Do you care about keeping post offices open, ensuring Saturday delivery for years to come and stopping proposals to lay off postal workers?

Please sign a petition to support a bill that would end the requirement that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) pre-fund 75 years of retiree health care benefits. 

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) filed legislation to end the requirement that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) pre-fund 75 years of retiree health care benefits. The requirement, passed by Congress in 2006, is unprecedented, as no other private or public entity has to meet such a standard. That requirement is the key factor driving Postal Service deficits and defaults and has led to proposals to end Saturday service, close rural post offices and lay off postal workers. Think Progress reports the USPS would have a $1.5 billion surplus if it wasn't for the pre-funding rule set by the Republican majority in Congress.

Not that there was much choice, but today the U.S. Postal Service’s (USPS's) Board of Governors announced it will not end Saturday mail delivery.

Earlier this year, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said he would end Saturday delivery in August. Congress last month passed government funding legislation that specifically barred the USPS from going to five-day delivery. But up until today’s announcement, the USPS hadn’t backed away from its plans.

In hundreds of rallies in large cities and small towns, postal employees, other union members, community supporters and others rallied Sunday to preserve Saturday mail delivery.

In many cases, the participants protesting Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe‘s decision to suspend Saturday mail delivery beginning Aug. 5 exemplified the “neither rain nor sleet or snow…” postal motto by braving a major spring storm barreling across the nation’s mid-section.

I encourage transportation workers everywhere to support the Letter Carriers (NALC) this Sunday for its Day of Action to educate and mobilize Americans in support of continuing six-day mail delivery from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe’s reckless, unilateral move to end Saturday delivery will disproportionately harm those who need it the most—our nation’s poor, elderly, people with disabilities and those in rural areas. It will hurt small business, cut jobs and send the USPS on a severe downward spiral.

This Sunday, you can rally and tell Congress to strengthen the U.S. Postal Service for the future and protect six-day mail delivery. The coalition Delivering for America is organizing hundreds of rallies across the country to save Saturday delivery, which Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe says he will end Aug. 5. Find a rally near you.

You are probably hearing that the Post Office is "in crisis" and is cutting back Saturday delivery, laying people off, closing offices, etc. Like so many other "crises" imposed on us lately, there is a lot to the story that you are not hearing from the "mainstream" media. (Please click that link.) The story of the intentional destruction of the U.S. Postal Service is one more piece of the story of crisis-after-crisis, all manufactured to advance the strategic dismantling of our government and handing over the pieces to billionaires.

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe’s plan to end Saturday mail delivery beginning Aug. 5 is a “disastrous idea that would have a profoundly negative effect on the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and on millions of customers,” says Letter Carriers (NALC) President Fredric Rolando. Postal Workers (APWU) President Cliff Guffey says:

USPS executives cannot save the Postal Service by tearing it apart.

A new annual report from the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) showed increased worker productivity and a declining operational deficit, despite a larger amount of money lost by the organization based on a unique congressional requirement that USPS prefund retirement benefits for decades into the future. No other agency or private company in the country faces such a requirement. Congress passed the provision in 2006 and could repeal it at any time, solving most of the deficit problems the service faces.

We've written before about the congressionally manufactured Postal Service "crisis," but this infographic from Delivering for America illustrates why a mandate to pre-fund 75 years of retirement in just 10 short years put the Postal Service under financial strain. Download the "The Truth About the Postal Service Finances" infographic.