Kevin Boyer delivers mail on his Columbia route yesterday. Boyer, the state president for the National Association of Letter Carriers, says he thinks the move from six days of postal service to five days will lead to the downfall of the U.S. Postal Service.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Kevin Boyer is a hulking man with tattoo-covered arms, a shaved head and a goatee. But this Harley rider gets downright emotional when the subject turns to the future of the U.S. Postal Service.
“I don’t want this to be a career that lasts until I retire,” he said. “I want it to be here long after I’m gone.”
Boyer, 46, is the state president for the National Association of Letter Carriers. He delivers mail to 734 homes each day in the Vanderveen subdivision and in his spare time advocates on behalf of 6,100 letter carriers statewide as their labor union leader.
He has become convinced that the shift from delivery six days a week down to five proposed by the postmaster general will be the first step down a slippery slope. That slope, he said, will lead to a drastic reduction in mail service in the United States — in which five-day delivery eventually becomes four-day or even three-day and universal service to all homes shrinks to eliminate delivery to rural addresses.
“The two things we have over our competitors right now is: We’re universal; we’ll go to the last mile in the county; and we’ll deliver on Saturday, and they won’t,” he said. “If we lose those two things, then what do we have?”
But USPS administrators see it differently. The Postal Service lost $3.8 billion in fiscal year 2009 and projects a $238 billion shortfall over the next decade. They blame the recession and a shift toward electronic communication. In 2009, the USPS handled 25.6 billion fewer pieces of mail than it had the previous year.
“The Postal Service has changed with America for over 200 years,” said Valerie Hughes, U.S. Postal Service Gateway District spokeswoman “We used to be the Pony Express, you know, and we’ve adapted.”
Cutting delivery on Saturday, the lowest volume day of the week, would save $3 billion annually, according to USPS estimates.
Hughes said there is no plan in place to eliminate universal service, which is mandated by law. And, she said, the elimination of Saturday delivery will not cost full-time letter carriers their jobs. Instead, she said, the USPS will simply use fewer temporary and part-time carriers.
“This plan is actually a plan that looks clear to the year 2020, trying to get us back on a path of financial stability and solvency,” Hughes said. “It’s no fly-by-night thing.”
Boyer believes losing a delivery day would cost 1,000 Missouri carriers their jobs.
One issue both sides agree on is the need to end a costly system that requires USPS employees to prefund their retiree health care and pension costs. The USPS is the only government agency required to do so, and it forces it to set aside $5.5 billion annually. A report submitted by the Postal Regulatory Commission on June 30 added fuel to the fire by stating that USPS employees had overpaid the Civil Service Retirement System by a total of $50 billion to $55 billion historically.
Labor leaders like Boyer are demanding repayment, and they believe this discrepancy has meant the USPS has overstated its losses in recent years.
Many of these decisions will be played out in Congress, which must vote to allow USPS to reduce its delivery days or change its pension payment model. A House resolution supporting six-day service has 225 co-sponsors. Postmaster General John Potter has said he would like to shift to five-day delivery as early as October. The Postal Regulatory Commission is accepting public comments on the proposal.
Boyer promises to be a loud voice in opposition. He said business today is conducted 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the USPS is hastening its irrelevance by cutting back service to five days. He said private companies will step in to fill the void left by Saturday delivery, and the USPS will lose customers such as Amazon and pharmacies that guarantee speedy delivery.
More than anything, he said, these cuts threaten the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of workers.
“It’s almost like InBev taking over Anheuser-Busch,” he said. “If you’re a stockholder, maybe you think that’s OK because your stock is going to be worth more. But all those people who work there, when they start slashing jobs and make the people get by with less, what are they going to do? And at the end of it, are they really making the company any stronger?”
Reach T.J. Greaney at 573-815-1719 or e-mail tjgreaney@columbiatribune.com.
