Postal Workers and Customers United to Save the Postal Service I hope you participated in the recent campaign for each NALC member to gather at least 10 signatures for our Save Saturday Delivery and Save America’s Postal Service, as per NALC President Rolando’s appeal. The bulk of my column for this quarter is a brand new leaflet issued by Postal Workers and Customers United to Save the Postal Service, a small group of veteran postal union activists from the NALC, APWU and Mailhandlers that I have been working with in defense of our universal public postal service. I believe this leaflet does an outstanding job of projecting where we need to go from here, following the petition campaign. As the leaflet points out, the Wall Street fat cats have been bailed out at our expense while the rest of us have been left with the burden of an economic crisis that won’t quit. In the October 5th issue of the Wall Street Journal, a thirty-four year director of the United Parcel Service, Gary MacDougal, launches an all-out war on the postal service and then provides us with “the smoking gun.” This UPS henchman says, “Entrepreneurs will see the demise of the USPS as an opportunity...this transition can be one of the badly needed bright spots in a troubled American economy.” Remember, the U.S. Congress we are appealing to is basically the same institution that bailed out Wall Street and deserted Main Street. This same Congress ripped off the USPS to help bail out Wall Street. This started the phony “postal crisis,” which got the Wall Street privatizers to begin to circle around the USPS like vultures. So to convince the U.S. Congress to keep the USPS intact, six day delivery, etc., we will need to have the power of postal unions united, the rest of the labor movement at our side, and the people of the USA to maintain and demonstrate their loyalty to and love for the universal public postal service. Save Our Postal Service! Dump the PMG Who Wants to Junk Our Jobs! Feet in the Streets in Washington, D.C.! Sister and Brother Postal Workers of All Unions and Crafts: In a positive response to unprecedented attacks on our jobs and the public Postal Service, thousands of postal employees and supporters rallied to “Save the Postal Service” on September 27th. The focus of this national day of action was largely limited to passing H.R. 1351, the Congressional bill that would help eliminate the unfair financial burdens (pension overpayments of $70 billion) on the Postal Service and thus allow it to better fulfill its Constitutionally mandated mission. This initiative of our national postal unions was a good step forward. However, this one day of activity is not nearly enough. So what are some actions we can take to build on September 27th and Save Our Service? Demand the removal of Postmaster General Donahoe, who is charging ahead with plans to end six day delivery, close 4,000 post offices (mostly in rural and low-income areas), eliminate 250 processing plants and 200,000 decent union jobs, including the ripping up “no lay-off” contractual protections. He should be replaced by a Postmaster who will defend and build the peoples’ Postal Service. We can promote local union resolutions from other labor and community organizations) demanding the USPS Board of Governors remove Donahoe. By the thousands bring our feet to Washington, D.C. Both the Committee of Presidents of the NALC and the Presidents’ Conference of the APWU voted to endorse and to encourage our national union leadership to organize a national rally in Washington, D.C. Executive boards, local membership meetings and state organizations should urge our union leaders to convene such a march. Organize our co-workers, family, neighbors and postal patrons to participate. Postal unions, nationally and locally, continue to work together for the common good. The joint coordination of the national postal unions on September 27th was good to see and helped lead to a successful outcome. It shouldn’t stop there. In every local area we can establish ongoing joint organizing committees with representatives from all the postal unions as the struggle continues to Save the Postal Service. “In Our Unity Lies Our Strength.” Build local, state, regional and national alliances with community groups representing those affected by the draconian plans to cut back postal services. With the USPS serving 150 million households and businesses, and providing universal service at reasonable uniform rates to providing universal service at reasonable uniform rates to the people of the United States regardless of nationality, economic status, age or locale, the public holds the Post Office in high esteem. The PMG, Congress and the privatizers can only be beaten with a unified broad movement of the people. Link hands with the hundreds of “Occupy Wall Street” mobilizers around the country. The 99%—workers, seniors, city dwellers and rural residents, need and support a public postal service. The Wall Street 1% want a private postal service where greed rules the day and vast profits can be made at the expense of the customers and the workers. A recent opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal called for the bankruptcy and dissolution of the Postal Service, promoting that “Entrepreneurs (read UPS and FedEx) will see the demise of the USPS as an opportunity..” No kidding! Keep our eye on the prize: We can take the individual path hoping to just make it to retirement, or perceive five day delivery as a chance for better days off, rather than a giant step toward replacing union jobs with privatized non-union labor. Or we can collectively forge the kind of fight that will close the door to the privatizers, protect good jobs and defend the peoples’ right to a public postal service. This is our time to stand up and be counted! See you on the front lines in the fight for our future! Postal Workers and Customers United to Save the Postal Service P.O. Box 1398 Rockville, MD 20849 Or email: savethepostalservice@gmail.com (Labor Donated)

