President Fredric V. Rolando
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PRESIDENT FREDRIC V. ROLANDO 2012 — 2014 BIENNIAL REPORT NALC 125 YEARS OF SERVICE, SOLIDARITY AND This report is hereby submitted to the offi cers and delegates to the 69th Biennial Convention of the National Association of PROGRESS Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO, Philadelphia, PA, July 21-25, 2014, pursuant to Article 9, Sec- tion 1(k) of the Constitution of the National Association of Letter Carriers. Detailed information pertaining to many of the National Association of Letter Carriers’ most important activities can be found in OF LETTER CARRIERS ASSOCIATION NATIONAL the following pages and in the reports of my fellow offi cers. I am grateful for their efforts in fulfi lling their responsibilities with dili- gence and competence. My role has been to coordinate and supervise their activities, set an overall direction for this great union and, in a number of key areas, provide di- rect, active and assertive leadership in the best interests of the members of the NALC and, where appropriate, the U.S. Postal Ser- vice as well. President Fredric V. Rolando July 2014 | The Postal Record 9 EW PRIVATE INSTITUTIONS Unemployment stood at 9.5 percent Public-sector workers across the coun- get to celebrate their quas- (50 percent higher than today), and the try were under assault by similarly anti- quicentennial—their 125th USPS had recorded the biggest losses labor politicians, who targeted public anniversary. That is especially in its history—and not just because of employee pay, benefi ts and bargaining true of labor unions. The world the pre-funding mandate that we’ve rights to close budget defi cits caused Fof work changes so dramatically from been battling since 2006. Mail volume by the Great Recession. generation to generation, and the had declined by an astounding 25 At the same time, the NALC was em- country has changed so fundamentally percent between 2007 and 2012 as broiled in an extended round of collective since the National Association of Letter the recession and technology battered bargaining in which the Postal Service Carriers was founded in Milwaukee 125 the Postal Service and its customers. sought massive concessions and radical years ago. Indeed, when our union was The very future of the USPS seemed in changes in our National Agreement in created in 1889, the light bulb had just doubt. In fact, the NALC had taken the reaction to the nation’s economic crisis. been invented and the fi rst automo- extraordinary step of hiring an invest- The union and the USPS were headed biles were being developed. About half ment bank to sort through restructuring for interest arbitration after months of of the country’s population lived on options and business model changes, failed talks and mediation. farms (today they employ less than 1 as a right-wing, Tea Party–fueled In my report to that 68th Biennial percent of American workers), and just Congress openly talked about disman- Convention, I highlighted the immense 38 states comprised the United States. tling the USPS and an uncertain White challenges that complicated our efforts So it is quite a remarkable achievement House caved to Republican demands to defend letter carriers at the bargain- that the NALC is still a strong and vital to support service and job cuts in the ing table and in the halls of Congress. organization in 2014—we’re 125 years Postal Service. These challenges included the de- old and counting. presspressed economy, the utter dysfunc- Our union has endured and thriveded tion of the legislative branch of through decades of change—throughgh the U.S. government, the deeply 22 American presidencies and 39 misguided managerial leadership postmasters general; through a Greateat oof the Postal Service itself and Depression and, recently, a Great tthe unmerciful march of informa- Recession, along with a dozen or soo ttion technology that was eroding other economic downturns; throughh oour core letter mail product. It is two world wars and a handful ddiscouraging to report that many of of confl icts fueled by the Cold ththese same obstacles remain with War, threats to global oil supplies us in July 2014: and terrorism; and through both • Although the nation’s unem- an industrial revolution and an ployment rate has fallen to 6.3 information technology revolution. percent and the economy has Generation after generation of begun to recover, the recovery letter carriers have seen it all and remains very weak by historical have built a union to help them standards. The decline in the job- NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF LETTER CARRIERS ASSOCIATION NATIONAL navigate every twist and turn less rate has been driven less by faced by their employer, fi rst the