Aljazeera America - Unionized postal workers and supporters in about 150 American cities will hold demonstrations on Friday in an attempt to halt impending cuts to the United States Postal Service that threaten to reduce services and lay off thousands of employees.
The protesters are demanding a moratorium on planned changes to USPS service standards that would reduce the speed with which a particular piece of mail is expected to travel from one mailbox to another. APWU spokesperson Sally Davidow said the planned reductions in service standards would “virtually eliminate any delivery of First-Class Mail overnight.”
The impending cuts are part of an effort to close the postal service’s $20 billion budget shortfall. But Davidow said the shortfall itself was “completely manufactured” by a 2006 law that requires the USPS to pre-fund its retiree health benefits, something that costs the service about $5.5 billion per year.
“They need to get rid of that requirement,” said Davidow. The USPS inspector general and some progressives have also floated the idea of funding the postal service by allowing it to offer low-cost banking services, something that it previously did between 1911 and 1966.
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