The Hidden Cost of Carrier Route Disruption and Dislocation At our Branch 630 union meeting held in Greensboro on July 7th, Branch President Jim Tvelia, with a solid background of route inspection knowledge and experience, took the members through the labyrinthine process which apparently leads—long after route, section and station changes have already been established by postal management—to an opportunity for the union and the carrier to finally review and redress the wholesale restructuring of routes under the Joint Alternate Route Adjustment Process (JARAP). The introduction of the Flat Sequencing System (FSS), especially at this time of diminished mail volume, seems, at least in areas such as Greensboro, to exacerbate the problems in this JARAP environment. The likely chaos that will ensue from this process reminded me of the observation I made to NALC President Fred Rolando on Friday morning, August 13, 2010, shortly before the last day’s session of our 67th Biennial Convention was to commence. Earlier in the convention, we had a no-confidence vote in PMG John Potter; it was unanimously passed by the seven thousand delegates present. This was primarily due to Potter’s open leadership of the campaign for the reduction of six day delivery to five or even four days. (You and I know this would lead in short order to the elimination of the universal public postal service in the United States.) The principal reason that PMG Potter and the corporate privatizers had thus far been unable to get anywhere in their effort to destroy the public postal service was the unparalleled confidence of the people of the USA in their postal service. At its core, this attachment of the public to its postal service is manifested in the relationship of each postal patron to his or her letter carrier. On this Friday morning, I shared with President Rolando some thoughts about the decision by the USPS to essentially reverse the Oakton and Vienna, Va. Decision by which the National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA) had acquired so many thousands of routes in the intervening years at the expense of the NALC. Since the NRLCA has historically been a much weaker union than NALC, the agreement signed by postal management with NALC President Bill Young had initially surprised me. Shortly after assuming the NALC presidency, brother Rolando had explained that President Young had obtained the positive reversal of Oakton/Vienna, Va., which promised to bring thousands of new jobs to NALC by giving postal management, in the environment of diminished mail volume, the opportunity to do more than the one route inspection per year, per route, as required by the M-39 and other postal manuals. The option I shared with brother Rolando on August 13th of last year, was not that President Young had been wrong to make the agreement. Rather, I felt that, in the event of future opportunities for deals involving the frequent disruption/dislocation of mail routes, the current leaders of NALC should factor in the significant downside associated with such route disruption. First and foremost, it would erode the postal patron/letter carrier relationship which serves as the strongest defense of the survival of the universal public postal service. As the recent outrageous debt ceiling debate debacle has dramatically shown, the elimination of the universal public postal service, which costs the people of the USA nothing except a user fee, would just be one more public service, one more public right, being ripped away from the people of the USA by Wall Street and its political puppets in Washington, DC in this backward political moment. In the heat of our Branch 630 meeting in July, the level of continuous postal route disruption apparently inherent in the current JARAP process reminded me once again about the strategic significance of frequent route disruption. With NALC contract negotiations about to begin, I believe the point is worth sharing throughout our union from top to bottom. Such dislocation and disruption makes all the more difficult the already difficult job of the individual letter carrier to efficiently and effectively deliver the mail. But you and I know that the route belongs to the postal service. So the ability of NALC to resist route changes is limited. However, the learning curve to learn a new mail route, the great attention to detail that is required to accurately deliver the mail to the new postal patrons, the flow of traffic and the line of travel, etc. All this takes time. Moreover, the focus of this article has been on the impact of frequent route disruption on the survival of the universal public postal service and of the NALC. This latter point is one more important reason to do the job the right way, with no shortcuts. In this new situation, city letter carriers are very fortunate that we work for an hourly wage.

