Unions Continue Call To Boycott Staples Stores Over Privatization: Extended Interview with American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein
The US Postal Service is facing a push toward privatization that threatens hundreds of thousands of good-paying union jobs. In what postal unions are describing as a “dirty deal” between Staples Stores and the Postal Service, the USPS opened full-service post offices in 82 Staples stores last fall. Neither the postal service nor staples were willing to staff these units with postal employees. The American Postal Workers Union is calling for a boycott of the Staples stores. Mark Dimondstein, President of the American Postal Workers Union says the drive toward privatization involves undermining public services and decent paying union jobs that postal workers enjoy, shifting living wage jobs to low-wage, non-union work without benefits:
[Mark Dimondstein]: It’s hard to kill a public service that has a lot of public support like the Post Office does and a great public need. So, the way they’re going about doing that is to undermine, degrade, de-fund, create false financial crises, and push the customer elsewhere. For instance if mail isn’t being processed on time and carriers are out on the street ‘til 8 or 9 o’clock at night, people get frustrated. If they go to purchase stamps and mail packages and lines are going out the door because they don’t have enough workers on the windows, then it’s driving customers elsewhere.”
Supporters of privatizing public services usually argue that it will save taxpayers money, because, supposedly, private companies can deliver a service cheaper than public employees. However, decades of evidence shows that privatization costs as much or more than keeping services public.
[Mark Dimondstein]: ”It doesn’t lower any costs to the customer and the consumer. What it does is it lowers wages and it enables a corporate entity to rake off the difference in private profit. And then, of course, public services become at risk, because the whole question of whether they’re there, whether they’re postal services or public transportation, public libraries, education and so on…then it becomes a business decision rather than a service decision for the needs of the people. Privatization is a transfer of wealth from the public till into private hands and into private profit. And the only way they can get that difference is by either raising the cost of the services, in combination with lowering wages. Staples is a good example of that. They pay people 8 or 9 dollars and hour, and they’re gonna make the difference in some kind of increased profit, if they were allowed to become the Postal Service or a big piece of the
postal service.”
The privatization movement has argued that the Post Office needs to cut services because they’re facing a terrible financial crisis, with taxpayers having to foot the bill. Dimondstein says this is disingenuous on two fronts. First, the postal service runs off the revenue generated from customers, and receives no tax dollars at all. Secondly, the supposed financial crisis facing the Post Office is a congressionally manufactured crisis. In 2006, with bipartisan support, Congress passed a law requiring the Post Office to pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years.
[Mark Dimondstein]: ”No other agency, no other company, has to do that kind of pre-funding, 75 years out, for workers not even born yet. That is where people read in the news media, “ah, the Post Office lost five billion dollars last year.” Well, they have to pre-fund at five billion dollars a year, and they can’t do it, and no other company could do it. Were it not for this pre-funding, the Post Office is actually making money. They made a lot of money last year. They’re already over a billion dollars on the operating side this year. The Post Office is not doing nearly as badly as the pundits are trying to make it seem, and then that’s what they use to say, “okay, we need legislation that’s gonna do away with six-day delivery”, or right now the Post Office has announced they’re gonna close more processing plants. And that’s just gonna slow down mail more, drive more business away, and destroy many more decent jobs.”
After months of protests against postal privatization, the APWU boycott of Staples stores is being joined by the other three U.S. postal unions, and endorsed by most of the nation’s largest unions, including teachers unions, the AFL-CIO, the SEIU and AFSCME.
[Mark Dimondstein]: “People in the labor movement are seeing this around a fight, again, for living wage jobs and for good public services. We greatly appreciate the solidarity out there, and a victory for postal workers in the fight against Staples will be a victory for all workers. And the question of defending the national treasure that belongs to the people of this country is something that the American Postal Workers Union and the other unions are firm on, but we can’t do that alone. We’re gonna have to do that with the postal customers and patrons that want to make sure that they have this democratic right called the United States Postal Service for generations to come. Staples is looking for increased foot traffic out of this deal with the Postal Service. We are gonna take that foot traffic away and keep Staples in the business of office supplies, and keep the Post Office in the business of serving the people of this country with
postal services.”
That was Mark Dimondstein, President of the American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO. For Workers’ Independent News, I’m JoAnne Pow!ers.
