VK..

How do I vote? I vote "nay". And then I hit the airwaves explaining why.

Let me tell a story that I might have told here before.

There is more categorically wrong with the USPS than we know. And we don't have to go after the retirement accounts first, IMO. We have to correct the situation that I am about to relay first. THEN, if they can't afford the retirement funding we can look at that.

My ex-wife works for the USPS. She sorts mail in what was called a PMPC - Priority Mail Processing Center (has a new name now). She took the job one fall when she decided that making $15/hr for more physical work beat the $10+ she was making as a swing manager at McD's.

Years ago, when she first took the job, it was with Emery Worldwide Air Freight. They were operating under a contract with the USPS to handle Priority Mail. Her first holiday season there, they celebrated when, one night, they handled ONE MILLION pieces of mail.

Forward to the following spring. The USPS decides to take over the operation at the end of the contract. So now everyone becomes a USPS employee. (There's another story concerning the idiocy of the Postal Exam but I'll save that for a later time) Around April, the facility is celebrated at the most efficient PMPC in the entire USPS.

Prolems started. The Postal Unions got in there and working conditions deteriorated immediately. My ex refused to join the union. In NH, you're allowed to do that! The union did a lot of things, some of which would be felonies, over the next few months. Like posting her name (and others) on a "scab" board in 8-inch high letters, telling union members to tell these 'scabs' what they thought of them. This was basically a code word for vandalizing their cars overnight (she worked a graveyard shift). Also, one union steward threw mail at her (assault). This is one of the only things you can do at that job to get you immediately escorted out of the building. However, he said he had his unions buddies to back him up and swear that he was in the union break room at the time.

People were leaving this facility, even in a recession at good wages.

Come the holiday season, they had more people working there than the year before (especially with the seasons 'casuals' they added every year).

The union complained that it was too much to expect of the workers to process THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND pieces of mail in one night.

That's right. More people couldn't do ONE THIRD the work level of the previous year.

This is an area where, CLEARLY, privatization/contracting worked out.

(A big difference than in my area where defense contractors pad budgets like crazy and it's actually more efficient to hire the employees directly - I can't tell you how much the government saved when they hired me away from my defense contractor)