StupidiNews Focus: Going Postal On Unions

Today's StupidiNews story of the US Post Office wanting to lay of 120,000 workers is a huge story, possibly the biggest story of the year so far as jobs and the labor movement are concerned.  Jobs and unemployment, being the number one issue with voters time and time again, are critical in order to get our total economy back on its feet, and you can't do that well if the Post Office wants to get rid of a hundred thousand plus jobs over four years.  The true tale of employment carnage is much, much worse.

The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is proposing to cut its workforce by 20 percent and to withdraw from the federal health and retirement plans because it believes it could provide benefits at a lower cost.


The layoffs would be achieved in part by breaking labor agreements, a proposal that drew swift fire from postal unions. The plan would require congressional approval but, if successful, could be precedent-setting, with possible ripple effects throughout government. It would also deliver a major blow to the nation’s labor movement.

In a notice informing employees of its proposals — with the headline “Financial crisis calls for significant actions” — the Postal Service said, “We will be insolvent next month due to significant declines in mail volume and retiree health benefit pre-funding costs imposed by Congress.”

Let that sink in.  The Post Office wants to not only break its contract with labor unions to put 120,000 people out of work, it wants to kick nearly all of its employees out of the federal employees health care plan and pension plan and replace them with something less.  Republicans like Darrel Issa want to know more about the plan and apparently have no problem with setting a precedent that will allow government to simply eliminate union contracts whenever it feels like it.

The fact of the matter is the USPS has already gotten rid of 200,000 plus jobs over the last ten years.  Under the new proposals anyone with less than six years of service would be subject to losing their job, period.  Postal unions are already vowing to fight these proposals, but you'd better believe the battle to weaken government unions and to demonize government employees at the state level was in preparation to gut the Post Office and eliminate all government employee unions as well.

I'll be keeping an eye on this one.  The Constitution mandates a national post office.  Imagine what Republicans would do to it if they got full control in 2012.