Metro Postal Union Rallies Against Service Cutbacks

Urges Congress to Act
By ARI PAUL

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang A MESSAGE FOR YOU: Postal workers picketed outside the James A. Farley Main Post Office April 15 to protest the ending of 24-hour service at the facility. Nearly 200 workers who currently work overnight shifts will have to be relocated to other post offices after May 9 when the cut goes into effect.

The New York Metro Area Postal Union staged a day of protest April 15 urging the U.S. Postal Service to rescind the closing of three Manhattan post offices and the termination of overnight service at the James A. Farley Main Post Office in midtown.

Used Tax Day to Make Case

As lines in post offices swelled on the last day to file income tax returns, the union chose what is thought to be the busiest postal day of the year to highlight the vital need for the USPS and how service cutbacks will have adverse effects.

The USPS has cited several reasons for its deepening budget deficit, including the price of fuel. Revenue has also decreased along with mail volume as a result of competition from private-sector delivery services such as the United Parcel Service and FedEx as well as the widespread use of fax, e-mail and on-line bill-paying systems.

The Chief-Leader/Michel Friang WANTS A POSTAL BAILOUT: Clarice Torrence, president of the Metro Area Postal Union, said that a bill relieving the U.S. Postal Service of an obligation to pre-fund retiree health-care benefits would yield enough savings to stave off the post office closings and other service reductions.

The local's president, Clarice Torrence, said that the USPS's financial woes can be cured by the passage of a bill currently in the U.S. House of Representatives that would temporarily lift the requirement to pre-fund retiree health benefits, which the USPS said cost $5.6 billion annually.

"We're just asking that they be relieved of that debt for two years, and the post office is immediately in the black; the $5.6 billion is what's killing them," she said during a protest outside the postal station on Prince St. in Soho, which is slated to close in July. "If this government can bail out AIG and other companies, certainly they can bail out a company—a service— that the citizens of this country are entitled to under the Constitution."

The other post offices slated to close are Columbus Circle Station April 30 and Sgt. Tejeda Station in Washington Heights June 30.

Wouldn't Reduce Benefits

Ms. Torrence added that the bill if enacted would not harm retiree health benefits. Her union's international, the American Postal Workers Union, has endorsed the measure.

She also denied that the closing and service cuts were an inevitable result of expanded and diverse competition.

"There's a demand for customer service," Ms. Torrence said, pointing to the line snaking around the corner at the Prince St. location.

Union officials later in the day held an informational picket outside the Farley Building, which is slated to end 24-hour service. Starting May 9 it will operate from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekdays and shorter hours on weekends, and the USPS will have to find new job sites for the 200 employees who work the overnight shifts.

"Not only do you have the people in the community, you have a lot of businesses around there and tourists who come there at night," Ms. Torrence said.

16,000 Vulnerable to Layoffs

Post office closings and service cutbacks would require relocating the workers at these facilities to other stations within a 200-mile radius, she said. The USPS has identified 16,000 workers it could lay off, but Ms. Torrence said that such a process has not started yet for her members and that she was confident the job cuts would start at the supervisory level.

Ms. Torrence added that the closings and cutbacks could be rescinded if the bill delaying the retiree health benefits payments, which she said had enough support to pass in the House, is enacted, and told post-office users to urge their Congress Members to support it.

The informational picket at the Farley Building was interrupted when a union member, Wilhelmenia Kirnon, started heckling the picketers from the stairs, saying that the union leadership had not taken any action on the closings, which had been made public earlier, and waited until April to hold a formal protest because of the incumbent slate's current election campaign. "They knew that this was being shut down," Ms. Kirnon said. "It was in the newspapers. Why do you wait 'til April 15 to tell us to 'Call our Congressmen?' "

She added, "This is just an election ploy."