In Our Unity Lies Our Strength At the 2009 state convention I was pleased to be re-elected once again as Area Four Representative by some of the most effective and best led branches in North Carolina. During this term I attended all North Carolina training seminars and the state convention and actively participated in the deliberations at each state executive board meeting. I also installed the officers at Howie Leff Memorial Branch 936 in High Point, and attended a few retiree dinners. In coordination with state president Eddie Davidson, I again handled a few local problems in small branches in the mountains.   Last summer, I was a Branch 630 delegate to the national NALC convention held in Anaheim. I wrote a special Area Four report on the convention, hoping to inform the small branches unable to send any delegates. During the past two years, as Area Representative, I attended both Region 9 rap sessions. At the September 2009 rap session, I gave a eulogy to the great labor heroine, the late Crystal Lee Sutton, the real “Norma Rae,” who was a close friend and had just recently passed away. Especially at this moment of sharp attacks on public sector union workers in Wisconsin and throughout the Midwest, and as the postal union contracts, including NALC’s,  are being fought out with postal management, Crystal’’s marvelous spirit of union solidarity needs to live on in us. Within Area Four, in 2011 we organized a second successful one-day shop steward and member training session, hosted by Greensboro branch 630, following an earlier one at Winston-Salem branch 461. By arrangement with NBA Judy Willoughby, RAA Kenny Gibbs flew in to lead the training. Branch 461 President Reggie Gentle and I assisted Kenny. I also represented our North Carolina state association as an elected delegate to the 2009 and 2010 state AFL-CIO conventions. At the 2009 convention I drafted a resolution in consultation with NALC state president Davidson and NC APWU President Sorrells in defense of six day delivery and the public post office. It passed unanimously and served to educate our brothers and sisters in other unions across the state on our postal issues. In 2010 the identical resolution was printed in the official booklet; it was discussed and passed again. As I indicated in my previous report, with working people in this country still in the midst of an economic crisis unmatched since the Great Depression of seventy-five years ago, letter carriers need to stick together and find ways to unite with our working class brothers and sisters of other unions and in other industries. I hope to have the opportunity to help bring this about. For in our unity lies our strength.

Area 4 Rep’s Reflections on the 2010 National Convention ---The 2010 NALC Convention felt more inclusive than any in my memory. Credit goes to President Rolando whose openness to the delegates’ remarks was refreshing and seemed genuine; and to the decision to finally have a video camera on the delegates on the convention floor as we expressed our views. About a month prior to the Convention, I had written Brother Rolando urging that this action be taken. We delegates were seen as well as heard just like the leaders speaking from the podium, fostering mutual respect all around. Increased delegate participation is a vindication for those of us who have pushed for this innovation for many years. This solidarity spirit encouraged more delegates to take our responsibility as the highest body of the union --- not just to rubberstamp the policies of the leadership but to communicate the needs of the members back home and give our critical input and guidance to the leadership for the next two years. One weakness in an otherwise solid President’s Report on opening day was Brother Rolando’s failure to recognize the drive for private corporate profit as a likely cause of Postmaster General Potter’s “bizarre” behavior as the head of a beloved public institution that he seems hell-bent on destroying. The corrupting mixture of capitalists and Congress, fueled by the Profit Motive, makes any effort at postal privatization a serious threat---even while letter carriers and postal workers maintain overwhelming loyalty for the postal service from the general public. For Potter, it’s not Personal; it’s just Business. One of my proudest convention moments came right after I addressed this issue. The seven thousand delegates expressed our indignation at the PMG’s destructive role with a unanimous vote of no-confidence in Potter. This should be an important part of our message as we struggle to keep the hearts and minds of postal patrons everywhere in support of the public postal service and its union workers. Furthermore, our solidarity spirit was enhanced by several other events. On Monday afternoon, at the close of the Convention, 150 of us, including my wife Sandra, Howie Leff Memorial Branch 936 President Annie Woods, and I participated in a picket line in nearby Irvine, California. Jim Cook, President of Portland, Oregon Branch 82 had been designated by President Rolando to bring a letter from him and to lead the delegation to express NALC solidarity and support for hotel maids organizing into Unite/HERE (the hotel