They Love to Hate Us

Postal Points, a mailing industry newsletter, has enjoyed taking potshots at the APWU for quite a while, but the vitriol seems to have increased lately.

And in a Dec. 21, 2007, article about the Omnibus Appropriations Bill that passed Congress late last year, the publication also blasted legislators who added a provision to the spending bill that directed the Postal Service to postpone any facility consolidations until further review has been made by the Government Accountability Office. 

The initial amendment to the legislation was introduced by Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY), who has been an active opponent of the consolidation of the Bronx Processing & Distribution Center and who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), who has spoken out against USPS plans to consolidate the Sioux City Processing & Distribution Facility, was instrumental in winning support for the provision on the Senate side.

“Consolidation of the Sioux City mail processing facility should not proceed until the USPS implements a fair, accurate and transparent method for making these decisions,” Harkin said. “The USPS must be forthcoming with communities targeted for consolidation about how their postal service will be affected and what costs it will impose on the community.”

But Postal Points has a very different view. The newsletter of the Mailing and Fulfillment Service Association said the measure “represents an unacceptable level of micromanagement by shortsighted and self-serving legislators who continue to meddle in postal operations to satisfy narrow and parochial interests of major political supporters.” That would be us.

“In this case, the likely instigator is, again, the American Postal Workers Union, who likes to frustrate postal efficiency whenever it can,” the article continued.

“The question now, therefore, is what the mailing industry – collectively or as individual constituents of the members of Congress – will do to make legislators stop toadying to the APWU and its allies and start enabling the postal efficiency that was mandated in 2006.”

Legislators “toadying” to the APWU?

If only winning legislative support was that simple!