But the Big Postal Unions Won’t Join the Effort to Force Trump hold-outs from Their Posts
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That’s
the view of postal workers across the country who are seeing service standards
deteriorate and privatization expanded under the watch of Postmaster General
Louis DeJoy and Postal Service Board of Governors Chair Ron A. Bloom. And the
postal workers want to give both men the boot.
Last
month, 77 public interest groups comprising the Save The Post Office Coalition
signed a letter
urging President Joe Biden not to extend Bloom’s term after it
expires in December.
Notably
absent from the appeal, however, were any of the four postal worker unions —
American Postal Workers Union (APWU), National Association of Postal Mail
Handlers Union (NPMHU), National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) or the
National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA).
In
March, 50 House Democrats called on Biden to can the entire board —
including Bloom — but NALC reportedly stepped in to throw cold water on the
irate legislators.
NPMHU
spokesperson Katie Maddocks — the union representing more than 50,000 postal
employees — concedes that her union’s priority is moving the Postal Reform bill
forward and that the NPMHU, at least, wants to make sure that “if Mr. DeJoy is
ousted, that won’t mess up our bill.”
The bipartisan Postal Service Reform Act of 2021 is vitally important to the USPS and all four of the unions representing its more than 495,000 employees. It seeks to eliminate a requirement under a 2006 law that the USPS pre-fund more than $120 billion in retiree healthcare and pension liabilities. It is an onerous requirement imposed by a Republican-controlled Congress that costs the service more than $5 billion a year and contributes to its chronic financial woes.
But
frontline workers critical of DeJoy and Bloom say that there will be little
left of the USPS by the time the stalled reform act ever makes it out of the
House Ways and Means Committee.
“It is my fervent belief that if we do not stop the destructive policies that are being implemented in the Postal Service, that we’re not gonna have a Postal Service to negotiate with for a contract — or a need for any kind of legislative relief,” Iowa Postal Workers Union President Kimberly Karol says.
“These
policies are so bad and so detrimental to the future of the Postal Service,
that I think it is very important that we get the public informed and speak
out, and get DeJoy and Bloom replaced for advocating for these very destructive
policies.”
Other
reasons not to rock the boat and pitch both DeJoy and Bloom into the drink have
to do with outstanding contracts that still haven’t been hammered out and a
dubious 10-year plan. Dubbed “Delivering for America,” the blueprint went into
effect Oct. 1. It includes twice-yearly postal rate increases, shorter post
office hours, the elimination of airplane service to transport mail and the
closing of mail processing plants.
New
Labor Contracts Stalled
Neither
the APWU nor the NRLCA signed new labor agreements with the USPS. The NPMHU’s
current contract expires next fall, while NALC’s current contract runs out in
2023.
“We
understand that a good contract is very important — but there’s no need for a
contract if you don’t have a Postal Service,” APWU Detroit Area Local 295
President Keith Combs says. “I really believe we
must act now — Postmaster DeJoy is dismantling machines, but he’s also
dismantling the Postal Service. We cannot just stand by and watch this
happening.”
Postal
workers in Michigan, according to Combs, have seen their on-time delivery
rating plummet nearly 30% over the last year alone.
“Michigan,
in 2020, went from a 93.11 percentile rating to a 64.15 percentile rating —
something we’re just not used to seeing here in Detroit,” the 32-year postal veteran
adds. “I’ve been around long enough to see Detroit number one in the whole
country — twice. So, it’s alarming when I see us drop 29 {percentage points) in
one year in on-time delivery. That’s just something we’re not used to seeing.”
Postal
workers who want to send DeJoy and Bloom packing insist those kinds of delays
are deliberate features of the 10-year plan which DeJoy rolled out back on
March 23, and opponents immediately assailed as guaranteeing the “death spiral” of the venerable USPS.
“Everything
is true about the decline in Postal service — but it was the intent of DeJoy
and Bloom to make it happen from the beginning — so get used to it,” New York
Metro Postal Union President Jonathan Smith told protesters rallying outside
the Manhattan offices of Brookfield Assets Management in September.
Conflicts
of Interest
Postal
workers critical of DeJoy and Bloom insist that, in addition to dismantling the
USPS as we know it, both men are guilty of scandalous conflicts of interests,
which alone should be reason for their ousters.
New
York Metro Area Postal Union members chose to hold their September 23, rally
outside the offices of Brookfield Assets Management on Vesey Street because
both DeJoy and Bloom are deeply enmeshed in the $50 Billion private equity
group. Bloom is actually the company’s vice chairman and managing partner and
has been since 2016. DeJoy, meanwhile, is a millionaire Trump campaign donor
who reportedly owns $305,000 of Brookfield Assets Management bonds.
“There
is too much money going around that they don’t want to talk about; there are
too many investments going around that they don’t want to talk about,” Smith
said in response.
As
alarming as the “Delivering for America” plan is to its opponents, those
seeking DeJoy and Bloom’s ouster point out that the 10-year plan maintains six-
and seven-day delivery — something vital to both the NALC and APWU.
