The Chamber of Commerce, the NFIB and the mailing industry are missing in action

A couple of weeks ago, the House Oversight and Government Reform (OGR) Committee adopted the most anti-business bill imaginable, targeting a $1.3 trillion industry that employs 7 million to 8 million American workers with a destructively counter-productive bill called the Postal Reform Act of 2011. Although H.R. 2309 is squarely aimed at the half million mostly working-class Americans who work for the U. S. Postal Service, the bill would devastate tens of thousands of businesses – financial service providers, paper manufacturers, advertisers, printers, publishers, online merchants and pharmacy benefit managers – that rely on the Postal Service to make a profit. Put simply, it would destroy the USPS. The reaction: Silence. Jaw-dropping silence.

On Oct. 13, the Committee passed a bill that creates two new unelected and unaccountable government boards made up of people with no knowledge of our industry to dictate a top-down dismantling of an invaluable part of the nation’s economic and financial infrastructure. Not a peep is heard. A group of largely junior legislators who have no expertise in our industry follow the lead of some auditors on loan from the Government Accountability Office to radically restructure an enormous American industry from the clueless comfort of Washington, DC, and the business community goes mute. Astounding. A chaotic mark-up results in the adoption of one irrational amendment after another and the mailing industry yawns. Mind boggling.

Now, for the average small business owner, the reaction is understandable. In today’s horrible economy, who has time to follow the workings of an increasingly out-of-touch Congress with an approval rating in the low teens? But what about organized business; what about the major mailers? Where is the Chamber of Commerce? Where is the National Federation of Independent Business? Where are the DMA, L.L. Bean, Netflix, Amazon and eBay?

Compare the reactions of the Chamber of Commerce to the Boeing-National Labor Relations Board and postal reform issues. After the NLRB sought to punish Boeing’s executives for being careless enough, in clear violation of the law, to brag that they were building a manufacturing plant in South Carolina to punish Boeing’s worker for exercising their right to strike, the Chamber went thermonuclear. A few thousand jobs were at stake. But when the OGR Committee passed its “postal destruction act,” threatening the jobs of 7.5 million private-sector employees and putting an entire private sector industry at risk, it’s been the sound of silence from the Chamber.

Imagine the reaction of the NFIB if the Congress imposed a burden on a single private company or a single private sector industry to pre-fund almost 75 years of future retiree health benefits – for workers not hired or even born yet — in just 10 years’ time. Imagine if that $5 billion-per-year burden – that no other employer faces – were pushing that industry to the brink of bankruptcy. What would NFIB do? I doubt it would passively stand by and blame the private industry or company. I doubt it would be speechless as it is now with the Postal Service. There would be a massive advertising campaign and cries of bureaucratic over-reach and anti-business bias.

If the USPS were a private company, do you think the Chamber or the NFIB would ignore the results of two private-sector audits that found massive overfunding of pensions and side with the government auditors who insist on outdated actuarial standards from the 1970s? Do you think they would accept a recycled seven-year-old analysis from the GAO that applies an actuarial double standard in order to shift $50 billion in costs to a private USPS? I doubt it.

Perhaps we can forgive the Chamber and the NFIB for their ideological blinders. But how can we forgive the mailing industry for accepting its possible destruction like sheep? NALC is fighting on Capitol Hill for a fair resolution to the pension and retiree health obligations and is working at the bargaining table to adjust to the new realities of the postal market. What are the mailers’ associations doing?