Postal workers see plan to eliminate Saturday delivery failing

A U.S. Postal Service plan to cut out Saturday delivery will ultimately fail, predicted a spokesman for the National Association of Letter Carriers.

“We don't see this thing - despite the hoopla that the postal service management has come up with - being approved by Congress,” said Drew Von Bergen, chief spokesman for the union that represents about 200,000 city mail carriers, and 100,000 retirees.

The U.S. Postal Service recently launched a web site explaining how the proposal would work, and offering advice to customers on how to manage the delivery changes. It raised the ire of unions, who said the postal service is trying to do an end-run around Congress by selling the proposal to the public.

“We're going to fight it the whole way,” Von Bergen said. “In the end, we think Congress is going to agree with us and we will continue to have mail delivery six days a week.”

Four unions that represent postal workers all oppose the elimination of Saturday delivery, even though the postal service has said that cutting 40,000 mail carrier positions will be achieved without laying off workers. Unions have equipped members with “talking points” to take to their congressmen and senators, and are lobbying heavily against the move.

Von Bergen said the mail carriers union sees the proposal as an overreaction to the dramatic decline in mail volumes that has resulted from a deep recession. If the postal service cuts Saturday delivery now, it will accelerate the demise of the postal service as other delivery services take up the slack, and Americans become resentful of mail delays.

“It's not just delivery,” Von Bergen said. “It's delivery and collection. You're talking about a two-day stoppage of mail movement in this country: Prescriptions, DVDs, packages people ordered by mail.”

On holiday weekends, the mail would stop for three days, Von Bergen added.

The unions would like Congress to deal with the situation instead by modifying a provision of a 2006 law that required the postal service to pre-fund retiree health care costs.

“This requirement, more than any other single factor, has created a USPS deficit of alarming size,” American Postal Workers Union President William Burrus said earlier this month. Without the pre-funding burden, he said the postal service would have a had a cumulative surplus of $3.7 billion over its last three fiscal years.

The postal service already plans to ask Congress to restructure the payment schedule to meet the pre-funding requirement. It claims that ending Saturday delivery would put mail carriers on a regular five-day work week, eliminating the need for carriers who cover the days off for regular route carriers.

The postal service plans to eliminate the position through attrition, Von Bergen said, a plan it believes will work because many baby boomers in the postal work force are now approaching retirement age.

The postal service says it will experience a $238 billion deficit over the next 10 years unless elimination of Saturday delivery and other steps are taken.

Burrus, whose union is the nation's largest, called the predictions “outlandish and unsupported” in a recent statement.

The other unions representing postal workers include the National Rural Letter Carriers Association and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union.