workers union). About forty of them were on a one-day walkout demanding pay for being forced to work through their ten minute breaks on a daily basis. Led by Jim, Patty Cramer, the Monterey, CA Branch President and myself, three veteran activists, a seven person delegation went inside to meet with the Hotel Manager and Assistant Manager and present them with President Rolando’s letter, while the rest of the picketers continued the protest outside. We concluded the protest with a brief but spirited rally in front of the Embassy Suites. The next day, the most inspiring speech of the Convention was delivered by United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts who had us on our feet with his “us against them” message of defiance and determination. The solidarity spirit was continued as the Convention concluded on Friday with a speech by AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka after which three thousand of us (!), wearing brand new “5 Day (Delivery) is the wrong way” shirts, boarded 65 buses for the hour long trip from Anaheim to Los Angeles City Hall. There we joined a few thousand local union folks in a Rally for Jobs and we heard speeches by brother Trumka, President Rolando, the Los Angeles mayor, California Senator Barbara Boxer and a number of Los Angeles County labor leaders. But for most passersby, the three thousand letter carriers and our message of defense of six day delivery was the high point of the rally. And for many of us, it was the high point of the Convention. One final thought: In years past when mail volume was going up and up, postal management flat-out violated the M-39 and M-41 handbooks requirement of an annual route inspection for an eight hour route, many times refusing to do route inspections even once in a decade. Now, with declining mail volume and automation, MYWRAP, JCRAP et al has provided management the opportunity to do route inspections more than once a year, a source of real irritation for FTR carriers. In exchange for this NALC concession, management gave NALC new territory formerly going to the weaker rural carriers association. However, in addition to the constant disruption of letter carriers’ routes, there is one other important negative implication of the JCRAP processes. Route disruption leads to a weakening of the bond between the letter carrier and the postal patron and to inferior service at the very time when PMG Potter is trying to cut delivery days and service and ultimately to destroy the public postal service. Let’s keep this in mind as we negotiate with “the devil” in the future. Fraternally,   Richard Koritz

COUNTERPOINT: DEFENDING THE PUBLIC POSTAL SERVICE The article "Can the Postal Service Rebuild Itself?" (Greensboro News and Record, Sunday, August 01, 2010) raises a legitimate concern. Over the long run, on-line activity will supplant much of the letter-size mail that has historically been core work of the USPS. And the authors point out that the USPS future lies in delivery of physical things which the internet cannot do. The remainder of the article, however, serves as part of the massive disinformation campaign corporate privatisers are using to scare the public and politicians into surrendering this multi-billion dollar business to them. The authors cite projected deficits through 2020 that have been exposed as "worst case scenarios" by the Postal Regulatory Commission. Meanwhile, they are silent about the fact that, if not for a retiree health benefit pre-funding requirement, required of no other business or agency in the USA, the Postal Service would have been profitable in every year of the past decade, except 2009, the worst crisis year. Likewise, several months ago, a USA Today/Gallup Poll, citing the same doomsday statistics as "facts," was used as "proof" that the people of the USA are ready to give up Saturday postal delivery. Those who use the postal service the most had the highest percentage agreeing to its elimination on Saturday, revealing that people thought they were actually voting to save the other five days. In this time when political parties and government have low ratings, the Postal Service, remarkably, retains strong support from close to 90% of the people. The article's authors compare the USPS to Kodak, a company that did not change with the times. The Postal Service, with its unions in the lead, has changed and needs to continue to do so. Furthermore, the Postal Service is a national treasure, more like Social Security. At the beginning of the second administration of George W. Bush, he tried to scare the public into believing that Social Security was broken and that the way to fix it was by turning over some of the benefit to individuals for ?investment? in the stock market. Fortunately, the public was not cowed and fooled. Otherwise, the current economic crisis would have wiped it all out. At this time when British Petroleum, in its pursuit of private profit, has caused a disaster for the human race, we the people should not allow private business interests to manipulate us into giving up our cherished public postal service. Richard Koritz 1801 Murrayhill Road Greensboro, NC 27406 (336) 272-2758 Richard Koritz currently serves on the North Carolina Executive Board of the National Association of Letter Carriers (AFL-CIO). He is also a member of the N.C. Human Relations Commission and the Board of Directors of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum here in Greensboro. [Submitted to the Greensboro, NC News & Record on August 1, 2010]