Bloom
also advised the NALC on postal issues earlier in his career when he was
vice-chair, U.S. investment banking and managing director at Lazard — the
largest independent investment bank in the world.
“It’s
a little sad to know that Bloom personally worked with the carriers union and
to my understanding, they like Bloom — and they like DeJoy,” Diane Erlanger,
director of organizing for the N.Y. Metro Area Postal Union,” said in
September.
Securing
good contracts, doing what you can to save mail delivery jobs over the next
decade and finally scrapping the requirement to pre-fund retiree healthcare and
pension liabilities might all be valid reasons for the hands off approach to
DeJoy and Bloom — but Karol thinks it’s all a mirage.
“It’s
like the [postal union] leadership has been mesmerized by this carrot that’s
being dangled in front of them by Congress and leaders in Washington, D.C.,”
she says. “They’re mesmerized. They can’t see beyond the carrot. But there’s no
way of attaining that carrot. In the meantime, those of us that are out there
in the trenches are suffering the consequences of these detrimental changes.”
Outsourcing
the Mail
Most
troubling to Karol is the introduction of numerous Surface Transfer Centers
that the USPS has started opening across the country.
The
USPS confirms that it has awarded contracts to outsource Surface Transfer
Centers in Atlanta, the Washington, D.C., area, and Springfield, Mass., as well
as others in Northern California and Southern California.
David
Partenheimer, the spokesperson for the USPS, calls the outsourced Surface
Transfer Centers, “a key strategy in our Delivery for America 10-year plan and
core to our surface transportation network.”
“The
outsourced locations will have Postal Service oversight of non-postal staffing.
We are moving the STC operations out of space-constrained postal plants to
larger off-site facilities,” Partenheimer said in an email. “The STC’s are
monitored by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, a law enforcement arm of the
Postal Service, charged with maintaining the sanctity of the mail. In addition,
the Postal Service has 24/7 management leadership at every site.”
Karol
says the outsourced Surface Transfer Centers are responsible for the
significant service delays her customers in Iowa are now experiencing — and
even the disappearance of the mail itself.
“These
Surface Transfer Centers are not part of the postal network,” she says. “These
are private companies that have been contracted to sort, distribute, consolidate
and transport the [US] mail. All of this was being done inside the postal
network by postal employees.”
Postal
workers used to be able to provide customers with comprehensive tracking
throughout the delivery process, but that’s no longer the case, according to
Karol.
“Now,
because we have to relinquish custody of postal products — we give it to a
Surface Transfer Center company that doesn’t have the same obligations as
postal employees or the Postal Service in regards to transparency and our
service obligations — it essentially disappears,” she says.
Mail
Sits for Days
According
to Karol, mail can now sit for days waiting to be delivered because the private
companies contracting with the USPS are trying to maximize their efficiency by
making sure all of their containers and trucks are fully loaded before they are
actually dispatched.
“Because
I am in the middle of the country, anything that I want to send to California
has to wait at that Surface Transfer Center until people from Illinois or
Missouri or other parts of this central area of the country are sending things
to California,” Karol says. “And, likewise, when it’s coming back, we have to
wait until there are lots of things coming to Iowa.”
Karol
also notes other reorganizational changes to regional deliveries routes that
have increased traditional one- and two-day delivery service to three- and
four-day service.
“We
don’t send mail to Cedar Rapids anymore,” Karol explains. “It now has to go to
Des Moines — and then gets dispatched to Cedar Rapids. Likewise, mail that is
coming to us has to come through Des Moines. It’s no longer a direct route to
us. It’s building extra time into the delivery. Which is why it was essential
for delivery service standards to be changed — because we no longer have a direct
route. The network is still in place, but the way that it’s being transported
has changed.”
The
Iowa Postal Workers Union president says the USPS has not provided her with a
complete list of outsourced Surface Transfer Centers already in the network,
nor those coming onto the network.
Partenheimer,
too, did not identify the company or companies holding Surface Transfer Center
contracts with the USPS. But this past April, the agency awarded XPO Logistics
with a $120 million, five-year contract to oversee two sorting and distribution
facilities in Atlanta and Washington, D.C.
Those
calling to ax both DeJoy and Bloom have long cited their heavy interests in XPO
Logistics. Brookfield Assets Management — Bloom’s outfit — reportedly holds at
least $2.6 million in XPO stock. DeJoy was an XPO executive from 2014 to 2015
and has divested up to $155.3 million shares of XPO since becoming
postmaster general.
Says
Smith, “If you’re not going to speak out on DeJoy and Blume — tell me why.”
Joe Maniscalco is a journalist and freelance writer based in New York City. His work has appeared in a variety of news outlets ranging from the NewYorkPost.com to Alternet.org. He's spent the last decade covering workplace justice issues, the American Labor Movement and steadfastly avoiding well-paid corporate media gigs.