More Hellacious News for the PO & Voting by Mail
(a companion piece is this July 25, 2020 ‘Grim News’ that contains a lot of the history of privatization attempts, mass numbers of PO closures, suggestions by Save the Post Office, etc.)
First up: ‘Who decides the fate of the US Postal Service?’ Kayla Costa and Shuvu Batta, 4 August 2020, wsws.org (with permission)
“Workers have responded with outrage to the recent leaked memos detailing efforts to privatize the United States Postal Service (USPS) by implementing major cost-cutting measures, slowing down the mail delivery speed, and making the federal agency seem unreliable in the middle of an election year that will see an increase of mail-in voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The internal memo, released July 10, stated that mail deliveries would be delayed due to cost-cutting and prohibitions on overtime, with “more to come.”
On July 27, newly appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy declared: “The Postal Service is in a financially unsustainable position, stemming from substantial declines in mail volume, and a broken business model.”
DeJoy continued: “We are currently unable to balance our costs with available funding sources to fulfill both our universal service mission and other legal obligations. Because of this, the Postal Service has experienced over a decade of financial losses, with no end in sight, and we face an impending liquidity crisis.”
Costa and Batta reiterate some of their earlier reports in their:
“The campaign to privatize the Postal Service
This is only the latest in a campaign to privatize the Post Office spanning over a half century, which began in 1970 with the adoption of the Postal Reorganization Act after a nationwide postal workers’ strike. The law, first proposed under President Johnson in 1967, outlawed strikes in favor of binding arbitration, and spun off the Post Office Department, formerly a cabinet-level agency, into a publicly owned corporation, the United States Postal Service.
By the 1980s, the USPS was cut off from all federal funding, forcing it to rely solely on revenue from its own products and services. In 2006, George Bush’s Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act forced the USPS to fully fund retirement benefits without governmental assistance, creating a mountain of debt for the agency. The USPS has had declining revenue since the early 2000s as a result of the decline of paper mail delivery, and it has been losing money since 2007.
In 2018, the Trump administration released a plan calling for the USPS to either be sold off to a private company or become a publicly traded entity with shares bought and sold by wealthy investors on the stock market. […]
“For the ruling class, it is not a matter of if the USPS will be privatized, but when and how it will be done. Those who currently manage the USPS are well aware of their aims.
Who runs USPS?
The USPS’s Board of Governors, equivalent to a board of directors for a private company, is given the power to direct and control its expenditures, review its practices, conduct long-range planning, approve officer compensation and set policies on all postal matters.
Board members are appointed by the president and must be confirmed by the Senate. The Postmaster General is appointed and voted on by the Board of Governors. Since 2006, members serve terms of seven years and supposedly must represent “public interest generally and cannot be representatives of special interests.”
But the current members of the USPS Board of Governors represent their class with all of its criminal, profit-driven, and anti-worker characteristics.
This section could serve as more evidence that it’s not the Evil Republicans at play, but a uniparty screw job. Their names and short bios also feature some of their photos:
Louis de Joy
Robert M Duncan
Ron A. Bloom
John M. Barger
Roman Martinez IV
Donald M. Moak and William D. Zollars
The bipartisan gang-up against the USPS and the response of the working class.
In short, the USPS is headed by former Wall Street and corporate executives, whose collective millions are derived from decades of corporate raiding and financial speculation, ramping up corporate profits at the expense of the working class.
The fact that all of the current members received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate demonstrates that regardless of their pretensions, both Democrats and Republicans are united in their assault against postal workers and the social rights of the working class. This truth obliterates the claim by the unions, Bernie Sanders, and the Democratic Socialists of America that postal workers can “save USPS” by pressuring Congress to provide adequate financial assistance.
Moreover, the presence of many union advisors on the Board shows that unions themselves are involved in this bipartisan conspiracy. No doubt the postal unions stand to receive billions of dollars in public stock and other financial incentives, similar to the 2009 restructuring of the auto industry when the United Auto Workers became the largest shareholder in General Motors.’”
I’d found this link at Defendthepostoffice.com, and they must have put some sort of good Mojo on it…as I was permitted to read it:
‘Mail Delays Fuel Concern Trump Is Undercutting Postal System Ahead of Voting’ ; The president’s long campaign against the Postal Service is intersecting with his assault on mail-in voting amid concerns that he has politicized oversight of the agency’, July 31, 2020, nytimes.com
WASHINGTON — Welcome to the next election battleground: the post office.
