Kelly Dickey: Covid-19 & the USPS
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Our country is facing an unprecedented situation. We are all anxious to see what awaits us in the next weeks and months, and what life after will be like. It is the essential workers who are trying to bring normality to our lives, ensuring our hospitals stay open and we can get needed groceries, and providing regular updates through news outlets.
Often forgotten members of the essential workforce are the dedicated men and women of the United States Postal Service (USPS). I have been a mail handler at the Pittsburgh Processing and Distribution Center since 1998 and president of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union Local 322 since 2015, representing three plants, nine smaller facilities and 850 members throughout Western Pennsylvania.
My fellow postal employees and I are ensuring your personal mail and packages are still meeting their destinations, government correspondence is still circulating, and orders of medical supplies, prescriptions and basic goods are arriving. We are all doing this while risking exposure to covid-19.
Not only are we serving our communities and neighbors, the USPS is the backbone of a $1.4 trillion mailing industry. As of the beginning of this year, the USPS employs 28,320 Pennsylvanians, with roughly 6,000 employees in the greater Pittsburgh area.
The USPS is one of the largest employers in the country with the second highest number of employed veterans. The Postal Service touches every single American household and business. The USPS is responsible for connecting small businesses with customers, shipping consumers’ packages, and making the “last mile” delivery for those in suburban and rural areas. The USPS is not some antiquated system: It is a constitutionally mandated service that impacts everyone.
Like many other industries, the USPS’s revenue is being negatively impacted by covid-19. Unlike many other industries, the USPS was facing financial uncertainty even before covid-19. Due to congressional mandates, the Postal Service is forced to make payments to its retiree health care funds so far in advance, it covers/pays for employees not even born yet (no company in the world does this, nor could one survive doing this).
Postage rates have been capped and do not meet market demand. Facilities and services have been cut, and that has resulted in delays. Because of this, within the past several years, the Postal Service has come under threats of privatization, limiting services and undermining its employees.
The latest stimulus package signed into law ignores this current fiscal instability and only provides for a loan to the USPS, which is just a poor bandage for internal bleeding. As members of Congress and the Trump administration move forward on the next line of stimulus packages, on behalf of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, I urge officials to fully realize the impact of the Postal Service, the necessity of its duties and the importance of its sustainability.
Kelly Dickey is president of NPMHU Local 322.