Sponsored Content WEBINAR: ELECTION 2008: E-mail Tips from a Political Insider   WEBINAR: Becoming the Illusionist: The Magic of Using "Brand" to Drive Response without Results Disappearing in the Process   WEBINAR: Score and Win Through Cooperation   TOOLS OF THE TRADE: Holiday's are prime-time for email marketing - maximize your ROI by getting to the inbox   ON DEMAND WEBINAR--MASTER CLASS: High Performance Online and Off-line Strategies for Large Scale Customer Acquisition   FREE WHITE PAPER - Direct Mail and the Internet Find any supplier you need - agencies, CRM, fulfillment, lists, e-commerce, paper, printers, telemarketing, and more. Featured Categories Lists and Data Telemarketing Database Marketing E-commerce Web Marketing Agency & Creative Services Print, Production & Paper Lists and Data Processing :: view all categories Get free access to more than 50,000 list data cards - one of the most comprehensive databases in the industry. >> Search Now DIRECT Buzz Blog Webinars Buyer's Guide Calculators JobZone ListFinder Promo Calendar Research Store E-Newsletters Print Magazine This Month in Direct Magazine Bare Bones Postal reform works. The rate hike that takes effect May 12 is the lowest in memory: an average of 2.88%. And some mail classes are getting even less than that... See Full April Issue

What's up with the American Postal Workers Union?

Here's an organization that's supposed to secure the long-term best interests of a key sector of the U.S. Postal Service's work force. Yet nary a week goes by without something showing up in the media reflecting a union that's hell-bent on ensuring its members' extinction.

To the best of my knowledge, the APWU never has said it believes the USPS should be operated as cost-efficiently as possible to best serve the needs of the American people. What you do hear is a seemingly endless litany of what it opposes.

The APWU opposes work sharing as a way for mailers to add value to their business. It's against efforts by the postal service to better align its network with available resources and changing needs. It resists postal reform.

But it not only opposes — it disparages. It ridicules postal managers. It characterizes the customers who pay their salaries as “vermin.” And if I had to judge by the comments anyone can read on postal employee message boards, the union has little respect for both postal work and the people who do it.

So what does the APWU support? Well, it likes to insulate itself and those it ostensibly represents from the realities of a changing world. It wants to keep the USPS as pristine as it was in 1970.

For instance, it insists on maintaining cost-of-living allowances for wages and retirement benefits. Nice if you can get it, but most in the private sector enjoy no such assurance. The APWU wants to prohibit work-force downsizing in the face of business declines or changes. Nice too, but no one in the private sector can claim that kind of protection. The union wants employer-paid retirement — defined-benefit annuities and health insurance. Here again, more and more people in the private sector are finding such entitlements extraordinarily rare.

What you hear from the APWU is NO…NO…NO! The last time I heard that was from my 2-year-old niece. It's a behavior I'm sure she'll change as she grows.

Too bad I can't say the same about the APWU.

---

GENE A. DEL POLITO is president of the Association for Postal Commerce (PostCom) in Arlington, VA.