President Trump’s yearslong assault on the Postal Service and his increasingly dire warnings about the dangers of voting by mail are colliding as the presidential campaign enters its final months. The result has been to generate new concerns about how he could influence an election conducted during a pandemic in which greater-than-ever numbers of voters will submit their ballots by mail.
In tweet after all-caps tweet, Mr. Trump has warned that allowing people to vote by mail will result in a “CORRUPT ELECTION” that will “LEAD TO THE END OF OUR GREAT REPUBLICAN PARTY” and become the “SCANDAL OF OUR TIMES.” He has predicted that children will steal ballots out of mailboxes. On Thursday, he dangled the idea of delaying the election instead.”
The authors then reference the memo sent to postal workers by Trump’s choice on new Postmaster General, Luis deJoy, noting that there will no longer be pay for overtime ensuring that mail will be delivered by the close of day. According to wsws, postal workers report first class mail and unsorted packages being left on the ground in different mail centers across the US.
“Voting rights groups say it is a recipe for disaster.
“We have an underfunded state and local election system and a deliberate slowdown in the Postal Service,” said Wendy Fields, the executive director of the Democracy Initiative, a coalition of voting and civil rights groups. She said the president was “deliberately orchestrating suppression and using the post office as a tool to do it.”
The authors bring a quote from Barack Obama on ‘voter suppression’ had delivered at John Lewis’s funeral, the hypocrisy of which is epic, considering the over 3700 PO closings under his administration, many of which featured exquisite WPA murals; DiFi’s hubbie Richard Blum had the exclusive contract for their sales. But srsly: attendees at Lewis’s funeral used their time to make partisan hay? Shame on them all!
They then proceed to note how many more people in various states are voting by mail, and some of the states that require ballots to be received by voting day, not just postmarked on voting day. They also describe what a debacle voting in New York has been, given the state’s rules, one being that the counting of the votes can’t even start until the polls close.
Then comes a longish section on postal officials’ reactions to Luis deJoy’s New Rules.
This ‘News’ from the WaPo gets a bit tricky, not only to re-write a bit, but due to the fact Dems are rather equal to Saints as far as I can tell.
butthead and meathead
‘Treasury agrees to lend Postal Service $10 billion in trade for rivals’ shipping contracts; The debt-laden mail service will provide the agency proprietary information on its agreements with private-sector competitors’, WaPo (Bezos’s rag), July 29, 2020
“The Treasury Department agreed to loan the U.S. Postal Service $10 billion in emergency coronavirus relief funding Wednesday in exchange for proprietary information about the mail service’s most lucrative private-sector contracts.
The Postal Service, subject to confidentiality restrictions, will provide Treasury copies of its 10 largest “negotiated service agreements,” or contracts with high-volume third-party shippers such as Amazon, FedEx and UPS, and receive a crucial injection of cash that postal officials say will keep the debt-laden agency solvent for at least another year, according to a copy of the loan’s term sheet obtained by The Washington Post.
The Postal Service contracts with private-sector shippers for “last-mile” delivery from distribution centers to consumers’ homes, and it offers those companies small discounts because of the volume of packages they provide
President Trump has derided the agency over those deals, which industry experts say only account for a roughly 5 percent savings. He has called the Postal Service Amazon’s “delivery boy” and falsely claimed the agreements are the reason the agency has struggled financially.
In April, Trump said he would not approve any emergency funding unless the USPS quadrupled package delivery prices, a move analysts say would quickly bankrupt the agency by chasing away customers to private-sector competitors.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had previously sought to leverage the loan, attached to an early round of coronavirus relief spending, in exchange for sweeping operational control of the Postal Service, including provisions that would allow the Trump administration to approve senior postal personnel decisions, service contracts with third-party shippers, collective bargaining negotiation strategies and high package prices.” […]
“The loan deal requires the USPS to provide Treasury with monthly and quarterly financial and volume reports. It also must spend any money it draws from the loan within 30 days and cannot access any of the funds if it has a cash balance of more than $8 billion. The funding expires in March 2022.
“While the USPS is able to fund its operating expenses without additional borrowing at this time, we are pleased to have reached an agreement on the material terms and conditions of a loan, should the need arise,” Mnuchin said in a statement. “I look forward to continuing to work with Postmaster General DeJoy to fulfill the President’s goal of establishing a sustainable business model under which USPS can continue to provide necessary mail service for all Americans, without shifting costs to taxpayers.”
