Crushing postal workers and slashing service will not solve the U.S. Postal Service’s financial crisis, Postal Workers (APWU) President Cliff Guffey said in response to the announcement today that the Postal Service will seek congressional support to cut 120,000 jobs, break its labor contract signed earlier this year and withdraw from the federal health and retirement plans.
“Congress created this mess and Congress can fix it,” Guffey said.
The USPS economic crisis is the result of a provision of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 that requires the Postal Service to pre-fund the health care benefits of future retirees — a burden no other government agency or private company bears.
The legislation requires the USPS to fund a 75-year liability over a 10-year period, and that requirement costs the USPS more than $5.5 billion per year.
Guffey also pointed out that “the federal government is holding billions of dollars in postal overpayments to its pension accounts.”
Congress must address the cause of the Postal Service’s financial crisis so that postal workers can continue to serve the American people and the USPS can continue to act as an important engine of the U.S. economy.
Guffey added than the APWU “will not allow the hard-working men and women of the U.S. Postal Service to be made the scapegoats for the outrageously poor judgment of Congress.”
Click here to read the USPS’s “Workforce Optimization” proposal.
