Postal Union Fights Staples Partnership: 'A Big Step Toward Privatization'
On a recent Saturday morning, 500 protesters poured out of a parade of school buses, signs and megaphones in hand, and tried their best to shame a single Staples store just outside Chicago. Among them was Mike Suchomel, a 20-year veteran of the U.S. Postal Service, who traveled all the way from New Jersey for a nearby labor conference.
What has infuriated Suchomel and many of his fellow postal union members is a new arrangement struck between USPS and the office supply retailer. Under the premise of a pilot program, a limited number of Staples locations are now offering most of the same services provided at post offices, to be handled by Staples employees rather than postal workers.
"It's just a big step toward privatization," said Suchomel, who hopped a bus to the protest from the Labor Notes conference, a biannual gathering of labor activists held in Chicago. "I think it's a terrible thing that the postmaster general would even think about this."
In recent years the Postal Service has lost an eye-popping amount of money, largely due to retiree health prefunding requirements imposed on the agency by Congress. In an era of falling first-class mail, the red ink has kicked off a postal reform discussion that's pitted the postmaster general against the various postal unions. The latter insist that the service cuts being considered, including the end of six-day delivery, will send the institution into a death spiral.
Union representatives say the Staples program is proof agency management would be happy to spin off basic postal services to the private sector, further shrinking what's long been a bastion of well-paying, public-sector union jobs. After a series of sporadic demonstrations against Staples in recent weeks, the American Postal Workers Union, which represents 220,000 postal employees, is planning protests from coast to coast on April 24, and it expects broad backing from other public-sector unions.
Read More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/15/postal-service-staples_n_5155270.html
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