Bogage writes additionally that Dems had publicly advised the PO leaders not to accept the Treasury’s loan IF it meant relinquishing control of the agency; that an earlier bipartisan agreement in the Senate giving the USPS a $13 billion grant, but DT had threatened to veto of the whole $2 trillion dollar package with funding for unemployed workers, small businesses and other industries ravaged by the novel coronavirus pandemic-related recession — if the postal appropriation were included.
He also writes that Mnuchin had told ‘lawmakers’ it was all or nothing: a loan with those terms, or #STFU. What does the following mean?:
“Desperate to save the agency that was at the time predicted to run out of money by October, lawmakers accepted the loan provision.”
Now this section simply slayed me: Borage writes that Dems’ spirits were buoyed by USPS reports of better-than-expected financial results in May, and that’s due to surging package volumes are at Christmastime levels, and that the USPS has close to $14 billion on hand! (Never mind that earlier reports have noted that they are desperate for $25 billion just to make it through the year.) He finishes:
“That is enough money, experts said, to tide the agency over till May 2021 as a worst-case scenario, or October 2021, if package volumes remain high. The loan from Treasury will buy the Postal Service at least five more months of liquidity, but perhaps as much as a year’s more cash if package revenue continues to make up for declines in first-class mail, the agency’s most profitable product.”
p.s. Do any of you know how to reach CB (black cat, golden eyes) in RL? He's been gone since early June, and I'm concerned. (He hadn't signed up w/ the Members Contact Project.)
(cross-posted from Café Babylon)
Comments
Not just mail-in voting.
Mail volume has increased because of coronavirus. People are ordering more things online and package deliveries are up. For me personally, my local bank branch closed, so I've been mailing my transactions to another branch. Also, people are mailing cards for birthdays and other occasions they would normally attend in person.
In addition, many people aren't waiting for the mail-in voting brouhaha to end and have already requested and submitted absentee ballots. I recently sent ours in for the Arizona Democratic primary.
Bottom line, the post office is needed now just as much as ever. This Republican attempt to privatize one of the few Federal agencies specifically authorized by the Constitution must be stopped.
PO
It's good that Wendy is covering this so completely. I fear that if the privatization of the Post Office is allowed to go forward that it will be a catastrophic loss for our country. And we will see an increased push for privatization in other areas.
edg's point about people ordering what they need by mail during the pandemic has reached epic proportions in my Lower Manhattan high rise. A daily stream of packages handled by the front desk has turned into a tsunami. The "package room" has been overwhelmed and tables have been set up in the lobby to handle the flood.
NYCVG
oh, how; how dizzying:
when i see big city shots from the air (especially at night) in DVD films, i realize just how long i've been a country mouse: i can't even imagine living in such seas of humanity and commerce.
but yes, i've been rather obsessed with the screws laid on the post office since...i reckon under obomba. i looked t the archives at save the post office, maybe as far back as 2010 (obomba rule), which is why i refused to bring his asshole virtue-signaling comment.
they'd suggested postal banking, which many nations around the world accomplish very easily, for one. now they're down to purchasing sheets of Any Time stamps and gifting them, and so on.
i'm so glad to hear that incoming parcels seem to be working. ; ) our wee local PO is down to One clerk behind the counter; she is so over-worked, and i'm sure underpaid.
although i'd short-handed
the title out of necessity, i hadn't meant to imply 'just VbM',but right now, it's a big deal as well, and part of the Q afoot as to DT and meathead's ploys. on my linked 'grim news' i/we'd shown many other needs for the PO during the pandemic, including: (but not limited to) medicines by mail and other very crucial other needs otherwise unobtainable during lockdowns, even masks. although fucking amazon never sent the ones i'd ordered for mr. wd. how many billions has bezos dded to his fortune since lockdowns began? $97 billion?
commenters provided many examples, including holiday and simple greeting cards. i'd also provided a PSA regarding my own experience with sending 2 fairly high value packages and insuring them.
under deJoy's management, both were destroyed, lost, empty...and to collect insurance on them, i'm required to provide Proof of the insured value (a mere $250 in each case) by receipt, written corroboration evaluation from an expert, and so on.
so i'm out not only the actual value of 2 large boxes of first edition books, but even the measly $500 fiat dollars. bingling externally, i found that this shit is new. but me, i'll go UPS next time when i send anything.
but i appreciate your reminders, because you're only too correct, edg.
on edit: i'd forgotten to add that no, this is not as simple as 'Republicans will privatize it', although they seem to have started the ball rolling under nixon.
