10 postal workers launch hunger strike

Source: CNN

Ten current and former postal workers launched a more than 3-day hunger strike Monday to protest looming cuts and closures at the U.S. Postal Service. Drastic? Yes. But organizers say desperate times call for desperate measures. "Rallies and marches just aren't working anymore," said Tom Dodge, 58, a postal truck driver from the Baltimore area who has participated in several marches and rallies to save post offices. "It's time to take a stand on this. The post office is a part of our Constitution."

The hunger strikers want the Postal Service to shelve its July plans http://money.cnn.com/2012/06/12/news/economy/postal-service/index.htm?iid=EL to start closing or consolidating 48 mail processing plants. By the end of 2014, when the plan to shrink the postal network is completed, 229 plants will be consolidated or closed and 28,000 jobs will be gone. They also want Congress to eliminate a mandate that has been a major financial drag on the service -- annual $5.5 billion payments to prefund health care benefits for future retirees. The strikers say say eliminating the mandate would solve the Postal Service's financial problems.

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"That payment is causing great hardship to the Postal Service," said Nannette Corley, a Maryland mail clerk for the past 19 years who is taking unpaid leave to join the hunger strike. "We are the people. What is it that Congress wants us to do? Starve and make everybody homeless?" The hunger strikers stopped eating Monday and will start eating again Thursday evening. They plan to demonstrate several times in Washington over the next week -- at the Capitol, in front of the Postal Service headquarters, and in front of the offices of the Washington Post.

They're also going to knock on doors in Congress to lobby lawmakers to take up a bill that would repeal the prefunding mandate and avoid deeper cuts at the agency. The Postal Service continues to face major financial turmoil. It reported a $5.1 billion loss http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/10/news/economy/postal-service-loss/index.htm?iid=EL last year, citing the recession, declining mail volume and a the congressional mandate to prefund retirement health care benefits for future retirees.

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