Per union contract: Postal workers show up for work, do nothing, still get paid

Two days ago I listened to multiple sob stories from postal union members about layoffs and the threat of the privatization of the US Postal Service.

Well, based on what I found on Indiana Public Media, the USPS could use a lot of privatization.

About a dozen workers come into the Terre Haute mail processing center at 3:30 p.m. each day. They used to sort through mail that would be shipped across the U.S. That stopped this week. Now, they are sitting with nothing to do but are still getting paid.

It's the result of a nationwide consolidation plan. The Postal Service moved the processing of its outgoing mail from Terre Haute to Indianapolis, but because of a union contract, none of the workers can be laid off or transferred more than 50 miles.

Ann Barnes is the President of the Terre Haute local of the American Postal Workers Union. She says the Postal Service is negotiating with union representatives in an attempt to find ways to for the employees to either retire or be assigned other jobs.

"In the meantime they went ahead and took the mail, they're paying extra for the transportation, they're paying the people in Indianapolis to process it, while our people are being paid to sit around and wait for something to do," Barnes says.

Can you imagine a private-sector business, even a unionized one, being run this way?

I can't.

Are these some of those "saved jobs" President Obama used to brag about?

Related posts:

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From the American Enterprise Institute: How to fix the US Postal Service dinosaur

Mitch Daniels: Gov't works better without public-sector unions

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