In a December 13 statement to its employees, the Postal Service denied charges that the recently named presidential postal commission has a pre-ordained agenda to privatize the nation's mail system.

In a story headlined "Misconstrued by the media," postal flacks reported "the presidential commission on USPS isn't charged with privatizing the Postal Service."

The report on USPS News Online says the appointment of the commission "is consistent with — and complementary to — the USPS Transformation Plan," and quotes Peter Fisher, Under Secretary of the Treasury for Domestic Finance, as saying, "Our goal is not to privatize the Postal Service."

Yet the Transformation Plan itself questions long held public assumptions about the need for government sponsored universal mail service and proposes three possible phases of transformation: incremental operational and administrative improvement, moderate legislative reform and finally privatization, or what it euphemistically calls "structural transformation."

The Transformation Plan acknowledges "transformation of a large institution is likely to take place one step at a time. It is logical, therefore, to think of these phases as sequential."

The end result is the same, though: privatization.

The Transformation Plan contains an endorsement of President George W. Bush's Management Agenda for 2002, which it says, "could have been addressed to the Postal Service."

It quotes from the report: "We must have a Government that thinks differently, so we need to recruit talented and imaginative people to public service... We'll establish a meaningful system to measure performance. Create awards for employees who surpass expectations. Tie pay increases to results. With a system of rewards and accountability, we can promote a culture of achievement through the Federal Government."

Bush recently announced plans to transform the federal work force by cutting it in half and privatizing many government services and operations.

The USPS Transformation Plan echoes the president's attack on the federal workforce by stating postal labor problems "can be seen as part of a broader pattern of human capital shortcomings that have eroded mission capabilities across the federal government."

The Transformation Plan envisions pseudo-collective bargaining similar to the "Railway Labor Act," which would deny postal workers the right to go to arbitration when contract talks fail.

The makeup of the president's postal commission is a stacked deck. Its members are overwhelmingly drawn from the corporate and business world. Its appointed ‘labor' representative is the president of an organization of New York prison guards which doesn't belong to the AFL-CIO, who endorsed Republican George Pataki in last year's gubernatorial race. There is no consumer advocate on the commission to represent the interests of the general mailing public.

The commission is a stalking horse for supporters of privatization and certainly will recommend that Congress curtail bargaining rights currently enjoyed by postal workers and at least an incremental form of privatization.

The media is getting it right when it says the postal commission is trying to find ways to privatize the Postal Service. The president's postal commission is really a postal privatization commission regardless of what Potter call it.

 

