For decades corporations and the GOP have pressured the U.S. Postal Service to privatize. They want to break the postal union, which is one of America’s oldest and public institutions and provides employment to 574,000 people of color, women and the disabled. The postal service have an admirable record in its treatment and hiring of its workers. The postal service is the second largest employer in the United States, behind Wal*Mart. The postal service generally pays for itself, but does not make huge profits and with the economy today it is losing money. The main reason for this loss is that the federal government under George W. Bush required the postal service to make huge payments 75 years in advance, which was $50 billion over what it should have paid, to cover the union’s health and pension benefits. If the postal office hadn’t been forced to make that overpayment, it would not have the problem its facing today. Leading the GOP charge is southern California’s Darrell Issa, a c...
This blog is a quick read about concerns, whether local or international, facing union and non-union workers.