Battered by the fast-growing use of e-mail and online bill-paying, the U.S. Postal Service recently announced it had lost a stunning $8.5 billion over the past year. That’s $4.7 billion more than it lost the year before. And the Postal Service delivered 6 billion fewer pieces of mail in 2010 than it delivered in 2009.
The fact is, for at least some Americans, traditional “snail mail” is becoming obsolete for many of the purposes it once served.
So it is incredible that in the face of such massive losses, the Postal Service’s biggest union sees little reason to make wage and benefit concessions to help balance the agency’s books.
In September, when it was first reported that the Postal Service would likely face huge losses, officials with the 211,000-member American Postal Workers Union stubbornly rejected the need for concessions.
“Union officials said that while they recognize the Postal Service’s precarious finances, they will fight to preserve hard-won working conditions and benefits that include the most generous health-care package in the federal government,” The Washington Post reported.
The president of the union, William Burrus, declared, “We have no intent of forcing our members to begin their lives all over again. We see no justification for unraveling agreements made over 40 years.”
But wait a minute. The purpose of the Postal Service is to deliver the mail, not to protect the jobs and lucrative benefits enjoyed by postal workers.
We do not wish unemployment on anybody. But it is absurd that the postal workers union is rejecting out of hand the need for belt-tightening in the face of severe losses.