e-Team Report, Oct. 18, 2013

Deputy PMG Tells Mailing Industry to Write Members of Congress Have Your Representatives Heard from You?

In an interview with the mailing industry’s Direct Marketing News, Deputy Postmaster General Ron Stroman noted that powerful forces are coming together to support flawed postal legislation (H.R. 2748 and S. 1486) that would cut service to Americans and needlessly punishes postal workers.

“You’ve got the chairman and the ranking member of both [postal] authorizing committees saying that they want reform and they want it now. You have the Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader saying they want reform this year,” said Stroman, the politically connected Deputy PMG and former House Oversight and Government Reform Committee staff director.

Stroman also said that if the Postal Service gets relief from the $5 billion yearly requirement to pre-fund retirees’ healthcare, the USPS may cancel plans to raise postage rates. This is a key goal of the mailing industry and is likely to provide strong motivation for the mailing industry to lobby Congress to support the bills. 

It may strike you as odd that while the Postal Service says relief from the pre-funding mandate could improve its financial position enough to eliminate the need to raise postage rates, management also insists that the Postal Service’s financial position is so dire that even with freedom from pre-funding it would still need to proceed with drastic cuts to the mail processing network and service standards. Is protecting the mailing industry’s cash cow more important to the Postal Service than preserving jobs and providing universal and timely service to the American people?

In the interview, Stroman urged the mailing industry to write to members of Congress in support of the flawed bills that are working their way through the House and Senate.  As forces rally to advance bills that would be highly detrimental to postal workers and the American people will you write to your members of Congress and ask them to oppose such efforts?

To send a letter TODAY to your representatives in opposition to destructive postal bills, please click here.

To read Deputy PMG Ron Stroman’s interview, please click here.

Magazines and Customers Short-Changed by Cuts to Postal Network

In another example of Postal Service customers being short-changed by steep cuts to the mail processing and delivery network, Labor Notes subscribers have complained of significant delays in receiving the magazine. Similar stories of delayed mail have been reported all over the country, especially in rural areas.  The closure of mail processing facilities and changes to delivery routes have frustrated magazine and newspaper companies that rely on the USPS to provide timely delivery in an already hostile environment for paper-based news.  “The worse delivery gets, the harder it is to love the Postal Service –and you’d better believe that’s by design,” Labor Notes wrote.  

The Postal Service’s plan to reduce service standards and shrink its way to solvency has resulted in mail delays that drive away customers. It feeds into the mantra of privatizers that the Postal Service cannot provide speedy, modern service.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Despite what opponents of a public postal service would lead you to believe, the USPS has been hobbled by Congress under the 2006 PAEA (Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act) much more than by the internet!  Without desperately needed postal reform that protects service standards and immediately stops the closures of post offices and mail processing facilities, customers will be driven away by the Postal Service’s slash-and-burn policy to the postal network.

For more on Labor Notes’ complaints about delayed mail, please click here.

Lawmakers Fight Back Against Predatory Lending to Federal, Postal Retirees

Next week Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA) and Rep. Gerry Connelly (D-MA) will introduce the ASSURE (Annuity Safety and Security Under Reasonable Enforcement) Act.  The bill would protect federal, postal and military retirees by expanding the Truth in Lending Act disclosure provisions to any situation where a federal or military pension is used in consideration for an “advance.”  

The APWU Legislative and Political E-Team previously reported on “pension advance” firms that often prey on federal retirees and veterans by skirting state and federal laws that prohibit annuitants from assigning their pensions to a third party.  These firms often require borrowers to sign over all or part of their monthly pension checks for loans that frequently carry effective interest rates ranging from 27 percent to 106 percent!  To qualify for one of the loans, borrowers are sometimes required to take out life insurance policies that name the lender as the sole beneficiary.  Retirees who have spent a lifetime earning a federal annuity can sink in debt under such loan terms that are often undisclosed in the lenders’ ads or contracts.  

The legislation would also cap the interest rate on such advance loans at prime plus six percent. It also would allow victims of such predatory lending schemes to sue firms that break the law.  

Tell your member of Congress to protect federal retirees from predatory lending and support the ASSURE Act!

To learn more about federal pension “advance” firms, please click here.