‘Prestigious' or not, PMG Award still looks like chump change                                     by Dan Sullivan 6/10/02 His co-workers had a good laugh last year when Gary Fournier told them he was going to track down the Phoenix, AZ postal clerk who had mysteriously vanished the same day that more than $3 million dollars disappeared from the registered mail section at the Phoenix General Mail Facility. The 55-year-old ex-Marine has been with the Postal Service for 18-years, the last six as a unionized postal police officer in Seattle. "They all thought I was nuts because I was looking for this guy," Fournier says. The guy he was looking for was Louis Holley, a 28-year postal employee with sticky fingers and no great aptitude for crime. Holley had disappeared June 2 with the contents of six pouches of registered mail containing cash, checks and postal money orders. Had he headed south, he could have been out of the country in hours. Instead, he went north, intending to lay low for a while before crossing into Canada. That was mistake number one. Holley wandered around for more than two and-a-half months, eluding Postal Inspectors and federal, state and local police before finally ending up in Seattle in early August. That was mistake number two. He should have never wandered into Gary Fournier's neck of the woods. The Postal Inspection Service had put out wanted posters describing Holley and his getaway car, a 1995, black Jeep Cherokee with gold trim. The wanted posters offered up to $50,000 for information leading to his arrest and conviction. "I was kinda upset that this guy was a 28-year postal employee and he stole all this money from us," says Fournier. "Plus, the reward money looked good." There had been reports placing Holley in Boise, ID, where he had purchased the Jeep with cold, hard cash. Seattle is about 500 miles northwest of Boise, about an 8 or 9-hour drive. Fournier put one and one together, just like Columbo used to do on TV, and decided to start looking. "I just kinda felt like he was here. Everyone thought he was out of the country, in Canada," Fournier says, "But I felt he was still here." So Fournier began prowling motel parking lots in the Seattle area on his own time, checking vehicle identification numbers on black Jeep Cherokees to see if they matched the numbers on Holley's getaway car. He also handed out wanted posters to family and friends and asked them to be on the lookout for Holley. No wonder his fellow postal cops found Fournier's off-duty obsession hilarious. He was looking for a needle in a haystack. "I live about 40 miles out of the city. Every day on the way home, I would look for him." On August 17, stubborness and persistence paid off. After work that morning, Fournier pulled into a motel parking lot in Lynwood, Wash., looking for the Black Jeep Cherokee with gold trim. And there it was. Fournier verified the plates on the Jeep were registered to a Ford Escort Holley had purchased in Edmonds, Wash. Just like Columbo, he had his man. Fournier parked across the street, called the Postal Inspectors and then participated in Holley's arrest. More than $1.8 million in cash was found in the Jeep Cherokee. Another $800,000 in checks and money orders was recovered later. "It was just basic, old-fashioned police work. Just going out and looking," Fournier says modestly. Holley was convicted of theft last year and is now serving 41 months in prison. Fournier's story should have had a happy ending here. But since this is also a story about the Postal Service, it doesn't. Almost a year after capturing Holley, Fournier is still trying to collect the reward money the Postal Inspection Service offered for information leading to Holley's arrest and conviction. After giving Fournier $5,000 in cash last fall and calling it the Postmaster General's Award, the Postal Service rejected his claim for the $50,000 reward. At first he was told his application for the reward wasn't processed because he had already received the $5,000 cash award. Fournier asked for reconsideration of his claim and received a May 1 letter from Deputy Chief Postal Inspector K.W. Newman telling him to forget about getting any more money. Newman thanked Fournier for his "outstanding efforts" in the Holley case and reminded him of the $5,000 Postmaster General's Award, which he made sound as important as a Pulitzer or Nobel prize. "This prestigious award signifies the importance of your role in this case," Newman wrote. As for the reward money offered on wanted posters? "The amount paid for any approved reward claim is dependent on a number of factors," Newman explained to Fournier. "The fact that you were ‘not on the clock' when you discovered Holley's vehicle is not a determinative factor with respect to your eligibility to receive a reward .... It has also been determined that as a result of your official employment, you had access to information concerning this investigation before it had been released to the general public." So thanks, but tough luck, chump. Fournier has written to Congressmen, Senators, the Postal Board of Governors and the Postmaster General himself, Jack Potter, pleading his case for the reward money. So far, without any luck. His story has appeared in the Phoenix daily newspaper, the Arizona Republic, and on the TV news in Seattle. But with Holley now behind bars, and no great public outcry, postal bosses have lost interest in the case. The Postal Service paid out more than $160 million in bonuses to bosses last year who through hard work and diligence managed to lose more than $1.5 billion. So maybe postal bureaucrats figure it's squandering money to pay a reward to someone for actually saving the Postal Service almost $2 million dollars. Of course there is the small matter of honoring your word. The Postal Inspection Service did offer up to $50,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Holley. And Fournier did track him down on his own time and bring him in along with almost $2 million in stolen money. That should count for something more than $5,000, by any standard of fairness. Fournier, more disillusioned than bitter, says, "If something like this ever happens again, I would like to think I will still do the right thing." Which is more than we can expect from PMG Potter, Chief Postal Inspector Newman and the rest of the postal bureaucracy. They can call the Postmaster General's Award prestigious if they want to. But it still doesn't make a $5,000 payout on a $50,000 reward offer anything more than chump change. And it still doesn't make it right.