In his 2010 book, There’s Always Work at the Post Office, former postal worker Philip Rubio documented how the USPS came to be a major provider of employment for black men and women, many of them veterans, and how black postal workers became a critical force for social change.
Employment with the U.S. Postal Service has historically been a source of upward mobility for thousands of African American men and women since the 1860s, but it is a source that is expected to dry up in this century.
Over the past 10 years the U.S. Postal Service has reduced its workforce by 212,000 positions, anticipates another 100,000 positions lost to attrition, and plans to further eliminate 120,000 career positions by 2015. Some of the 120,000 eliminated positions could come through buyouts and other programs, but a significant number are expected to result from layoffs — if Congress allows the USPS to circumvent union contracts that explicitly prohibit laying off postal workers.
In what is becoming an American trend to undermine collective bargaining agreements across multiple industries, Postal Service employees and retirees face possible contractual changes that are being described by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as “cost saving” measures intended to “protect taxpayers.”
The USPS is asking Congress to intervene on its behalf. In a recently released optimization document, the USPS states, “Unfortunately, the collective bargaining agreements between the Postal Service and our unionized employees contain layoff restrictions that make it impossible to reduce the size of our workforce by the amount required by 2015, therefore, a legislative change is needed to eliminate the layoff protections in our collective bargaining agreements.
When I think of the post office, I don't just think of an agency that delivers to all homes and businesses in the nation. I think of the postal job I got in 1980 - first as a distribution clerk, then, soon after, as a letter carrier. This was a job that helped us buy a home and send our children to college, helped put my wife through graduate school and allowed me to go on and continue my education and earn a doctorate in history in 2006.
Like many other postal workers, the African-American men and women I worked with in Colorado and North Carolina were often veterans - as were the postal workers I later interviewed in New York, California, Mississippi, Florida and elsewhere. Many had college degrees.
It all began after the Civil War, when African-Americans were first allowed entry into the postal workforce. By 1970, blacks, making up one-fifth of the postal workforce, were twice as likely to work at the post office as whites. Today, thanks in large part to union activism in the post office, in which African-Americans played a prominent part, the doors have been further opened for women and for other minority-group members.
But how long will those jobs be there? When the post office doors shut, where will military veterans (the majority of postal workers since 1950) - with their jobless rate at 13.3% - find work?
This isn't happening in a vacuum. On July 26, the same day the USPS announced its planned closures - which entailed a projected loss of 5,000 jobs nationwide - there was more bad news. The Pew Research Center reported that decades of gains in wealth in the African-American and Hispanic communities have been lost. Wealth is what your family has when you divide your assets by your debts; it's what you pass along to your children. If we're already moving in the wrong direction, mass USPS job losses will only accelerate the trend.
Automation and the Internet are often cited as the chief culprits for the post office's fiscal problems - but that's far too simple a story. The USPS still delivers 40% of the world's mail, with just under 600,000 workers. Since 1971, no government funding has paid for postal service or wages; it's strictly self-supporting through postal revenue. In fact, in recent years, the USPS has earned revenue surpluses. Drastic cost-cutting measures like closures are not signs of a dying, obsolete agency fighting to overcome deficits related to poor business. Rather, they represent a response to a 2006 congressional mandate that the USPS had to prefund retirees' benefits for 75 years - and do it all within the next 10 years, at a rate of $5.5 billion a year.
Last month, right after the announced planned closures, residents and postal workers in the Bronx held a protest to save post offices in the borough that stands to lose 17 post offices - the most in the city. They told reporters of their concerns over the loss of service and jobs. These voices must be heard. Millions of Americans continue to see the post office as an invaluable nationwide network that provides both jobs and services - and don't want to see those vanish without a fight.
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