There are just five working days left before Congress adjourns for the mid-term elections and I want to update you on the status of Postal Reform. We learned this week that the White House is still aggressively pursuing contentious changes in the Senate version of the reform legislation. The Bush administration’s proposed changes, if adopted, would leave NALC no choice but to actively oppose passage of the pending Postal Reform. According to our sources, the White House wants to:

• Unfairly place the burden of paying future military pension benefits earned by postal employees for their service in the U.S. armed forces on the USPS and its rate payers (some $10 billion), and raise the cost of pre-funding future retiree health benefits significantly. As drafted, the Senate bill rightfully transfers both past and future military pension costs ($27 billion) to the Treasury and uses the savings to the USPS to pre-fund retiree health benefits over 40 years. The White House changes would drain $10 billion in revenue from the USPS and unacceptably damage our interests at the collective bargaining table by mandating even greater payments for future retiree benefits. No other company or federal agency is now required to pre-fund such benefits.
  
  
• Reject a more flexible and fair "exigency clause" in the bill’s price indexing system and inserted only allow the USPS to raise rates above the Consumer Price Index in "unexpected and extraordinary" circumstances.
  
  
• Unfairly punish injured workers at retirement age by slashing their OWCP benefits, a provision that would apply only to postal employees — not to all federal workers.
  
  
• Send a new bill with these provisions to the Senate floor to be passed under "unanimous consent" rules rather than going through a formal House-Senate conference committee. If approved by the Senate, the bill would be sent to the House floor for an up-or-down vote and would, if passed, be sent to the President for his signature. In this scenario, there would be no need for a conference committee.

I am deeply troubled that the Bush administration appears determined to destroy the strong bipartisan consensus surrounding comprehensive postal reform. NALC has worked long and hard for reform, but we will not support a bad version of the bill. Indeed, we must be ready to do everything we can to defeat any bill that financially cripples the Postal Service or threatens our collective bargaining interests.

Over the next few days we will continue to closely monitor the situation. Over the next week, we need you to check your e-mail each day and stay alert - we may need you to make the voices of America’s 300,000 letter carriers heard loud and clear in Washington.

Thank you for your support and activism.

In Solidarity,
William H. Young