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Postal Service layoffs will hit minorities
Working at the post office has long been a way for African-Americans and others to rise up to the middle class. But at least 35,000 USPS jobs will soon be lost.
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Kai Ryssdal: The long-rumored and long-delayed shrinkage of the United States Postal Service is finally going to happen. This week, the Postal Service said it's going to close more than 250 mail processing centers around the country. It's part of a $3 billion deficit reduction plan the post office says it has to do to survive. What's not going to survive are a whole lot of post office jobs -- including a lot of minority jobs.
Gigi Douban reports from Birmingham, Ala.
Gigi Douban: These days, Nea Rice spends most of her days playing "FarmVille" on her computer. But for 22 years, she worked for the post office. Raising two kids on her own, she considered herself lucky. For African-Americans, working for the Postal Service in the 1970s was:
Nea Rice: The job to get if you could get it. It was the job to get.
That's because there were so few opportunities back then.
Rice: The only other jobs we had would be teachers and that's about it, as far as you know the black was concerned. And if you didn't have your education, you couldn't be a teacher and I didn't have the education for a teacher.
For the last few decades, the Postal Service has been a good place for minorities to work. Sally Davidow is a spokeswoman for the American Postal Workers Union.
Sally Davidow: The Postal Service has always been one of the places where African-Americans could find work because the Postal Service doesn't discriminate the way many private sector employers did in the past and unfortunately some still do today.
Davidow says the cuts announced by the Postal Service this week are "a disaster." In Alabama, three mail processing centers around the state will shut down and move here to Birmingham. Similar consolidations are happening nationwide. In the end, about 35,000 jobs will be lost.
L.D. Brown started working for the Postal Service 22 years ago. She says back then, it was an easy decision.
L.D. Brown: Now you can become a federal employee. You look at the benefits that it had to offer.
For many African-Americans, a job at the post office was a way to enter the middle class.
Brown: When I started at the Postal Service, there were many blacks and a majority of the managers were black. So upward mobility was always around.
That's part of what drew Derrick Thompson to the job. He's been delivering mail for about 10 years. Before this job, Thompson was a cop. He didn't like it. Too much sitting around, he says. Coming to work for the Postal Service was definitely a good move.
Derrick Thompson: It's a lot better. I've been able to make it a lot better than what I would have as a police officer.
Douban: Money-wise?
Thompson: Money-wise, yeah. And benefits-wise and everything else.
And even with the shakeup, he has no plans to start looking for another job.
Thompson: This is where I intend to stay, unless of course I don't have a choice.
In Birmingham, I'm Gigi Douban for Marketplace.
There is another sad part to the Post Office closings and that is all the small town Post Offices that are being shut down to "save money". There are well over a 1,000 small towns that have or will be losing part of their identity due to the Postal Service closing the small rural Post Office in their town. For many of the towns it is not just a place where people get their mail. It is a meeting place, a vital part of the community and where people can get checks and help to pay bills. According to the Postal Regulatory Commission the Postal Service will only save 7/10th of one percent of the operating budget by closing all these rural Post Offices. The cost to the people in these communities to drive up to twelve miles one way to get regular mail services will put a great strain on their family budget. You do the math at $4.00 a gallon. If you are interested in more information you can search "Save the Post Office" for more information.
Oh, yes the ironies!!! So the ones who acted as if somehow they possessed some skills which set them apart, while benefitting from lawsuits and racial quotas, are going to find out how easily replaceable they are!!! Oh, the horror!!! About 30 years ago in King County, WA, Asian groups won a class action law suit against the Postal service that required them to hire many barely English illiterate people to deliver and process mail...now the "free" market will correct itself, as it always does eventually.
Here is something you probably have not considered...
I am wondering, if some of the unintended consequences for drastic cuts at PO might be felt severely in Alaska.
You are probably not aware, but for years the Post Office has been subsidizing airfreight shipments to villages in remote Alaska. It is called By-pass mail, meaning it by passes the Post office and goes directly to the airfreight terminal where it is met by a Postal official, weighed and rated and then air freighted to destination.
By-pass mail moves as lowest 4th class mail rates for the shipper, and the Air carrier is paid at much higher rates set by the DOT. This was one of those special deals that Uncle Ted Stephens worked out to subsidize air transportation in the State. It has been going on since before the days of airline de-regulation. GREAT DEAL for villages and travelers, as it helps keep airfares more reasonable, but lousy deal for Postal patrons in other states in the Union.
If that were to go away, because of PO drastic budget cuts, the State of Alaska might have dip into its vast billion dollar reserves of Permanent fund oil revenues and support it's own transportation system. Those libertarian last frontier Sarah Palin independence T-pary types love their subsidies and hope you won't notice....
It is funny actually. I will be watching to see if it goes away. Expect protests from Alaska if and when it happens. Without the subsidy it will be more expensive to get away to that cabin in the remote bush out of King Salmon and hide from government.
Oh, the ironies... :)
