{"id":6634,"date":"2013-10-04T07:41:22","date_gmt":"2013-10-04T12:41:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=6634"},"modified":"2013-10-04T07:41:22","modified_gmt":"2013-10-04T12:41:22","slug":"pmgs-credibility-in-doubt-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2013\/10\/04\/pmgs-credibility-in-doubt-again\/","title":{"rendered":"PMG\u2019s Credibility In Doubt Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Greg Bell<\/strong>
\nAPWU Executive Vice President<\/strong><\/p>\n

At Senate hearings in September on proposed postal legislation \u2014 legislation the APWU and the three other postal unions oppose \u2014 Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe made several statements that once again call his credibility into question. \"4-APWU-Small\"<\/a><\/p>\n

At a Sept. 19 hearing, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said, \u201cIt is presently the law that an arbitrator cannot consider the financial health of the Post Office in arbitrating a labor dispute with the Post Office. Is that correct?\u201d Donahoe responded, \u201cThat is correct.\u201d<\/p>\n

Really?! The fact of the matter is Sen. Coburn\u2019s statement and PMG Donahoe\u2019s response are wrong. When contract negotiations end in arbitration, arbitrators routinely consider the financial condition of the Postal Service \u2014 along with other issues raised by either party.<\/p>\n

The exchange between Sen. Coburn and the Postmaster General is important because the bill (S. 1486) sponsored by Sen. Coburn and Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) includes a provision that would require arbitrators to consider the Postal Service\u2019s financial condition in interest arbitration.<\/p>\n

The unions oppose this provision as well as many others in the bill. The reason is simple: By singling out this issue among all the others that arbitrators have to consider, the legislation could lead arbitrators to elevate the Postal Service\u2019s financial condition above all other factors.<\/p>\n

The USPS has lobbied to include the requirement in postal legislation.<\/p>\n

At a second hearing on Sept. 26, Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) pointed out that Donahoe\u2019s statement was inaccurate. Donahoe said, \u201cI misspoke. I should have said that they can consider it but they\u2019re not required by law not to consider it.\u201d<\/p>\n

If this was the first time that Donahoe misspoke in this way his error would be understandable, but it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

PMG: \u2018Not Closing\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Postmaster General also \u201cmisspoke\u201d on closures. During the Sept. 19 hearing, Sen. Tester and Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) asked Donahoe a series of questions about the closure of post offices and mail processing facilities.<\/p>\n

Sen. Tester asked, \u201cIs there going to be further consolidation of mail processing facilities or post offices while we\u2019re doing this legislation and debate in committee?\u201d<\/p>\n

PMG Donahoe said, \u201cNo. The bill would put a two-year freeze on mail processing facilities. We have some scheduled for 2014. We would not advance any of those things to try to get under the wire. From a post office perspective, when I visited Montana last year, people told us, \u2019Keep our offices open, keep our local identity. If you have to change window time, we understand that but give us access to mail.\u2019 And we\u2019ve done that.\u201d<\/p>\n

To make sure he understood what Donahoe was saying, Sen. Tester asked, \u201cSo what you\u2019re saying is there wouldn\u2019t be any post office or mail processing centers closed while we\u2019re debating this bill before it becomes law?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNope, we\u2019ve done what we needed to do for this year, and if any further changes require service standard changes we will not do that,\u201d Donahoe said.<\/p>\n

In response to a similar question from Sen. Heitkamp, PMG Donahoe said, “There\u2019s no proposal to close any post offices…”<\/p>\n

There can be no doubt about what Donahoe said, nor is there any doubt about what he wanted the senators to believe.<\/p>\n

But closures are taking place. At least three post offices closed in the week before his testimony and 11 more are slated to be closed before the end of the year. In addition, the USPS accelerated its published schedule for consolidating mail processing facilities and implemented in 2013 most of the consolidations that were set for 2014. Five more mail processing centers are slated for consolidation before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

Healthcare, Retirement<\/strong><\/p>\n

Despite Donahoe\u2019s misstatements, the most troubling aspect of his testimony is his insistence that postal reform legislation must fundamentally alter the healthcare and retirement benefits of postal employees. The PMG wants to remove postal employees and retirees from the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) and replace FEHBP with a postal-only plan; he also wants to keep new employees out of the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS).<\/p>\n

The proposed legislation would put our federal healthcare and retirement benefits at risk, and smooth the way for these devastating attacks on our benefits to take place by making them subject to contract negotiations and arbitration.<\/p>\n

The postal unions adamantly oppose any legislation that would put federal healthcare and retirement benefits at risk.<\/p>\n

The testimony at the Sept. 26 hearing shows that there is no justification for the proposals. Jonathan Foley, the director of Planning and Policy Analysis for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), said, \u201cOPM is concerned that the ability to negotiate retirement benefits, especially whether an employee is covered in FERS, will result in disparate execution of benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

Regarding healthcare benefits, he said, \u201cOPM has long believed and has previously testified before this Committee that the Postal Service and its employees and retirees are well-served by the FEHB Program.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently, OPM overhead costs for the FEHB Program are only 0.08 percent of total health premiums. These very low overhead costs have been achieved by managing programs with very large numbers of enrollees and the accumulated experience of the agency and its staff having managed these programs for decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe FEHB Program offers good value to employees and the taxpayer, and is not an excessively costly benefit as compared with other large employer plans. In addition, annual premium increases for FEHB plans are typically at or below industry averages.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Foley also said, \u201cOPM is willing to work with the Postal Service on exploring alternative health options within FEHBP.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paving the Way for Privatization<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the final analysis, the Postal Service\u2019s legislative proposals are part of an elaborate effort to change the status of postal workers from federal employees to something closer to private-sector employees.<\/p>\n

The intent is to make it easier to privatize the Postal Service, particularly mail processing and transportation.<\/p>\n

For the PMG or anyone else to say otherwise simply lacks credibility.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Greg Bell APWU Executive Vice President At Senate hearings in September on proposed postal legislation \u2014 legislation the APWU and the three other postal unions oppose \u2014 Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe made several statements that once again call his credibility into question. At a Sept. 19 hearing, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) said, \u201cIt is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apwu-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6635,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6634\/revisions\/6635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}