A Proposal for a Street Demonstration at the NALC State Convention July 27, 2010   Fred Rolando, President National Association of Letter Carriers (AFL-CIO)   Dear Fred,   I know that brother Jim Sauber has passed on to you my earlier suggestions with regard to our upcoming NALC National Convention. Certainly you are quite busy getting prepared for the Convention and I don't expect a written response to those or to this communication. Nevertheless, I would be remiss in my duty as an active member and elected leader of our union if I did not raise the following suggestion for your (and the Executive Board's) consideration prior to the Convention. I believe there are several strong reasons why it would be very positive for our union and for the NALC's contribution to the successful defense of six day delivery and the public postal service for us to have a street demonstration at a large postal facility in a very public area with a lot of human traffic in the Anaheim/ LA  area.   First, such a demonstration will help set a good, constructive tone for the deliberations of the National Convention, the highest body of our union, as we confront the real challenges thrown up by the economic crisis and by PMG Potter and his patrons, the wealthy rulers of our country who have largely created this crisis. With Potter's help, Corporate America, that is, the Wall Street bankers, the oil and coal barons, Fed Ex and UPS, are attempting to use the crisis to get rid of a half million decent union jobs in th postal industry and to deprive the people of the USA of our valuable and popular public service.   Secondly, the overwhelming majority of the U.S. population, our postal patrons, continue to strongly support the postal service and its workers, especially letter carriers. So a strong presence with a clear message at a demonstration in Anaheim or LA will resonate with the people. That clear message could feature exposure of Potter's real motivation for the elimination of Saturday delivery. Clearly, Potter is not trying to save the other five days (a misleading notion, promoted by the corporate dominated media, that had led some of the most loyal postal patrons to initially say they would support the elimination of Saturday delivery); Potter is already pointing toward the elimination of Tuesday delivery as well which would rapidly lead to the disintegration of the postal service as we know it.   Third, such a demonstration will provide a dress rehearsal for the grass roots leadership of the NALC, enabling and inspiring us to go back to our communities around the country to mobilize letter carriers, other postal unionists, local politicians and the people of our communities to defend our right to a universal public postal service in the USA.   In conclusion, I hope that you and the Executive Board are already planning something like this. If not, I hope you will give it serious consideration. Certainly, I will not be shy about raising such a proposal from the floor early on in the Convention so that arrangements can be made for such an action before the Convention concludes. But the more planning and the more resources that can be focused on the task, the more effective it can be.   Brother Fred, I look forward to seeing you at the Convention and to working with you there for the advancement of the cause of letter carriers and our public postal service.   I am also sending this message to you by regular mail.   Fraternally,     Richard A. Koritz Area 4 Representative North Carolina State Association Executive Board National Association of Letter Carriers (AFL-CIO)

Civil Rights Museum Opens In Greensboro By Richard A. Koritz Monday, February 1, 2010, fell right in the middle of snow storms and other unusually bad winter weather here in Greensboro. Nevertheless, in the heart of the downtown, something truly historic happened. At 8:00 AM, about one thousand people gathered in the middle of Elm Street for a forty minute ribbon-cutting ceremony. Among the participants in the ceremony were legendary civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson, as well as U.S. Senator Kay Hagan, N.C. Governor Bev Perdue and all three US Congressmen from this area (Coble, Watt and Miller). By 9:00 AM Greensboro had a functioning museum dedicated to the celebration of an event that had occurred exactly fifty years to the day earlier! On February 1, 1960, four freshmen at North Carolina A and T walked to Woolworth’s Department store with the aim of being served a cup of coffee as they sat at the store’s lunch counter. Pursuit of this modest goal required great courage on the part of the four young men, for they were challenging the practice of legal racial segregation, the nasty custom of white supremacy backed up by the powers of law enforcement and the state. They truly did not know if they would be arrested, injured or even get back to A and