Nader Announce Plans to Create Postal Consumer Action Group

Nader to Create Postal Consumer Action Group (posted March 14, 2005)

Consumer Activist Ralph Nader has announced plans to create an organization dedicated to representing the interests of individual postal customers. “Consumers do not have an adequate seat at the table when important postal issues are brought before the Postal Rate Commission, Congress, and the Postal Service itself,” he said during a meeting with APWU President William Burrus.

Nader initiated contact with the APWU early in 2005.He sought the meeting because “representatives of large business mailers and presort bureaus generally dominate Postal Rate Commission hearings.” Nader seeks to create a Post Office Consumer Action Group, which would put funding and expertise into developing meaningful public testimony before the rate commission and other postal bodies. “I welcome Ralph Nader’s input in this important struggle,” Burrus said. “Too often, the APWU has been a lonely voice warning about the dangers of postal policy that favors the nation’s biggest mailers, while overlooking the needs of individual citizens and small businesses.” Consumers’ interests have not been well represented during recent important discussions in Washington about the future of the Postal Service, Nader said. “The President’s Commission made sweeping recommendations that would not only drastically restructure the Postal Service, but also eliminate and curtail traditional services. The Commission received testimony from a few dozen business representatives while only three representatives that even claimed to speak for consumers were heard from.” “Individual postal users need an organization that allows them to pool their resources so they can have their own advocates, economists, researchers, organizers and lobbyists, ”Nader said.

The Post Office Consumer Action Group would be a nonprofit organization that would enable individual users to band together for greater participation in shaping national and local postal policies, Nader said. According to his plan, the group would be funded by small voluntary contributions solicited through a mailing by the USPS to all residential postal addresses. The organization would be modeled on residential postal addresses. The organization would be modeled on the Citizen’s Utility Boards, which represent consumers’ concerns on energy, water, and transportation issues. Establishing such an organization through a Postal Service solicitation would require legislative action.

The APWU is a co-founder of the Consumer Alliance for Postal Services. CAPS is dedicated to protecting “affordable and dependable mail service for all Americans.” (source: APWU and some additions by PostalReporter.com )

NALC National Officers Meet with Nader

Meeting with consumer Ralph Nader (second from l.) about consumers' interests during the postal reform debate are NALC President Bill Young (r.), Executive V.P Jim Williams (l.) NALC General Counsel Bruce Simon and Research Director Jim Sauber (in blue and white shirts, respectively). Young assured Nader and Chris Shaw of the Center for the Study of Responsive Law that NALC represents the needs of consumers by insisting on top-quality mail service.

(source: NALC)

Excerpts from "Post Office Consumer Action Group Model Statute"

Sec. 1. Short Title. -- This Act may be cited as the " Post Office Consumer Action Group Act (POCAG)."

Sec. 2. Findings and Purposes. --

(a) FINDINGS. -- The legislature finds that:

(1) Individual action by residential postal users for the purposes of participating in postal matters and communicating their views is rendered impracticable by reason of the disproportionate expense of taking such action.

(2) Such participation and representation can be best secured by the creation of a permanent, not-for-profit organization which is under the democratic control of its membership, solely responsive to that membership's goals, and which is funded by voluntary contributions.

(3) The formation of such an entity by consumers acting voluntarily is impeded because consumers have neither the resources nor an efficient mechanism to contact all residential postal users, raise initial funds and join such an entity.

(4) In order to create such an entity, it is necessary to establish a democratically structured organization and to provide for the dissemination, to all postal users, of information as to the formation and purposes of such organization and to provide an efficient means for joining and contributing to such organization.

(b) PURPOSES. -- It is the purpose of this Act --

(1) To assist in establishing adequate and affordable postal service to all residential postal users.

(2) To foster and encourage active citizen participation in postal matters and to facilitate effective representation and advocacy of the interests of residential postal users before regulatory agencies, Congress, the courts and other bodies; and for these purposes create a permanent not-for-profit organization.

(3) To create an efficient funding mechanism for the organization, involving no compulsory burden whatsoever [*296] on the taxpayers of the United States, whereby individual residential postal users and others may voluntarily contribute to the organization.

(4) To ensure that public policies affecting the provision, quality and cost of postal services fairly reflect the needs and concerns of those users.

For these reasons there shall be established a permanent not-for-profit Corporation know as the " Post Office Consumer Action Group, Inc." with the responsibility to promote adequate representation of residential postal users; to collect operating funds; to assist in the redress of residential postal user complaints; and to provide for residential postal users' membership in such Corporation and residential postal users' direction of the actions of such Corporation.