NALC President Fredric V. Rolando’s letter to the editor of Politico was published on Friday, June 8. He calls “unrealistic” the 2006 congressional mandate that the Postal Service pre-fund retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so in 10 years, which accounts for 95 percent of the Postal Service’s red ink this fiscal year and almost all of its losses in recent years and is something no other government agency or private enterprise faces.
Rolando’s letter is below:
Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Scott Brown (R-Mass.) and Tom Carper (D-Del.), while pushing their postal bill in their Opinion piece, “House Must Deliver on Postal Reform” (POLITICO, June 4), overlooked critical information.
They speak of a Postal Service in “financial free fall” — blaming the Internet and workers. But they omitted the factor that’s caused 95 percent of the red ink this fiscal year — $6.2 billion of $6.5 billion — and almost all losses in recent years. The 2006 congressional mandate that the Postal Service pre-fund retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so in 10 years, is an unrealistic obligation no other agency or company faces.
In fiscal 2012’s first quarter, for example, the Postal Service announced a $200 million operational profit delivering the mail — but a paper loss exceeding $3 billion. Why? A pre-funding payment exceeding $3 billion.
We know that fixing this won’t solve all issues. More people, for example, are paying bills online. But fixing it would, according to USPS data, eliminate most of the red ink.
In addition, by removing the crisis atmosphere, it would let stakeholders — the USPS, mailing industry, employees, legislators, federal regulators — craft a business strategy to meet the needs of an evolving society.
Degrading service — as in the current Senate and House bills — isn’t a business plan. Instead, it’s a path toward dismantling the unique network and driving customers away.
Consider the push to end Saturday delivery. It would save 2 percent of the budget — by stopping 17 percent of service. Moreover, it jeopardizes the future. The Postal Service credited the sharp rise in e-commerce packages for its $200 million profit. The best day to deliver packages: Saturday, when most people are home.
Congress must do better.
Fredric Rolando, President
National Association of Letter Carriers
[…] 10, 2012 NALC says Senators overlooked critical information in postal reform discussion – […]
http://www.nalc.org/postal/reform/paea_2006.html
try clicking on the links and when it doesn’t load, back out the period & parentheses… they will work, if we remove the punctuation.
I did try to click on sucka link but could not find, and then if you click on the postal mag that is hard to fine also, go to awpu first area local 3800, library and stress in the workplace artical on the effects of the PAEA, then got to the bill burras journal online , misc, and scroll down by elevator and read, i wonder what sucka information souce comes from and how union he actually is.
I think sucka is slighlty mistaken in beliefs, and here are a few other sites for reasearch for sucks but first to clean off, a nalc legislative fact sheet from 2003, siad that over $200 billion in deficit were saved by Postal Federal Employee and Postal Federal Retirees and Families by 1980, then in 2000, 2001, 15 percent more was paid in to retirment account by Federal Postal Workers just to pay off the deficit under the Bush Term. This then was removed in 2002, but new legislattion came about under the PAEA. The union got forced to back the PAEA because the legislation was forced. Sucka can to to http://www.postalmag.com./joygoldbergusps.pdf to read up on what followed with the PAEA, and then go to Postal Comments to the Federal Trade commision , august 6, 2007. Then go forward to Federal Budget Treatment of the USPS, 2009 oig report then go from there to http://www.billburras.org-misc. then go forward to the ALEC/Koch The Privitization of the USPS for Ups and FedEx to get the true story of how the PAEA came about, and what all union has had to deal with since.
Now the real story of the 2006 PAEA; Bush tried to save the post office and the union pushed for PAEA.(Source: http://www.nalc.org/postal/reform/paea_2006.html).”The Bush administration had different ideas. It sought to complete the heist of the $27 billion and it tried to inflexibly earmark 100 percent of escrow savings for retiree health benefitsSource. In both cases, we prevailed over the White House. The new law sets out a 10-year schedule for using the escrow and military pension savings to dramatically reduce the Postal Service’s massive unfunded liability for retiree health insurance, while also providing some flexibility for other uses. In so doing, we secured more than $100 billion for the Postal Service in the decades to come and protected the interests of our current and future retirees, whose health benefits will be fully funded”.