Union Refutes Wall Street Journal Editorial

It came as no surprise that a Wall Street Journal editorial outlining the Postal Service’s financial difficulties concluded that the USPS should be privatized, but since the column was riddled with inaccuracies, APWU President William Burrus fired back.

In a letter to the editor of the notoriously anti-labor publication, the union president disputed the suggestion that the cause of the Postal Service’s current financial crisis is bad management and the diversion of mail to the Internet and e-mail. He pointed out that the crisis is the fault of the 2006 postal “reform” law, which requires the USPS to pre-fund retiree healthcare costs.

“Mail volume reached its height in 2006, well after Americans began using e-mail and the Internet on a mass scale,” Burrus said, noting that the slump in mail volume since then is almost entirely due to a recession-driven decline in business mail.

“It is deeply troubling that Journal editors advocate ending the Postal Service’s exclusive right to sort and deliver mail,” the union president wrote. “The Postal Service must remain a publicservice if we are to honor our nation’s commitment to serve every American community — large or small, rich or poor, urban or rural — at affordable, uniform rates.

“That tradition has served the nation’s people and businesses well for more than 200 years. Americans trust the Postal Service — staffed by public employees sworn to protect the privacy of their mailboxes — to collect, process and deliver their mail — and won’t accept anything less.”