USPS Workers To Stage National Protest Against Postal Service Saturday Shutdown

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Stepping up their grass-roots lobbying of lawmakers, the Letter Carriers – supported by the American Postal Workers Union -- will stage a nationwide protest this Sunday against the Postal Service’s Saturday service shutdown scheme. The “Delivering for America Rally” will run from 1-4p and has three metro-area locations in Gaithersburg, Baltimore and Hagerstown. The Postal Service workers plan to hit the streets on what would ordinarily be their day off to tell citizens and customers about the negative impact of USPS plans to cancel Saturday pickups and delivery, starting on Aug. 5, except for parcels. “We cannot let the Postmaster General wipe out the American people’s confidence in the best postal system in the world,” said NALC Branch 3825 President Ken Lerch. “An agency that reduces its services to the public is sending itself into a downward collision course,” added Dena Briscoe, President of APWU, Nation’s Capital and Southern MD Local. The unions, citing USPS studies, say that eliminating Saturday service would actually lose at least $5.2 billion in revenue, while cutting tens of thousands of full-time jobs, closing thousands of facilities and hiring more part-timers at low pay and with no benefits. - includes reporting by Press Associates, Inc.