As many of you already know, last Thursday, July 30, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee marked up  S. 1507, a bill to provide temporary financial relief to the United States Postal Service by allowing them to pay for retiree health benefits from the Retiree Health Benefits fund, rather than operating funds.  The bill is based on a draft offered by the Administration and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  When this draft legislation was originally submitted, the NRLCA and the other postal unions supported the bill as introduced in the Senate.

Unfortunately, when S. 1507 went into mark up, the Committee accepted an amendment offered by Senator Coburn that instructs an arbitrator to take into account the financial health of the USPS when deciding postal contracts. S. 1507 with the arbitrator language included essentially takes the “neutral” out of the neutral arbitrator.  Despite the NRLCA’s opposition to S. 1507 with the arbitrator language included, the committee reported S. 1507 favorably by a vote of 12-1 (Senator Akaka of Hawaii was the only Senator to vote against this legislation with the arbitrator provision included)

While the NRLCA agrees that the USPS needs financial relief, we cannot support S. 1507 as voted out of committee that includes an anti-labor provision. The employees are not the reason the postal service faces economic distress, and they shouldn’t be saddled with the USPS recovery.  There are a number of factors the USPS is facing its current financial crisis including 1) the current recession has hit the industries that rely heavily on mail (housing, real estate, and banking) to drastically reduced the volume of mail being sent and 2) as part of the 2006 Postal Reform Law signed by the previous administration, an aggressive pre-payment schedule for retiree health benefits requires the USPS to contribute $56 billion by 2016.