USPS Hunger Strike, Day 3

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Ten US Postal Service hunger strikers picketed the Washington Post Wednesday, demanding the paper “tell the truth” about the cuts and closures threatening the USPS. Protesters booed and hissed as hunger striker Jamie Partridge quoted a Post editorial calling the Postal Service “technologically obsolescent” and suggesting “costs will get shifted to… taxpayers.” “[The hunger strike] is a big struggle but it’s a good cause” said hunger striker and APWU Montgomery County Area Local 3630 President Nanette Corley (below at left), who held a sign reading “Not the internet. Not labor. CONGRESS is starving the Postal Service.” “Someone else had to sacrifice for me” added Corley. “I think this is my duty.” The hunger strike culminates today with a 4p rally at the USPS headquarters where hunger strikers will call on Postmaster General Donahoe to suspend the cuts and closures. Overnight single piece first class mail delivery is set to end July 1 and Donahoe has announced that he will then begin closure of half the mail sorting plants in the country and cut hours at post offices nationwide, slashing as many as 40,000 jobs. “The Postmaster General is sending the service into a death spiral,” says Matt McAuliffe, a mailhandler and hunger striker from Denver. “By slowing the mail one to two days, the postal service will drive away customers.  Those most dependent on the mail, the elderly, the poor and rural communities will be hit the hardest." - report/photos by Julia Kann