Postal Service Forgoes Democracy: Consolidation plans will benefit big mailers at expense of citizens

author : Clint Burelson topic : privatization | United States Postal Service

by Clint Burelson,

President of Olympia APWU Local

The United States Postal Service plans to reduce service to many communities by consolidating mail canceling and sorting operations into just a few large hubs. The proposal to discontinue canceling mail in Olympia, and to move many mail operations to Tacoma on April 3, is part of a larger national restructuring where as many as 250 mail processing facilities may be closed and consolidated. These consolidation plans will benefit large corporate mailers at the expense of citizens, non-profit organizations, small businesses, and businesses of any size that require fast mail service to and from their customers.

The Postal Service provides first-class mail service at the same rates to citizens wherever they live and however far their mail has to travel. The relatively low cost of mailing a letter to someone in the same town helps to balance the more expensive cost of mailing a letter to the other side of the country. The Postal Service rate structure was historically designed to encourage the sharing of information at affordable rates to nurture a democratic culture. This service is too important to our country to have it be taken over, as have mostly all other media, by "market" principles, which invariably lead to corporate control.

However, out of public view, large mailers have lobbied and have been successful in securing discounts for their advertising-based mailings through "worksharing," the euphemistic name for the process by which companies perform functions, such as applying barcodes, sorting, and trucking, that would otherwise be performed by the Postal Service. Through "worksharing," - which is essentially outsourcing - the large mailers pay less than the regular citizen for using the mail. The "worksharing" discounts have been so large that it has caused the Postal Service to have continuous revenue problems, and for rates for the small mailers and citizens to rise unnecessarily in order to pay for the discounts to the big mailers.

With the Postal Service consolidation plans, the large mailers are hoping to capture more postal work and discounts by eliminating and/or consolidating as many as 250 mail processing facilities across the country. So, instead of processing the local originating mail locally, mail will be trucked miles away to be processed before returning to the same town for delivery. Not only is this more costly in terms of fuel and work time, it also results in delays in first class mail service. This design is inherently inefficient and benefits only large advertising-based corporations able to take advantage of the discounts.

Privatization Trends

In general, the large mailers want as much of the Postal Service work turned over to the private sector as possible. In theory, the discounts they get simply reflect the work they have done to sort the mail. But the mail from the big mailers still needs to be processed, sorted, and delivered with the rest of the mail. The discounts awarded are far deeper than the costs the publishers have "saved" the Postal Service. In reality, they amount to a subsidy for big mailers - a subsidy paid for by the average stamp buyer.

The excessive discounts for the large mailers have reduced the Postal Service role and dramatically increased the private sector role in the mailing industry. Corporate CEOs laud a reduction of the Postal Service budget as a savings to the public, but in reality it is a transfer of work and income to the corporations. The corporations generally have this work performed by workers who are paid far less than postal workers, so the process destroys good jobs and replaces them with low-wage ones.

The big mailers hope to secure this arrangement by closing and consolidating of mail processing facilities, which will make it difficult to return mail processing functions to the Post Office. The Postal Service is also closing small post offices. In fact, over 200 small post offices have been closed in the last two years.

For the average citizen, the Postal Service consolidation plans mean a reduction in mail service, higher costs for the reduced service, and a loss of union-covered living wage job opportunities. The loss of living wage jobs will hurt our communities in turn.

The reduction in mail service and higher cost for using the Post Office will also mean a reduction in equality and will harm small business owners and non-profit organizations. Many small non-profit organization and small businesses will find it increasingly difficult to use the mail for their communication needs if the service is slow and expensive. In the magazine business, the big mailers like Time-Warner will be better able to discourage competition if the smaller mailers have to pay more for their mailings.

Perhaps most importantly, the plans to dismantle the Post Office will mean a reduction in democracy. Higher costs for small mailings will reduce the ability of citizens to communicate through the mail. Corporate media, no matter how many channels, is still corporate media. A real democracy needs to provide support for the voice of the regular citizen. The Postal Service is one place that historically has provided that support.

Inadequate Media Coverage

The story of how large corporations are benefiting and the average citizen losing in the Postal Service consolidation plans is not being adequately covered by the corporate media, because many of the large mailers who will benefit from the consolidation plans are also the large media corporations that provide most of the news to the country. AOL/Time Warner, which owns CNN and many other media sources of information, is the most obvious example. Newsweek, Reader's Digest, and other large media mailers also support consolidation and cannot be expected to tell the story from the general public's viewpoint.

Concerned citizens and organizations should contact their government representatives. If enough people are vocal, the consolidation plans and reduction in service can be stopped, and the Postal Service returned to its role as a public service.

More Information Online

More information on the consolidations happening across the country can be found at http://www.apwu.org , http://www.lunewsviews.com and at http://www.postalmag.com . Specific information on the Olympia consolidation can be found at http://www.lunewsviews.com/olympia and at http://www.postalmag.com/olympia respectively.