The USPS has dropped a “controversial arrangement” involving private employees at over 500 stores.
Bloomberg reported that the USPS has dropped the service “amid union pressure” from “more than 500 retail outlets”, after “boycotts” and an “adverse US labour board ruling”. The arrangement had seen “private employees” provide USPS services at Staples stores, with USPS spokeswoman Darlene Casey stating that the service would “end its relationship with Staples in order to comply” with a National Labour Relations Board (NLRB) ruling.
The news site stated that the cancellation “is a coup” for the largest union at the USPS, the APWU (American Postal Workers Union), which had “mounted a three-year, multipronged campaign against the arrangement”, including opposing the retailer’s failed merger with Office Depot. The union also leafletted outside stores “urging customers to boycott the company”.
Mark Dimondstein, President of APWU, commented that “had we not drawn the line in the sand and launched these protests” all Staples stores “would have had full-blown post offices, not staffed by postal employees but rather Staples employees, and the Post Office also would have used that model to spread to other major retailers”. He also stated he had “received a commitment in writing” from USPS “that sales of postal services at Staples will cease within the next two months”.
Carrie McElwee, spokeswoman for Staples, confirmed in turn that “more than 500 of its stores would be dropped”, though Staples customers “will still be able to ship goods through” the USPS. The programme had been launched in November 2013, as a pilot to “place mini post offices in 82 stores” and “staffed by Staples’s non-union employees”. USPS had promoted this as “a way to provide convenience for customers”, but was criticised by the APWU as “privatisation”.
In July 2014, USPS announced it was closing the mini post offices only days after the American Federation of Teachers “passed a resolution urging its members and the public not to do their back-to-school shopping at Staples”. Instead, Staples stores would be included in the Approved Shipper Programme, so stores could “provide some USPS services”, but “that wasn’t enough to satisfy APWU” and other unions.
Added to this, the Office of Inspector General “took note of the union’s complaints”, announcing an audit of Approved Shipper Programme locations last May, and finding that the USPS “lost revenue due to participants incorrectly accepting boxes with insufficient postage”, as well as that “clerks at the private retailers often didn’t complete certified mail forms correctly” or comply with “mail security requirements”.
The NLRB “rebuke[d]” the USPS last June by ruling it had “had violated federal labour law by refusing to provide APWU with information it had requested about the mini post office pilot”, and five months after it ruled the USPS had “failed to meet its obligation to bargain with the union over the ongoing Staples arrangement, and issued a recommended order that would require USPS, if APWU requested it, to rescind its arrangement with Staples”.
The USPS could have appealed but “instead committed to drop Staples” from the programme, and the decision “defuses an ongoing controversy for USPS just before Republicans take unified control of the federal government, which will come with the chance to fill nine empty seats on the agency’s board of governors and to pass their favoured solutions for its long-time funding woes”.