Association for Postal Commerce
"Representing those who use or support the use of mail for Business Communication and Commerce"
"You will be able to enjoy only those postal rights you believe are worth defending."
The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito. The views expressed are solely the author's.
There are lies....There are lies....And then there are damn lies!
I don't know about you, but I've had my fill of listening to the claptrap peddled on the Hill by the American Postal Workers Union's William Burrus. As they say, if you tell an untruth often enough, people just might begin to believe it.
What really got me was Burrus' baloney about people being paid four times what postal workers are paid to perform the kind of worksharing that has saved the Postal Service billions of dollars since worksharing's inception. Where are his facts? In reality, he has none.
A simple survey would quickly reveal that worksharing works because the private sector can get certain mail preparation activities done more cheaply than the Postal Service. In the private sector, those engaged in worksharing must make their way in an intensely competitively market.
The Postal Service's workforce doesn't.
In the private sector, employees in mail service firms are paid wages that are limited by market place competition and governed by area-wage realities.
The Postal Service's wages aren't.
In the private sector, businesses have to stretch really hard to provide health, retirement, and other employment-related benefits.
The Postal Service's workforce is paid a wage rate that in many regards exceeds that which is paid elsewhere in the federal service for comparable activities. The Postal Service's workforce pay less out of their own pockets for the benefits they receive than others in the federal workforce. Oh yes, and there is no such thing as an area-based pay for anyone who works for the Postal Service. Everyone is paid off the same scale, even in areas of the country where private sector wages are remarkably less.
Burrus likes to crow that his workforce is the most efficient in America. Oh really? Then I'd like him to explain how this efficiency is reflected in the fact that despite over three decades of existence and to significant revisions to the postal system's underlying statutes, employee-related expenses still account for 80% of all postal operating costs. In the private sector, any such an enterprise with similar experience would have been driven out of business quite some time ago.
Burrus maintains that his union workers could get every aspect of mail processing done more efficiently than anyone in the private sector. Okay, let's put his proposition to a test.
The next time the Congress wants to "re-engineer" the nation's postal system, let's have it put everything the Postal Service does up for competition. Let Mr. Burrus' constituents bid for the right to do the Postal Service's mail processing work alongside those from the private sector who would relish the opportunity to compete. Let's then see what kinds of bids local postal unions submit, and let's compare them to what competitors vie to do.
It wouldn't even be a contest. In time, most of today's postal workers either would retire or would be looking for more suitable (and available) employment outside the USPS with one of the winning contractors.
Now, none of this is top secret. I know this to be true. The Postal Service knows this to be true. Congress should know it to be true. And I'm absolutely certain Bill Burrus knows it is too. So, let's have enough of this APWU line of malarkey that does nothing more than obscure reality, and let's get on with a more productive rational postal policy debate.
P.S. On the House side, they require witnesses to take an oath to tell the truth. Maybe it's time for the Senate to do the same.