POSTAL workers and teachers are coming under attack as a result of the drive to cut federal and state spending in the crisis-hit United States.
To pay for a ‘financial crisis’, the US Postal Service is threatening to lay-off 120,000 workers.
This has prompted the New York Metro branch of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) to demand the resignation of Postmaster-General and Postal Service chief executive Patrick R Donahoe.
If Postmaster-General Donahoe refuses to resign, the union is demanding that the Postal Board of Governors removes him.
Donahoe took the oath of office as the 73rd Postmaster General of the United States on January 14 this year.
In April, he successfully negotiated a new four-year agreement with the APWU and praised the union, saying: ‘We worked together to negotiate a responsible agreement that is in the best interest of our customers, our employees and the future of the Postal Service.’
Donahue said the deal reached would save the US Postal Service $3.8 billion in labour costs.
But less than three months later, he called upon Congress to nullify part of the new contract to allow him to lay-off 120,000 workers.
The New York Metro Area postal union says Donahoe is either incompetent or is collabortaing with those who actively want to destroy the Postal Service and have it privatised and that, whatever the reason for his manoeuvre, they want him removed for violating his oath of office.
The New York Metro Area union questions how the three other postal unions can bargain in good faith with Donahoe after his actions.
It also called for an independent investigation into a ‘sweetheart’ retirement package for Donahoe’s predecessor as Postmaster-General, John E Potter, who stepped down in December last year.
He was said to be retiring with $3.1 million in pension benefits accumulated during his 32-year career.
He was also apparently able to use a separate ‘performance-related’ pension established for him by the Postal Board of Governors in 2001, said to be worth $1.35 million when it was frozen in 2007 in favour of ‘direct performance incentives’.
He had already built up $881,000 in deferred compensation awards and incentives that he could draw out in annual installments once retired, it is also claimed.
Postal workers are asking why – if the US Postal Service was ‘in such dire straights’ – would former Postmaster Potter receive such awards, with the service said to be on the ‘brink of failure’.
The New York Metro Area Postal Union says the current ‘financial crisis’ in the Postal Service is caused by mandates imposed by Congress in the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act and the overpayments into the CSRS and FERS retirement plans that have been expropriated from the Postal Service by the US Treasury.
The union warns that the Postal Service is facing drastic cuts, closing post offices, cutting back on delivery and eliminating hundreds of thousands of ‘living wage’ jobs in the middle of an economic slump.
Meanwhile, a row is brewing in Chicago, Illinois, over an ‘offer’ from Democratic Party Mayor Rahm Emanuel to schools of a ‘bonus’ payment, if their teachers agree to lengthening the school day.
Karen Lewis, of the Chicago Teachers’ Union, has described the move – ignoring existing teachers’ contracts agreed with their union – as the kind of scheme ‘you expect from the Republicans’.
The Chicago administration claims that nine schools are signed up to Emanuel’s scheme so far, but the union is vowing to take him to the Labour Board.
Chicago has a total of 482 public elementary schools and 400,000 public school pupils.
The unions are warning that the Democrats are following an anti-union drive in Republican-led states like Ohio and Wisconsin, as part of the drive across the United States to slash public spending.
Emanuel took office in Chicago in May this year – after leaving the White House where he worked as President Obama’s chief of staff – vowing to remodel the city’s public school system.
Teachers were initially offered a two per cent pay increase, in return for lengthening their working day by one and a half hours, which their union rejected.
Emanuel and Chicago public schools chief Jean-Claude Brizard then sought to impose the offer without the union’s agreement.
They said that any school joining the Longer School Day Pioneer Programme would get extra money, with $150,000 for those schools that started implementing the longer day straight away.
But teachers who accept working the longer hours give up specific provisions in their contracts involving the length of the school day and after-school pay.
The teachers union accused City Hall of using a combination of bribery, threats and coercion of teachers and schools to run roughshod over collective bargaining.
The union has filed a complaint for unfair labour practices with the Illinois Educational Labour Relations Board, hoping for a hearing in the coming days, as more schools are balloted on the mayor’s ‘offer’.
The teachers union has said it is prepared to consider a possible 75-minute extension to the school day, to bring public schools into line with the private school system.
But the union has demanded that there must be a thorough examination first of what benefits – if any – such a change would bring.
The union warned that Emanuel is on a collision course with teachers and their union after he supported a bill in the Legislature that would make it easier to sack teachers and harder for teachers to strike.
‘Everybody knows who Rahm Emanuel is. He wants to win. He’s dirty. He’s lowdown. He’s a street fighter,’ Teachers’ Union President Lewis warned.
‘This is Rahm Emanuel trying to prove a point, trying to flex his muscles.
‘He’s trying to put his fingers in our faces because he ultimately wants to bust this union, bust all the unions.’
The teachers union has been fighting school closures, increasing class sizes and slights on teachers’ professionalism as well as attacks on their members’ pay and conditions, and in June 1,000 more teachers were sacked.
Tensions between Emanuel and the union were heightened when he heaped praise on privately-run charter schools during the elections. Charter schools are largely non-union.
The teachers union is also resisting any move to tie teachers’ pay in the public schools system to ‘student achievement’.
The Chicago Public Schools board has rescinded a four per cent salary rise allocated to teachers in the current contract agreement.
The CPS board has the power to implement a longer school day across the district in 2012-13, but schools chief Brizard ‘offered’ two per cent for all elementary school teachers who agreed to lengthening the school day this year.
The teachers union has accused Mayor Emanuel of wanting to extend the school day not to boost student performance, but simply to warehouse and baby-sit children.
Lewis warned that the public school system was moving away from a cooperative, family environment to a cut-throat business model, hitting teacher morale.
