One postal union heads to contract arbitration; another extends talks

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4693

One postal union heads to contract arbitration; another extends talks
By Mark Gruenberg
28 November 2010

WASHINGTON - One of the nation’s three postal unions, the Rural Letter Carriers, said it would head for mandatory arbitration after talks with the U.S. Postal Service broke down Nov. 15. Meanwhile, another, the Postal Workers, extended the talks until Dec. 1 in hopes of reaching a new contract.

“Throughout the collective bargaining process, APWU sought to protect our members’ jobs and to strengthen the Postal Service,” Postal Workers President Cliff Guffey said after a Nov. 20 bargaining session. “Every proposal we have made to preserve jobs for our members will also benefit the USPS, because APWU members can perform the work more efficiently and less expensively than subcontractors. Our proposals are good for the Postal Service and for the American people.”

The talks between USPS and its unions come as the third of them, the Letter Carriers, dissected the $8.5 billion “loss” in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, which USPS announced on Nov. 12. NALC’s analysis showed all but $500 million of the red ink was due to a combination of political gridlock and an accounting charge.

Former President George W. Bush’s 2006 postal reorganization law “legally bound the USPS on Sept. 30 to once again make a $5.5 billion payment toward pre-funding its Postal Service Retiree Health Benefit Fund,” NALC said.

“It bears repeating that this mandate to pre-fund the PSRHBF in just 10 years is at once highly unusual, since no other corporation or agency is required to pre-fund benefits at all -- much less at such an onerous level -- and it’s unnecessary. Even before Sept. 30, the fund already contained enough cash to cover current and future retiree health benefits for decades to come.”


FULL story at link.