Postal workers line the street outside Binns Park during a Tuesday afternoon rally to protect postal services, plant locations and jobs. Similar rallies took place Tuesday in more than 400 cities across the country.
When postal workers want to get their message to the public, they don't send a letter.
They take to the streets.
More than 75 local postal workers and supporters lined the 100 block of North Queen Street late Tuesday afternoon to spread the word about House Resolution 1351, which they say would solve the service's financial woes.
"The rally today is for one specific purpose, and that's to get Congressman (Joe) Pitts to support H.R. 1351," Michael Stephenson, president of the American Postal Workers Union, Local 95, said Tuesday.
Stephenson said rumors of the U.S. Postal Service's financial decline are greatly exaggerated. In fact, he said, the service accrued a $611 million surplus over the past four years — money that was quickly gobbled up by the federal government, leaving many postal workers in fear of losing their jobs.
The root of the problem, Stephenson said, is a 2006 Congressional mandate that the Postal Service pre-fund health care benefits for future retirees — 75 years' worth of benefits, he said, that must be paid in just 10 years, at a rate of $5.5 billion per year.
The common perception that the USPS is on the brink of bankruptcy is simply not true, Stephenson added.
"We want the public to know the true story of what's going with our funding," he said. "We want to get the public behind us."
Pitts, Stephenson said, has not yet come out for or against H.R. 1351. He hopes people who saw the rally will be motivated to contact Pitts' office to urge approval of the resolution.
Postal clerk Debra Miller said 3,700 post offices and 252 mail-processing plants — including the Lancaster facility on Harrisburg Pike — are poised for elimination because of the funding crisis.
"That would be catastrophic," Stephenson said. "They'd have to reduce the delivery standards — which would effectively do away with overnight first-class service."
It doesn't make sense, he said — because the USPS is supported solely by service and product sales, not tax money.
"The post office isn't supposed to make a profit. We're supposed to break even," Stephenson said.
And bulk mail sales — which Miller said have always been "the bread and butter" of the Postal Service — haven't declined the way that letter delivery has since the advent of texting and email.
Add to the problem billions of surplus dollars the USPS has overpaid to the government in the past that, because of government red tape, cannot currently be accessed. Those funds, Stephenson said, also would alleviate the current financial crisis.
"We don't want a bail-out," Jim Heslop, a mobile maintenance worker for the post office, said. "We've already overpaid. We just want our money back, so we can put it toward … the health care requirement."
Mostly outfitted in uniform blue and maroon T-shirts, postal workers — supervisors, mail handlers, clerks and rural and city carriers, represented by several unions and associations — carried signs, distributed leaflets and collected about 170 signatures from passersby in support of H.R. 1351.
"Everybody in Lancaster who has a mailing address is going to be affected," Shelby Root, president of the Lancaster branch, National Postal Mail Handlers Union, said.
"If a few more people come on board with us, we'll be able to push this through."
Similar scenes were occurring Tuesday across the United States.
Stephenson said more than 400 postal rallies, including 19 elsewhere in Pennsylvania, were taking place at the same time across the country.
"I want people to know what the USPS is trying to do," Lancaster postal clerk Karen Daube said Tuesday. "All of these layoffs and closings that are proposed don't have to happen."
The people waving signs on the sidewalk weren't all postal workers. Several supporters — as well as a handful of children and one sign-wearing dog — also did their part to spread the word.
"We need a post office, just like we need a train station," Mimi Shapiro, of Lancaster, said.
Shapiro was one of several supporters in attendance. "I'm not a postal worker," she said, "just a citizen who mails things."
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