Trust

After an agreement was reached between the Postal Service and the APWU, Postmaster General Pat Donahue said, “This is a responsible agreement that is in the best interest of our employees, our customers and the future of the Postal Service”. He further said, “The contract will help lay a foundation that is fair to our employees and stakeholders”.

Then, in testimony before Congress he said the Postal Service only needed three things from Congress: an end to the pre-funding, return of the FERS overpayment, and 5 day delivery.

Stephen Lynch (D – MA) introduced H.R. 1351, which the APWU supports, and as of the end of July it has 179 co-sponsors. None of Mississippi’s four Representatives have co-sponsored this bill.

In August the Postal Service issued two “white papers” to Congress asking for much more than the three things they had previously said would be all they needed.

Now the Postal Service is asking for Congress to:

· Resolve the pre-funding of health care

· Solve inequities present in current CSRS pension methodology

· Repay FERS over-funding of $6.9 billion

· Eliminate the requirement to maintain 6 day delivery

· Allow the Postal Service to make decisions more quickly and in a more business-like fashion regarding it’s retail facility and mail processing networks

· Establish its own health benefits program

· Establish its own retirement program

· Eliminate the “no lay-off” provisions of the Collective Bargaining Agreements and establish a RIF program

President Guffey said “This is a clear attempt to abrogate our contract and destroy postal collective bargaining; crushing postal workers and slashing service will not solve the Postal Service’s financial crisis”.

Bill Fletcher of the American Federation of Government Employees union told the Washington Post: “When you break a contract, basically what you’re saying is that we have left the era of good-faith bargaining and negotiation and entered

into employer unilateralism.”

Mississippi Postal Workers Union President Mark Cunningham urged all members to contact their members of Congress to ask them to co-sponsor H.R. 1351 warning, “If we do nothing, we will all be applying for unemployment”.