Hundreds protest use of private mail carriers

Beaverton pickets protest outside post office to stir 'court of public opinion'

The Beaverton Valley Times, Mar 16, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (69 Reader comments)

Jonathan House / Times Newspapers

Dawn Pendell, a letter carrier from the St. Johns Post Office branch, demonstrates outside Beaverton's main office Thursday afternoon in reaction to its decision to privatize some letter-carrying.

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About 350 union letter carriers showed up Thursday evening in front of Beaverton's Post Office to protest the use of private postal delivery contractors in urban Washington County.

Members of the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 82 in Portland are battling the U.S. Postal Service over a private contract to deliver mail in Bethany’s Arbor Parc project.

The 374-dwelling development at the corner of Northwest Laidlaw Road and Bethany Boulevard is sort of a ground zero for the unions’ fight against private contract mail delivery in urban Oregon.

Private mail delivery began in the area March 12 under a 120-day Postal Service contract. The fast-growing and developing Bethany area is considered an urban postal route by some, sparking a clash between the letter carriers’ union and the Beaverton Post Office, which sought the contract.

Postal Service representatives say the issue is about saving money and being more efficient. Union members say it’s about using cut-rate, possibly unreliable and unsafe delivery people to chip away at the postal career culture that the union has fostered for a century.

The contractors are not eligible for Postal Service benefits and usually work for a flat fee.

It’s the first time in years that the union has set up informational pickets outside a post office, said L.C. Hansen, president of the 1,800-member Branch 82 union. But the issue of private mail delivery in urban areas is a tough one for the union, partly because its members see an ominous future looming behind the budget efficiencies, Hansen said.

“We want to work in the court of public opinion with the people that we actually serve to ask for their help in this,” she said.

“Our experience is that this is absolutely the first step in the destruction of the post office.”

Destruction of the post office? Not exactly, said Kerry Jeffrey, customer relations coordinator for the main post office in downtown Portland.

“The Postal Service has a mandate to cut costs and provide universal service under our current system,” Jeffrey said. “Our costs are constantly growing. We have an obligation to keep costs under control and still provide delivery service to every address in the United States. We’re trying to use every tool at our disposal.”

Saving money

One of those tools is the use of private contractors to deliver mail in some areas. Most of the private carriers handle rural routes across the state. In 2002, the Postal Service changed its rules about using private carriers to handle “highway contract service” where the mail was delivered in “sparsely populated areas.”

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