Postal workers urge Congress to act on USPS finances

Union presidents representing 650,000 active and retired postal workers have written to members of Congress, urging action to stabilize the United States Postal Service’s finances.

The heads of the National Association of Letter Carriers, American Postal Workers Union, National Postal Mail Handlers Union and National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association sent the communication to Congress members on May 1^st. The letter urges Congress members to heed the warning issued by Postmaster General Steiner in April that the Postal Service risks insolvency by February 2027 without action.

“In April, USPS announced that it would temporarily pause employer contributions to the defined benefit portion of the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) account. Relatedly, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) also granted a waiver allowing USPS to apply revenue normally meant to pay for pension obligations to other operating expenses,” they warned.

The four unions laid out to Congress three immediate actions to safeguard the people’s Post Office:

1. Congress should increase the agency’s borrowing authority. USPS’s current $15 billion borrowing authority has not been increased in decades, and does not meet current rates of inflation, nor does it meet the fiscal needs of one of the largest federal agencies.
2. Congress should approve a new investment strategy for USPS retiree health and pension funds, which currently sit in U.S. Treasury securities, missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in potential annual returns.
3. In addition, we maintain that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) should fairly reallocate the Postal Service’s Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) pension obligations. For more than 50 years, the USPS has overpaid pension obligations that properly belong to the federal government, costing USPS more than $90 billion. An administrative directive to OPM to fix the accounting issue is necessary.

According to Postmaster General Steiner’s April testimony, these actions would buy enough time to create a sustainable model for the Postal Service. It is up to us to secure these measures and then fight to expand postal services to better serve the public and build a truly sustainable Postal Service.