The Inspector General issued another report this month encouraging the Postal Service to “develop a strategy to increase voting by mail.” The report, titled “Election Mail Opportunities,” found that while many states allow voting by mail with no excuse, only 24% of eligible voters did so in the 2014 midterm elections. According to the OIG, the USPS could grow mail volume and revenue by $32 million in five years by encouraged vote by mail in the states that already offer “no excuse” absentee balloting – all while fulfilling its responsibility to bind the nation together.

The APWU wholeheartedly supports the expansion of voting by mail. As has been demonstrated in state after state, mail balloting is secure, cost effective, and increases voter participation in our democracy.

New MOU to Create Hundreds of Career Jobs in Level 4 POStPlan Offices

On Monday, the U.S. Postal Service’s inspector general posted a report with a seemingly innocuous title. “Flexibility at Work,” it read. “Human Resource Strategies to Help the Postal Service.”

Inside, the report talks about things like helping its approximately 627,000 employees take time off when they need it, or giving employees the option of working four longer days per week rather than five, and bring in supplementary workers to cover shifts when necessary. The modern workforce, it argues, insists on the ability to accommodate family and social life; allowing for variations in scheduling will make everyone happier and more productive.

That all sounds good, right? What employee wouldn’t want greater leeway with how and when she works?

As it turns out, however, “flexibility” means different things to different people. And the unions that represent the Postal Service’s workers saw in the report an immediate threat.

01/05/2015 - Where is it? Why hasn’t it arrived?  Beginning this week, these questions will be asked by millions of Americans who will wonder why their prescription drugs, their church bulletin, their paycheck, and other important correspondence haven’t been delivered. The lowering of service standards by the United States Postal Service, effective today, will cause unnecessary hardships for the public and small businesses. It also will severely damage the world’s most efficient and affordable delivery network by driving away mail volume and revenue.

Postal customers may unfairly blame their letter carrier or their local post office, but the culpability rests with Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. The elimination of overnight delivery of first-class mail and the delay of mail throughout the country is part of the same flawed strategy that’s behind efforts to end Saturday and door-to-door deliveries, close post offices, cut back hours, and make other reductions in mail service.