T's campus alive. They were refused service that day, and vowed to return the next. Thirty-one students came on February 2nd and more the next. Within a few weeks, Woolworth sit-ins had spread across much of the South. By the end of the year, one hundred thousand people had participated in the sit-in movement. Meanwhile, the two main downtown Greensboro lunch counters, Woolworth’s and Kress, less than a block apart on Elm Street, were both integrated after six months of sit-in demonstrations. This was a victory for civil and human rights for all of us. And it has directly benefited those of us in Branch #630. Sadly, NALC Branch #630 (as well as other letter carrier union branches in the South) had also observed this divisive and degrading segregationist custom by keeping the union local lily white. For union working people like ourselves, the integration of Southern society, sparked by the A and T/Greensboro Four, represented an important positive step toward unity of all letter carriers which is the basis for our collective strength. I was very pleased that active letter carrier, Debby Matyga, recognizing the historic significance of this event, took annual leave and joined my wife Sandra and me at the celebration on February 1st. Above all else, the new museum celebrates the indomitable spirit of humanity that flows within all of us. I hope to welcome all of y’all there soon. Retired Branch 630 member, Richard Koritz, is the elected representative of our area (Area 4) on the Executive Board of the North Carolina Association of Letter Carriers (AFL-CIO). Richard also serves on the North Carolina Human Relations Commission and is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum which just opened its doors on February 1, 2010.

Memories of the Civil Rights Era     In the winter and spring of 1960, I was a normal 15 year old high school sophomore in Lynn, Massachusetts. The Woolworth sit-in movement, started by the A&T/Greensboro Four on February 1st, changed the trajectory of my life.   My parents and paternal grandparents had all participated in the struggle for economic and social justice in the USA, in defense of workers rights and the rights of oppressed peoples. As far back as 1930, my immigrant Jewish working class grandfather had been the first in the family to actively defend the rights of the African-American people in the USA. He had been active in the global struggle to free the Scottsboro Boys, who were the victims of a white supremacist frame-up in Alabama. In the mid 1940’s my father had served as the very effective director of the largest union in the southern USA, the marvelous Food and Tobacco Workers Union- –CIO local 22. Local 22 was a Black majority union in Winston-Salem which represented the workers at the giant RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company and several Leaf Houses. Local 22 was, arguably, the outstanding fighter for civil rights as well as workers rights in the state of North Carolina in the 1940’s. My earliest childhood memory had been of a visit to my father in Sparta prison. He had been convicted of the crime of defending a Black worker on a picket line being beaten by the police.   By 1960, however, I was enjoying the high school experience, playing music and sports; and I had a steady girlfriend who was very nice. The repressive McCarthy Period was ending. But the conformity of thought and action that McCarthyite hysteria had spread affected young teenagers like me. While I was proud of my family’s role in the fight for a better world, and greatly admired my parents and grandparents, I was not politically involved.   Had the civil rights movement, the struggle for African-American freedom, taken another five or ten years to develop, I might have never become a committed activist, dedicated to the struggles of the exploited and oppressed of this earth. Thanks to the A&T/Greensboro Four and the hundreds of courageous youth in dozens of Southern cities who followed their example, the struggle for social justice which came to characterize the youth of the 1960’s was born. I was among the many youth in the North who picketed Woolworth’s in solidarity with the courageous Southern youth. It was my first political activity independent of my parents. Solidarity with the Woolworth Sit-in movement was the beginning of my own personal political commitment to help make a better world.   Unlike many white and Black activists who emerged in the 1960’s in rebellion against their parents and elders, the movement among the youth of my generation, sparked by the Woolworth sit-ins, provided a bridge for me to cross to meet my parents and grandparents and continue our family’s legacy of fighting for social and economic justice for all. Thank you A&T Four.     1801 Murrayhill Road Greensboro, NC 27406 336-272-2758   Richard A. Koritz is a member of the Board of Directors of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. He also serves as a member of the North Carolina Human Relations Commission and a member of the North Carolina Executive Board of the National Association of Letter Carriers (AFL-CIO). Since October 2001, he and his wife have led a weekly anti-war vigil in downtown Greensboro.