I've had great success with the post office.
In the past 15 years, I've mailed over 100,000 packages to customers of my online business and had only a handful of problems. Three were stolen. Nothing USPS can do about that if people aren't home and don't have a secure drop-off location. One was damaged in shipment. USPS refunded the postage. Because it was a low dollar shipment, I didn't insure it, so I was out the $4 product cost. Another was declared lost -- but mysteriously was returned to me a year after mailing. That's all I remember.
A portion of post office handling and delivery problems are due to the quality (or lack thereof) of contract workers. They only make $14 to $17 an hour and some aren't exactly highly motivated.
As for UPS, I've used them for about 1% of shipments. They are far more expensive for shipment weights under 3 pounds and in my experiences are far more likely to damage the packaging and/or contents than USPS is.
They work for us.
That's pretty strong testimony right there.
This is my experience also. Of all the major shippers, the one I've never – ever – had a problem with is our Post Office.
And by the way, it is OUR Post Office. If people realized that it belongs to We the People, and its existence is written into the Constitution, we might see some widespread indignation regarding its theft by billionaire one percenters who covet it only to extract profits at OUR expense.
curious as to
,
i found this bingling. for your perusal:
Postal myths: #1 “It would take a constitutional amendment to eliminate (or privatize) the postal service”, May 7, 2015, postalnews.com
beats me, amigo.
Well, hell.
And so you are quite right with this, wd. And so indeed I have been "...Clinging to a fictional constitutional protection..."
In that case, it appears we're more at the mercy of the wolves than I had imagined.
Wish I was right and you weren't, but there it is. Thanks, Wendy.
t'wasn't i who was
right, but the link's, and i hope this is evidence to the contrary.
Probably good.
From what I am seeing, it seems they are correct in the article.
good-o,
then, it works for me.
we'd never had any problems
before these two: mailed june 3, under luis deJoy's memo and cost-cutting edicts. they were both well and toutly packaged (even the postal clerk to mr. wd they love my devotion to packaging). to and from addresses and names on tag board, covered with 3" clear packing tape, addresses also inside the boxes, and one arrived empty, the second went to the dead mail office. i did the search for it, ten days later was told: 'illegible, contents trashed'.
usps has a 'media' rate, but it's not cheaper if you can't collect the fucking insurance under deJoy. we used to use a local USP shipper at the grocery store in town; they no longer ship out. but if boxes are too large, the PO won't ship them. once i boxed up almost a ton of warm coats, sleeping bags, blankets, etc. i'd collected during a very hard winter in south dakota to send to standing rock. bless his heart, the store owner comped the shipping charges.
many of our relatives used to request that we use UPS so packages would be delivered at their houses, not the PO.
glad to hear you and traveller xxx have had good experiences, and continue to.
neither fedex nor ups employees are unionized either, irrc, which used to be a disruption in the force.
Unions
UPS is full union. (See: https://teamster.org/divisions/package-division/) Fedex, only the pilots are union. Drivers, loaders, etc. are not.
from meathead's twit account:
and as night follows day, the tankies' on twitter predictions are coming into focus: Ortega’s next on the chopping block:
the moon is full in aquarius tonight;
i hope you'll be able to see her.
this song's been haunting me tonight. good night. sleep well and dream well if you can.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkJlmYwMgRM]
Thanks for asking abojt CB
I've missed seeing his posts and the wonderful cat.
Question: What group working to support the PO do you judge to be best? As with Social Security I see many "strong appeals" for support (funds) but don't want to waste what little I can do on false fronts.
i miss CB, too.
hopefully all is well with him, and he'll pop in again soon. you may remember he'd been absent for a few months (?), and upon his return said he'd been going through treatments for colon cancer, and very successfully.
a good Q, this:
and i sure wish i had an answer. i don't even know which of the 4 postal unions is credible at this point. and as far as i know, no websites are vigorously reporting on the many hellish hits along the road to total privatization other than wsws and save the post office.
the Dems under Obomba could have mooted dubya's "2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) which forced the USPS to fully fund retirement benefits without governmental assistance." but of course, O is one of them, and remember his telling a room of banksters: "my administration s the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks"? well, pitchfork him and the pony he rode in on!
