Subject: [SocialistWorker.org] Don't starve the post office
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http://socialistworker.org/2012/06/11/dont-starve-the-post-office
Activist News
======== DON'T STARVE THE POST OFFICE ========================================
A group of unionists and activists are taking action against cuts at the
USPS.
June 11, 2012
THE FEDERAL government is starving the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) of
resources, so activists are organizing a hunger strike of their own in
protest.
The action is planned to begin in Washington, D.C., on June 25, the last week
before the USPS begins downgrading its service. On July 1, it's scheduled to
discontinue overnight single-piece first class mail delivery, part of a broad
attack that will affect tens of thousands of postal workers and the customers
who depend on them.
In mid-May, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe announced that half of the
mail sorting plants in the country would be closed, and half the nation's
post offices would have their hours cut by anywhere from 25 to 75 percent.
The eight hunger strikers want the postmaster general to agree to stop cuts
and closures while Congress looks into a funding mandate that is at the heart
of the USPS's financial troubles.
"Not the internet, not private competition, not the recession--Congress is
responsible for the postal debt," said Jamie Partridge, a retired letter
carrier traveling from Portland, Ore., for the hunger strike. "Corporate
interests, working through their friends in Congress, want to undermine the
USPS, bust the unions, then privatize it."
In 2006, Congress passed a mandate requiring that the USPS prefund retiree
health benefits 75 years in advance. Without this mandate, hunger strikers
argue, postal revenues came close to matching expenses over the past six
years. They also say that the USPS has overpaid tens of billions into two
pension funds. But the postmaster general would prefer to cut jobs and
services.
The proposed destruction of good-paying postal jobs is one aspect of a larger
assault on public-sector unions. And these cuts would hit African American
workers the hardest. The Postal Service employs the largest number of Black
workers making over $50,000 a year of any employer. African Americans make up
21 percent of the postal workforce.
As a recent press release from the hunger strike organizers, Communities and
Postal Workers United [1], points out:
>The loss of government paychecks erodes one of the great equalizing forces
>at play in the American economy for more than a century. A government job
>has long offered a pathway for African Americans to sidestep discrimination
>that has impeded progress in the private sector, where social networks often
>determine who has a shot at the best jobs, say experts.
>
The hunger strike is scheduled to start on June 25 at 8 a.m. and end on June
28 at 6 p.m. Visit the Communities and Postal Workers United [2] website for
more information on hunger strike and solidarity events planned in other
cities.
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[1] http://cpwunited.com/home
[2] http://cpwunited.com/home
