Olympia Local
American Postal Workers Union
PO Box 1953, Olympia, WA 98507

Time Warner, Big Corporate Mailers Getting Nervous About Public Resistance to Mail Consolidation Plans

For Immediate Release 4/12/06 Contact Clint Burelson, President 360-970-2965

Statement by Clint Burelson, President

Union and community resistance to Postal Service consolidation plans are making big corporate mailers such as Time Warner nervous. Through informational pickets, press releases, and visits to government representatives, postal workers have been educating the public that mail consolidation plans will benefit the big advertising mailers at the expense of citizens. For Time Warner and other corporate media, the union contention that corporate media are not adequately covering the story because of their corporate interests is especially troublesome.

The Postal Service, urged on by big advertising mailers like Time Warner, plans to close or consolidate mail processing facilities or mail processing functions, usually the outgoing mail, into large regional hubs spread sparsely throughout the country. In some cases, the mail will travel over 100 miles before coming back to the original town for delivery. The Postal Service acknowledges that First Class mail will be delayed as a result of the consolidations, but argues that alleged savings justify the reduction in service. The union has used the USPS’s own documents to show that there will be little if any savings.

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The plans to consolidate mail processing facilities originated and/or are supported by the large mailers because it will reduce the number of sites where they need to drop off their mail and is expected to provide additional discounts associated with contracting out postal work as an ever-increasing volume of mail processing is contracted out. This privatization of the Postal Service means that much of the work formerly performed by postal workers making a living wage is now performed by private sector workers making little more than minimum wage. The big mailers have pocketed the difference in wages and are looking for more.

In addition, as part of their business, the large advertising mailers generally do not send their mail from mail boxes and are comfortable with reducing service to those that do in order to get benefits for themselves.

Consolidation is therefore a big and significant step in the direction of what Time Warner calls “deaveraging