Communities and Postal Workers United (CPWU) Newsletter
Oct. – Nov. 2013
Bronx General Post Office – Not for Sale
Excerpts from Labor Press article by Steven Wishnia
Chanting “Keep the Post Office in the Bronx,” about 75 people rallied Sept. 21 to protest the U.S. Postal Service’s plans to sell the Bronx General Post Office. 
The New Deal-era building,is one of about 500 post offices the Postal Service has put up for sale, says Jacque-lyn McCormick of the National Post Office Collaborate.
In New York City, the Postal Service recently put plans to close 34 post offices on hold, says Chuck Zlatkin, political di-rector of the New York Area Metro local of the American Postal Workers Union. It’s now planning to “relocate” them, he explains, because it can do that without holding hearings.
Nationally, the Postal Service has hired the CBRE Group to handle sales, and its chair is Richard C. Blum, husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA). In what McCormick calls a “total sweetheart deal,” it’s about to sell the Stamford, Connecticut, post office to a developer for $2 million less than a local arts group offered.
Metro APWU President Jonathan Smith accuses the Postal Service of “a strategy to discourage the public from coming in” and create resentment of union workers, such as by reducing the number of windows open and thus making the lines longer. In 2011, it moved mail processing for the Bronx to its main facility in Manhattan. The Bronx had to start mail carriers’ shifts an hour later to try to compensate for the late deliveries from Man-hattan, says APWU assistant director Genevieve Gardner.
Most of the post offices being sold have historic value, says McCormick, from both their architecture and their New Deal murals depicting local history and labor.
As a 19 year carrier, it’s great we have increased our parcel business. Due to route adjustments during the 2009 depression, we have longer routes with more parcels and an increasing mail volume caused by an uptick in the economy. Management will never bring back routes from the increase, but say “just carry it and get over it”! The hilarious thing is that the new hires are quitting, and they are twenty years younger than me. Change the routes for increasing volume or watch the sick calls increase due to fatigue.
I have been delivering mail for almost 26 years as a City Letter Carrier in(10469) Bronx, New York. I see this job getting worse. Management does not know how to manage mail. At my Station in the Bronx. Overtime is crazy, one day you have 2 hours of Overtime and the next just barely 8 hours of work.
The Postmaster General is destroying the Postal Service. He is the biggest idiot of them all. He recently told Congress that he is not filling vacancies in the Postal Service. How stupid is that. Congress needs to get there act together to improve on service from the Postal Service. Because on my route every day I am being given additional work from another open route which means later deliveries on my route. My customers are noticing how late I am coming and asking why. Something has to be done about this crazy state the Postal Service is in.
Congress enacted this plan in a attempt to bankrupt them, so they can privatize them and steal their pensions. This needs to be repealed.