U.S. Post Office cuts threaten source of black jobs

Reuters ^ | Jan 21, 2013 | Mary Wisniewski

[Lancey Howard]

(Reuters) - While delivering mail on Chicago's North Side, Lakesha Dortch-Hardy spoke about how much she loves her job at the U.S. Postal Service, and how much it would hurt if jobs such as hers were to disappear.

"These jobs are the middle class ..." said Dortch-Hardy, a tall, energetic 38-year-old, who took long strides as she wheeled her cart along a row of two- and three-story brick apartment houses. "Without this job, I don't know where I'd be right now."

The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service has eliminated 168,000 jobs since 2006, and more cuts could result as it struggles to avoid its own "fiscal cliff." As the United States honors Martin Luther King's civil rights legacy on Monday, many African-American workers may be facing new obstacles to achieving and maintaining a middle-class life style.

African-Americans represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population and 11.6 percent of the labor force, according to a 2012 U.S. Department of Labor report. Nearly one in five African-American workers hold government jobs such as mail clerks, firefighters and teachers, the report said.

"There's a long tradition of the public sector being more friendly, or less hostile, to African-American workers," said Robert Zieger, emeritus professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "The Post Office is the best example."

[muawiyah]

We went through months of difficulty getting UPS to make good on their insurance ~ they'd smashed a computer we sent through them into something about the thickness of a piece of paper.

Best bet ~ light wooden frame will work much better than form fitting foam plastic.

Remember, if you don't insure it it's your own fault because the legal doctrine the whole world works under is that the shipment carries the seeds of its own destruction. Without that doctrine NO ONE would haul anything.

The folks who sold you the spice bottles should have obtained insurance.

[DH]

You still did not answer my question.

[muawiyah]

you are an impertinent individual ~ you can read my about page ~ and that's all your getting.

You must have missed, over the years, my plan to privatize the USPS, saving $50 billion but eliminating unnecessary postal workers and cutting customer service to the bone ~ NO MORE GRANDFATHERS FOR YOU! And a host of other quite detailed condemnations of postal management, specific managers, members of the PRC and the Board of Governors, and even of both Democrat and Republican members of Congress. I even trashed the postal IG and Senator Grassly.

As you can see, if you'd stayed awake long enough to pay attention (hard being a geezer isn't it) you'd have realized your question was beyond impertent ~ it is irrelevant and simply proves you are too ignorant to be involved in this thread.

[rlmorel]

Yeah.

It isn’t that at all. It is the disconnect which requires a busy guy like ME to have to use MY time to rectify a problem caused by some jackass who either bought the roll down door of a truck on top of a random package (mine) or thought it would be great fun to see how far they could chuck a package (mine) to some other guy.

I have to wait for the package to arrive.

I have to open this soggy box wrapped with tape, dispose of the glass and clean up the unbroken ones.

I have to contact the vendor.

I have to wait for another week or two.

THAT is what I have a problem with.

[muawiyah]

New York City has been, and still is, a very violent city. Waves of murder are lurking just below the surface ~ the taxi medallion system was put in place during one of those periods where competing mob-backed taxi companies were killing each other's drivers.

Sure, there's been a pause in the killing, but being New Yorkers, you pull the medallions out of there and no passenger will be safe.

[muawiyah]

That's what insurance is for ~ plus it's clearly the fault of your sender for not having followed the guidelines and rules for correct packaging of breakables ~ they're published in the Domestic Mail Manual although UPS and FedEx also provide guides regarding how to properly package all sorts of things.

Their insurance is automatic ~ as is their price ~ it's automatically higher unless you are a very large shipper then they can cut you some deals on volume.

The common carrier is never guilty ~ anywhere.

[muawiyah]

There's a joke about a hypothetical obama stamp ~ but a quick review of 2012 usps stamps doesn't show one for obama. he's not dead yet ~ and i think they're holding the line on that standard for Presidents.

I only pay attention to the Christmas stamps checking them carefully to identify and report gang or drug insigna ~ which does sometimes happen. modern artists have this idea that to be edgy you need to trash the subject.

[DH]

You still have not answered my question

[muawiyah]

yup ~ the closeout procedures or accountable stock and cash are pretty exacting. The clerks at postal retail workstations have a tad more to do than your typical grocery cashier ~ so when it’s time to close out, they close out ~

[muawiyah]

it's for workers 75 years from now. not a single individual presently employed by USPS will benefit from it.

This was thought up by Senator Snow as a way to balance the federal budget in a way no one would know about. Then it began destroying the USPS which usually runs it's accounts within a tolerance of 2% ~ revenue vs. expenditures, week by week.

She should have been hogtied and horsewhipped.

[muawiyah]

The USPS pension accounts are filled to the top unlike most public and private pensions in this country. Part of it is probably because their black employees have shorter lifespans than the white employees. They draw their pensions for fewer years.

[muawiyah]

Why? Merrifield didn’t hurt anybody ~ just a building that sits there keeping rain of machines.

[Admin Moderator]

you can go to my about page and findout all you need. the fact you don't know about our about pages is very disturbing. probably means you are a troll out to cause trouble for FR.

Be careful who you call a troll. DH is poster #244 and signed up 1997-12-05.

Thanks.

[kearnyirish2]

“The 28,000 rural post offices that are no longer needed are manned primarily by WHITE WOMEN.”

Small offices in my area have been cut back, and they are on the frontier of the Newark Food Desert (suburban bordering on urban). A healthy mix of “preferred minorities” (including white women); any white guy I’ve seen is over 50 (hired when they were allowed to hire white guys).

[kearnyirish2]

“Liberals can cry all they want, but there is a social Darwinism that will not be evaded.”

It is being carried out in abortion mills scattered throughout our cities every day.

[muawiyah]

One of the rarest items in American postal history is a white man serving as postmaster of a small rural post office ~ that field has been dominated by white women for the last 75 years.

There are exceptions ~ it is a large organization. But those post offices have just about the same number of employees as postmasters or substitutes or clerks as USPS has black employees.

This has been a classic problem politically speaking ~ for a very long time. The postmistresses have more Senators in their balliwicks than the black fellows do, and that cuts across the partisan landscape.

[muawiyah]

With the advent of the Great Obama Recession we have 53% of college graduates over the last 5 years unable to get employment ~ that cuts across all fields of study too ~ so there are engineers in there.

You are up against janitors with masters degrees competing for the A/C HVAC jobs!~ if i were you I'd study the operations manual and the domestic mail manual so i could understand what the business is about and what it is usps hopes to achieve with all that automation equipment. That'd give you a knowledge base to propel yourself into supervision or management within the next 5 years (NOTE: USPS is as slow as the Marine Corps when it comes to promotion)

[muawiyah]

Straying a bit from the sociological issue you might not know it but USPS employees are covered predominantly by the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) ~ you work a short time, you get a tiny retirement package.

The entire system is available for public review at the Office of Personnel Management's webpages.

Now regarding what FDR said and may have believed in the 1930s, by the 1940s he had a problem with Communist Union organizers infiltrating the federal work force. He made a deal with the postal unions (then the largest federal unions) that if they put an end to the organizer's efforts he'd RECOGNIZE THEIR UNIONS and allow all federal government employees to write letters to their Congressmen

He made that deal with my grandfather, among others. Looked it up in the USPS archival library in fact ~

Just setting you straight on FDR. He changed his mind and he recognized the unions.

NOTE: People who think they can represent FDR as some sort of ubber Conservative got the wrong guy ~ he wasn't a Commie, but he wasn't Conservative in the modern sense either.