Meathead Mnuchin announced on twitter that he and the USPS have 'reached an agreement on the CARES act
loanextortion deal'. meaning luis deJoy, of course. and the duopoly senate-approved board of governors hire and fire Post Master Generals.save the post office had offered this on aug 3: Preserve Our Post Office, Before It’s Too Late, but while author mark jamison chronicles a lot of the history of the many assaults on the crucial institution, never more critical than under the pandemic.
and he sees clearly the wider angle of what's afoot:
That's really helpful, Wendy
Irreplaceable really. I get mails from many "authentic"-sounding senders who claim to be fighting for the USPS via donations, and think that some are just sinkholes set up to catch whatever funds they can from people who care. Few if any state the results of specific actions. The actual old USPS itself plus postal banking would be my wish.
#MeToo.
lot lizard had mentioned other services, as well as 'hoped for/pending' services that the german post offices provide in the linked earlier companion piece 'grim news', etc. of course my lamus brainus has already forgotten them...
There will be no postal bank
It's a scam like the Employee Free Choice Act. Just to keep us voting Blue.
The banksters that control them will never allow it.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
of course not.
it's an Epic Con in plain sight:
Holy Compradors, Batman!
and wasn't that Unity Duo that didn't include M4All but did include Masks for All?
Not just Republicans
The worst blow to the USPS was the requirement to fund retirement benefits some 70 or 75 years in advance. As the APWU always says "to fund retirement benefits for workers who have not even been born yet." I don't remember if that started under Obama or Bush, but Obama had eight years to repeal it. The APWU endorsed him in the primaries. That was the first time ever that the union had endorsed a candidate in the primaries. And how did he repay them?
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
exactly:
Comprador Obomba.
thanks, voice, for paying such close attention.
It was the millstone around our necks.
In my fifteen years the only outside hires were myself and a Filipino guy that was hired the same day. Since then It's been losing headcount to attrition and the only "new" employees were tranfers from other installations.
USPS IS the government! Private industry doesn't swear an oath to the Constitution, nor are they on government pension and healthcare systems. All agencies send the CSRS their matching contributions. There is no separate postal retirement or benefit systems. Even vacation and sick leave benefits follow the same standards as DoD the Interior Department. I think DoJ has some special bennies.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
my apologies, voice.
i've read your comment thrice now, and it seems that my frazzle-rock brain simply can't decode it. seems as though it's time for me to sign off for the night.
you'll likely want to consign me to bedlam for this (as for my wackoid dreams), but this by now ancient stone poneys song's been in my head all afternoon.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFSmkELOxZc]
g' night, all.
I probably wasn't clear.
What part are you having trouble with?
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
this part:
i'd had to look up CSRS (Civil Service Retirement System) then try to understand how and why the post office is going bankrupt to to bush's 2006 PAE act, but now i see you you must believe that's a con by now. thanks for trying to edjumicate a thick-wit. my head's in beirut, so i'm thicker than most days even. ; )
TYFYS
Exactly. And every USPS employee I've known (at least the ones wearing a uniform, as that's all I've ever known) take their position very seriously.
By the way, thank you for your service, Voice.
No thanks needed
I was paid, but thank you for your intent.
I should add that USPS hires (except for upper management) strictly by examination. The examinations sometimes are strange, mine included binary to octal conversions which not even computer programmers need to know anymore (I do because I'm a fossil). Outsiders think there are so many people of color, women and oldsters because of social engineering. Not true. It's the result of competitive examination instead of some hiring manager's "judgement" of the best candidate which just happens to be someone like him. There are extra points for veterans and the disabled but it's not huge, 10 points. 20 if you are a disabled veteran. But the disabled know that they would get nothing outside and try their best. I had a boss for a while who was a youngish deaf woman. We had a fire on the dock that caused the fire alarm to ring and a PA announcement of fire with "this is not a drill". Halfway to the exit I asked the crowd, "Hey! Did anyone go tell ***** ?". I went back to her office, alarms clamoring. She was sitting inside doing paperwork. I went in and wrote on a piece of paper "FIRE! We have to leave NOW!" We left together but halfway back to the exit I got an asthma attack. I motioned her to go on, but she shook her head and put her arm around me and we hobbled along. The all clear sounded before we got out. It was a paper fire on the shipping dock. Probably some moron smoking. Smoking is forbidden in all plants after a devastating fire in the '70s. Flame, paper, and paper dust don't go together. But tobacco addicts would go to the dock, step off and light up using the technicality that they were not "in" the plant.
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.