In a letter to the Senate dated March 26, Frederic Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, urged lawmakers to consider the negative implications of bill S. 1789, known as the 21st Century Postal Service Act, which was created to address the financial crisis at the United States Postal Service.
Although S. 1789 is a well-intended bill, Rolando noted, it fails to address USPS' most serious problems and doesn't do enough to help the agency in the long term.
"S. 1789 appears to be based on the Postal Service's dangerously misguided business strategy, which relies almost exclusively on reducing the quality and value of its services to households and American businesses, the main users of the mail," Rolando said. "This approach, which will see the elimination of at least 150,000 good paying jobs, will not work. As Senator Collins observed in a Senate-floor speech on March 19, this plan will 'drive away customers' and 'shrink the Postal Service to a level that will ultimately hasten its insolvency.'"
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Instead, Rolando argues that legislation must be centered on a business plan for the USPS that both stakeholders and Congress can support. This plan should preserve the USPS's network, which is the most important strategic asset, and that includes a last-mile network that operates six days a week. While the current bill prolongs the elimination of Saturday delivery for two years, its current form will turn the end of six-day delivery into a forgone conclusion.
Rolando also said S. 1789 doesn't adequately address the USPS' obligation to fund in advance future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, which has cost the agency $21 billion over the last five years, and it includes a "punitive and regressive reform of the federal-employee workers' compensation program." According to Rolando, the bill would reduce compensation benefits of injured workers, and for those at the age of retirement, they would face benefits reductions of 50 percent of their salaries at the time of their injuries.
"Unfortunately, based on what we know now, we have no choice but to oppose S. 1789," Rolando wrote. "Making the pre-funding of future retiree health benefits the principle policy objective in the law and sacrificing more than 150,000 jobs—at a time when millions of Americans are out of work and thousands of veterans are coming home from abroad—simply makes no sense."
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