Thursday, March 4, 2010

First GM and Chrysler (and California), Now USPS

First, our nation's glorious unions with their insatiable greed took down General Motors and Chrysler and forced them into becoming wards of the state (to say nothing of what they've done and continue to do to the State of California, which is essentially bankrupt), and now the United States Postal Service is about to go under as well.

Ending Saturday service is just a charade. Sure, it may save some operating costs, but the biggest problem with the USPS (and California and GM and Chrysler) is its unfunded, sky-high pension promises--all made to quell a restive union begging for ever-more handouts to justify collecting union dues and squandering them on political and personal power plays.

Here's a nice summary encapsualization of everything from the Las Vegas Review-Journal:

About half of the Postal Service’s 600,000 workers are eligible to retire in the next 10 years. They can’t be laid off, their growing salaries can’t be scaled back, and their pensions and health care subsidies are essentially a property right. Although new union contracts will be negotiated this year and next, Mr. Potter freely admits that next to nothing can be done to control Postal Service personnel costs.

Unions have hijacked the airline industry, sent automakers into a ditch and all but bankrupted states and local governments. Now they’re hastening the demise of this country’s mail service.