But so far the service as a whole, with its guarantee of universal service at universal rates, still stands. Since then, postal workers and the customers who love them have fought several waves of closures of mail plants and post offices they won some and lost some. That was the point: to create an excuse to cut service, eroding support for this very popular public service, and let corporate vultures swoop in and privatize the juiciest parts. This onerous requirement makes it look like the postal service is in the red. Or worst, especially in rural areas: nothing at all.Ī 2006 law requires USPS to prefund its retiree medical benefits 75 years in advance-meaning it has to set aside money for the old-age care of future employees who haven’t even been born yet. Turnover among the permatemps is high.īut what would replace these union jobs is much worse-more low-wage, nonunion, Amazon-type jobs. Meanwhile the workload has steadily intensified. New hires sign on for substantially lower pay and lesser benefits. Under financial pressure, all four postal unions have accepted a tier of permatemp “non-career” jobs. Not to romanticize these jobs aren’t great. It’s an important source of decent jobs-located in every neighborhood of this country-for Black workers (21 percent of the postal workforce), veterans (18 percent), and women (40 percent, compared to 20 percent at UPS). There are nearly a half-million postal workers it’s the largest union workforce in the U.S. Privatization would be a huge loss for labor. No private company wants to deliver a letter for 55 cents, or cheaply ferry prescriptions to rural addresses, or guarantee the integrity of a vote-by-mail election for free. And if you think UPS and FedEx prices are high now, wait till you see ’em without public competition.īut the public will suffer. Developers want the great real estate that’s sitting under post offices in certain zip codes. Who benefits from postal privatization? Plenty of logistics companies would love to get their paws on the postal service’s proprietary data, with routes sequenced to reach every address in the U.S.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |