Postal workers rally to save 6-day delivery


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SALT LAKE CITY — Salt Lake's letter carriers rallied Sunday to keep six-day delivery for the United States Postal Service.

The rally was part of a nationwide effort by the National Association of Letter Carriers to maintain the current delivery schedule.

"The loss of employees would be tens of thousands, possibly 100,000 good jobs," said Kimberly Mortensen, secretary of Utah's chapter of the NALC.

She said there's no current plan in place to deal with the fallout from a change to five-day delivery, something that USPS is pushing forward with despite objections from Congress. Mortensen said she isn't even sure she'd still have a job if the plan moves forward.

Lane, Mortensen's son, said that changing the schedule doesn't make sense.

"If you cut Saturday delivery, how many people will say 'Well this isn't convenient anymore, I don't want to do that,'" he said. "So they're not going to send mail. You're going to lose money."

Congress and USPS are at odds over the possibility of a five-day delivery schedule. A little known law which focuses on delivering mail to the blind and delivering overseas election ballots requires the Postal Service to deliver six days a week. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has asked for the ability to determine the delivery schedule, but they have so far declined.

Nevertheless, Donahoe and the agency are moving forward with cutting Saturday deliveries. Some national lawmakers have said this puts the Postal Service in a bind when the time comes to discuss mail-related legislation later this year.

"Basically saying you're going to ignore the will of Congress is not the smartest thing to do," Rep. José E. Serrano, D-New York, told the New York Times.

For some Salt Lake carriers, it's not about a national power struggle over the mail, it's about business sense.

"I don't know how a business can survive cutting any service at all," said letter carrier Richard Watson.

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