APWU Reaction to Senate vote on S. 1789

[Galraedia]

Source: PostalNews.com

From the American Postal Workers Union:

The Senate passed an amended version of the 21st Century Postal Service Act (S. 1789) on April 25 by a vote of 62-37. “Although the bill is flawed, the amended version is far better than the original,” said APWU President Cliff Guffey. “That is a result of the tremendous effort of APWU members, postal customers, and elected officials who appreciate the importance of the Postal Service to American life. Thank you for your hard work.”

The bill will provide the USPS, which is facing imminent collapse, with short-term financial relief, by returning $11 billion in USPS overpayments to federal pension funds to the Postal Service. “Keep in mind,” Guffey said, “this is money paid by postal customers, workers and the Postal Service – not taxpayers.”

The bill also will provide some protection for service standards for a minimum of three years. “Although we sought stronger, longer safeguards, this is an improvement over the original bill, which did nothing to preserve service,” Guffey said. “Protecting service is essential to preserving the Postal Service,” he said.

Read more: http://postalnews.com/postalnewsblog/?p=1737

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At the very end of 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA). Under PAEA, USPS was forced to “prefund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in an astonishing ten-year time span” — meaning that it had to put aside billions of dollars to pay for the health benefits of employees it hasn’t even hired yet, something “that no other government or private corporation is required to do.”
Contact your representatives and demand that they end the PAEA mandate that is killing the USPS http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

[mike_c]

1. frankly, I'm less interested in ending the PAEA mandate than I am in extending it...

...to ALL retirees, both public and private. Underfunding pensions is a huge problem, and NOT requiring government agencies and private corporations to fully fund their pension obligations is not the solution. Sure, 75 years out in ten years was a poison pill, but requiring that all pension providers fund their pensions out to the average post-retirement life span would be entirely appropriate-- I'm guessing that would be something like 25 years out.

[hay rick]

3. The PAEA mandate has nothing to do with pension funding.

Postal pensions, under both the old Civil Service Retirement System and the current Federal Employees Retirement System, are already OVERfunded. S1789 would return at least a portion of that money to help stabilize postal finances.

The PAEA mandate is a separate issue. The Postal Service was fully funding current healthcare benefits for current employees prior to the enactment of the 2006 law. The PAEA mandate added a requirement for the Postal Service to also pre-fund future healthcare benefits- 75 years worth in a 10 year period. This means paying in advance for the healthcare benefits of not just current employees, but also employees who have not yet been hired or even born in many cases.

PAEA is sabotage, pure and simple.

[libinnyandia]

2. What is ironic about the whole USPS crisis is that many of the communities at least in my home

state are staunchly Republican.