USPS Delays End of Saturday Delivery

(Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO)Saturday mail delivery won a reprieve this week, after postal employees, other union members, community supporters and others rallied last month in hundreds of rallies in large cities and small towns (including locally in Gaithersburg). The U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS's) Board of Governors on Wednesday announced it will not end Saturday mail delivery, as Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe had threatened earlier this year. Congress last month passed government funding legislation that specifically barred the USPS from going to five-day delivery. But up until Wednesday’s announcement, the USPS hadn’t backed away. “I'd like to thank our Congress for stopping the USPS from making a devastating decision,” said APWU, Nation’s Capital and Southern MD local President Dena Briscoe, who is hopeful that this decision will “ignite postal management to look at ways to grow the agency instead of reducing public services.” Postal unions have been trying to work with USPS management to develop costs savings and growth measures and last November, a USPS report showed that worker productivity has increased while both operational expense and USPS’s deficit have dropped significantly. In related developments, the APWU denounced plans by the USPS to accelerate the closure of 71 mail processing plants that were due to remain in operation through 2014. - photo: USPS workers picket proposed cuts to 6-day delivery outside the mail sorting center in Gaithersburg, MD; photo by Chris Garlock