Publishers Of America; Association for Postal Commerce; Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers; Parcel Shippers Association; National Association of Letter Carriers; National Rural Letter Carriers Association; National Association of Postmasters of the United States; and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union.
Network
