Save the US Postal Service offices!

This is a corker. Today, while wandering past a Staples store in the South Bay I saw a bunch of people outside waving protest signs. Upon closer examination this turned out to be Stop Staples!, a campaign by the American Postal Workers Union (motto "Don't mention Seinfeld"). Staples is the same kind of store in the USA as it is in the UK, providing all kinds of stationery and office supplies. Since late 2013 the US Postal Service has been running a trial program with post office counters in Staples stores, staffed by Staples workers rather than APWU-unionized US Postal Service employees. Hence the protest. The APWU seems rather concerned that the trial program is about to expand.

Reading the AWPU background briefing on the protest is illuminating and amusing in roughly equal measures for anyone who has ever spent time in a US post office:

"Staples and USPS management are perpetrating a fraud on the people of this country," says APWU President Mark Dimondstein. "They are promoting the deal as though taking your mail to Staples is the same as taking it to the Post Office. "It’s not."

He's right, you know. If I go to Staples to make a purchase at the postal counter then I can reasonably expect to be in and out in ten minutes. For the regular post office - once I can find it and get a parking space - I'm budgeting a full hour and bringing a book.

Staples' low-paid, high-turnover employees get just four hours of "classroom" training for postal retail duties.

I don't know about "low-paid". In California they're subject to the state minimum wage which is $9/hour now and $10/hour from January 1st, and there seems to be a thriving demand for competent retail employees. And if the US Postal Service is paying as much as McDonald's for most of their counter staff, they - or rather, the US taxpayer who's funding them - are getting a really bad deal.

Postal workers must pass a test before they are considered qualified to work the window

I can only imagine that it involves the examiner locating a pulse on the worker, with a generous margin for error.

What this is about, of course, is that the APWU is terrified of its membership shrinking, and the associated contributions to the existing retirement plans falling. The USPS retirement plan (healthcare and pensions) funding is in a horrendously bad state as it is, and shrinking the operations, staffing and funding of the USPS will make this situation even clearer, the gap harder to plug, and the public less inclined to back additional federal spending to fill the hole. "Why do I care about the local post office? I go to Staples when I want to post something." The USPS is going to be left with just local letter delivery after Fedex and UPS takes the profitable parcel delivery, and the bulk of those letters are junk mail that the USPS loves for the money and the recipients hate for the spam.

Amusingly, around midday the protestors all left en masse. Presumably they were on their lunch break, a staple feature of US post offices in my experience. As soon as the lunchtime queues start to build up, the counter staff react by closing several of the open counters and wandering off, presumably to have a leisurely lunch. If they've got any eye to the future, I hope they're dusting off their resumés and looking to move to a counter position at Staples before the rush.

Let me quote the APWU leaflet again, in closing:

During the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2014 the USPS enjoyed an operating surplus of $765 million. But the agency’s good news was buried in most media accounts, which said the USPS suffered a loss of $354 million loss. The USPS reported losses for the first quarter of 2014 for one reason – the congressional mandate that requires the Postal Service to pre-fund healthcare benefits for future retirees.

Indeed, damn Congress for insisting that government businesses track their accumulated liabilities as well as their income...