job creation and more by workers Post Offi ce Department and then leaving the labor force—in effect, the United States Postal Service. giving up hope of returning to It is a proud history of service, work. Wages remain stagnant solidarity and progress—a and the quality of new jobs has history that we will celebrate deteriorated—millions of high- this week at the 69th Biennial paid manufacturing and technical Convention of the National Associationtion jobs have been replaced by part- of Letter Carriers. WlWe also were jtjust months th time, temporary or independent away from an unpredictable election contractor jobs. These trends, A LOOK BACK TO that threatened to bring into offi ce a combined with a brutal winter MINNEAPOLIS Republican president who had a long that disrupted the recovery in history of buying companies, then huge swaths of the country, have Two years ago, we met in Min- laying off their workers and stripping translated into tepid economic neapolis at a very diffi cult time in the their assets, all to line the pockets of growth that weakens the demand history of our union. The United States private-equity investors. That candi- for postal services. was only beginning to slowly come date professed open hostility toward • The dysfunctional 112th Con- out of the worst recession in 80 years. the USPS and its unionized workers. gress (2011-2012) set records 10 The Postal Record | July 2014 for failure. It failed to address turn, but he remains stubbornly courts, hundreds of thousands more the jobs crisis in any signifi cant in place. jobs would have been lost. way, and it actually made things • The information technol- Think of the state employees in Ohio, worse—by causing the bond- ogy revolution shows no signs who lost and then won back their right rating agencies to downgrade the of abating, and First Class Mail to bargain collectively by fi ghting back quality of U.S. Treasury bonds, volume continues to decline, through their unions. Without their for the fi rst time in history, after albeit at a far slower pace. In threatening to default on the na- fact, in April, First Class Mail tion’s debt. The current Congress volume increased slightly over (113th) has sunk to a new low— the same month in the previous again by failing to take action to year—the fi rst time that has help the unemployed or to spark happened in almost 10 years. economic growth, but also by But we know that the migration shooting the economy in the foot of physical-transactions mail to by provoking a mindless 16-day the Internet (such as invoices, shutdown of the federal govern- bill payments and correspon- ment in October 2013. The cur- dence) is all but irreversible. rent Congress, like its predeces- However, as we will see below, sor, has failed to fi x the principal technological change may be cause of the fi nancial crisis at one area where there is cause the USPS—a law imposed by for cautious optimism. the 109th Congress in 2006 that That’s because Standard Mail requires the USPS to incur mas- volume appears to be holding sive expenses to pre-fund future up as the economy recovers retiree health benefi ts. and as advertisers realize that • In Minneapolis, delegates it is fundamentally more effec- called for not just the removal of tive than e-mail marketing. And the Postal Service’s top managers it’s because the Internet, even but also for a fundamental over- as it displaces business for the haul of the governance structure Postal Service, also creates new of the USPS. We concluded that business—witness the explosion the postmaster general and the in e-commerce package deliver- USPS Board of Governors had ies. Indeed, in the fi rst half of the unions, their pay and benefi ts would adopted a fatally fl awed business year, while letter mail revenue have been cut, their pensions frozen, strategy, one that our Lazard Co. dropped by $300 million, the their jobs eliminated. consultants termed the “shrink to Postal Service’s shipping rev- And think about what would have hap- survive” strategy. That strategy, enues increased by $500 million. pened to us over the past six years with- Ron Bloom of Lazard told us, was Unfortunately, the weak economy out our union. If not for the NALC and the doomed to fail. No enterprise can is holding back a full recovery for other postal unions, management and prosper by slashing the quality of the country and the USPS, and the Tea Party Congress could have done service and dismantling its core postal fi nances remain fragile at irreparable damage to the Postal Service and to the families of postal employees. strategic assets—in our case, the best nearly three years after the OF LETTER CARRIERS ASSOCIATION NATIONAL invaluable six-days-a-week last- recession ended. The PMG’s plans to end Saturday and mile delivery network.