I’ve been talking to [info]bat_cheva and reading handouts she has gotten from her APWU meetings, and we have a problem here.

I will try to do this justice, but time is really short and I’m working on the fly here. Basically, some people in the USPS are pushing fast and hard to change the USPS radically, closing many, many locations and potentially subcontracting for retail and delivery services. This is so not okay. Without a federally protected mail service, we have no strong federal guarantees that our mail will get where it is going, let alone in a timely fashion, or that it will arrive safe and unopened.

Granted, I’ve had problems with the USPS, but it is nothing compared to what would happen if it was put into the hands of smaller private companies, or if postal services were drastically reduced, along with staff. And you could kiss the relatively low costs goodbye.

Do you need to go to the post office to send stuff by registered mail? Do you want to have to do that from a single downtown location in the large city nearest you, along with all the other people who will be there? Do you have reliable transportation to such an area, like a lot of poor folks don’t? Do you have a PO Box that you don’t want moved without your permission? Do you frequently engage the USPS for services that are too complicated for automated postal centers to provide? Do you rely on real-life postal service stations and their trained employees instead of the (terribly confusing and unhelpful) USPS website?

Two-thirds of the over 4,800 postal stations and branches nationwide will be submitted for review, a review process which does not involve public or media notification, involves only a ten-day input period from the public (remember, with no prior notification required), and for which there is no appeals process. These evaluations of post offices in your city will happen over the course of sixty days. Sixty. That is all the time they are going to take to determine how much this will affect the American public and paying USPS customers.

In an APWU statement put before the Postal Regulatory Commission, it states that “some, perhaps many of the stations and branches that may be affected are located in areas where residents rely primarily upon public transportation. Closing or relocating these facilities will undoubtedly change the nature of the postal service and create a hardship for this population. An additional question that must be explored is whether the effect of these closures will disproportionately affect low-income households, racial, or ethnic minorities, and the elderly.”

In other words, this screws over the poor and the housebound and the elderly. Forcing these people, who may not have bank accounts, credit or debit cards, computers, or access to transportation to rely on automated postal stations and the USPS website is just absurd. This is not a service meant for the wealthy, healthy, and young, it is a vital service meant for all.

The USPS management also wants to outsource retail and delivery services, completely destroying what is called the “sanctity of the mail,” and creating enormous potential for exploitation. Very dangerous exploitation. Without the USPS’ rigorous background checks, you would never know who was delivering your mail, including bank statements and official documents and records, personal items, and so on. They would know where you lived, what sort of car you drove, whether you had children, what your names were, all sorts of personal things. They would have a good idea of when you were home, what your cars looked like, how to get into your yard, whether you have a dog.

Have you thought about this? Have you thought about the fact that your mail carriers and in-plant mail handlers have been selected to be safe and trustworthy people? And what it would mean if they were not?

What would it mean if the USPS outsourced these services? What would happen if your mail was being delivered by the lowest bidder? Do you think that the level of service would remain the same? Would it be consistent countrywide? Would it be safe?

These bureaucrats are pretending to respond to the USPS’ admittedly troubled state when they are in fact doing nothing that will help the USPS or its customers long-term. It would, in fact, fundamentally alter the services we receive, and destroy the USPS as we know it.

This is against the law. The fundamental nature of the postal service is federally protected and it cannot be changed without an act of Congress, yet the changes that are being proposed will most definitely constitute large changes.

The USPS upper management has kept this to itself. The public DOES NOT KNOW. We need to get the word out, and we need to get people riled up.

What you can do:

# Link to this from everywhere you can. You have my permission, you don’t have to ask. Get this out there.

# Write to your congresspersons. We have only until the hearing on the 28th of this month to make our voices heard, so it’s imperative that you contact them right away. Because mail going into the capitol is still being screened for anthrax, we need to make these communications in person, over the phone, or via email. Send multiple messages if you like.

Tell them in your own words to cosponsor and support HR 658, which will modify the procedures for closure or consolidation of postal facilities and ensure that it is done fairly to the American public and to postal employees.

And we need to tell them that we don’t think that the USPS will be able to continue to provide adequate services to the American public if these stations are closed without fair and public evaluation, and that you expect that the law will be upheld and that no substantial changes will be made to our postal service without an act of Congress.

Right now there is no recourse, no appeal if the USPS closes a facility. The USPS does not need to justify their decision, hold public hearings, notify the public, or notify the papers. They don’t have to tell anyone about it! For dramatic changes to a public service, that certainly lacks transparency. HR 658 would require public assessment of the need for closure or consolidation and provides an appeals process.

So, go right here to find your congresscritters and put in your zipcode to get started.

On a very personal note, I also want to bring up another reason that this needs to not happen. The USPS tries to transfer or retrain employees when closings occur, but if this happens, it is unavoidable that lots of people are going to lose their jobs for basically no reason at all. The USPS is a good employer that offers good benefits and union support, and employs a lot of veterans. That makes me partial to it to begin with. It also employs my best friend, my non-biological sister, [info]bat_cheva. If she loses her job because some glue-sniffing bureaucrats want to pillage one of the best mail systems in the world so they can line their pockets, well, that makes this personal.

But really, if you get mail, if you send mail, if you use the USPS at all for anything, this should already be personal to you, and you need to act. The integrity of the mail and the importance of a readily-available mail service is something we can all agree is important, whether we are Democrat or Republican or Independent or Green, whether we are involved or apathetic.

Furthermore, we are all united in needing this service, so whether you individually agree with the changes proposed or not, the service itself should not be changed without the permission of our elected representatives and without our input.

The APWU information center about the plans for consolidation.

More about consolidating stations.

More on why this will not help the USPS recover from its current slump.

ETA: Whether or not privatization is a good thing is a matter of opinion based in no small part on whether or not you trust private companies, with what seem to some people to be positives being interpreted as negatives by others, and vice-versa. Even if you don’t think the USPS can survive in its current incarnation, and that privatization of these services would be a bad thing, the fact that this is being done secretly with no public input is troubling, and the fact that it is being done so quickly and with so few provisions for what will happen afterwards is just not okay.