APWU – USPS to end “approved shipper” programme with Staples

The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) has claimed victory after the US Postal Service (USPS) announced that it is not going to run its ‘approved shipper’ programme through Staples stationery stores.

The USPS has written to the APWU that, according to a statement from the APWU, “Staples will be removing all signage and will discontinue postal services at the national retailer’s roughly 500 U.S. locations that handle postal services by the first week of March 2017.”

In response the USPS workers union has called off the boycott of Staples, “effective immediately.”

The APWU was up in arms over the deal between Staples and the USPS as the union argued that it referred to as “privatizing postal retail operations and shifting postal services from neighborhood post offices to Staples locations.”

The union said in its statement, “this privatization effort undermined the public’s right to good quality and secure postal services and represented a shift of good living wage positions to low-wage jobs, thereby hurting the well-being of the communities where the union’s members lived.”

“The public Postal Service is a national treasure that was treated like a cheap trinket by the former Postmaster General,” said APWU President Mark Dimondstein. “First, former Postmaster General Donahoe cut a dirty deal to set up post offices staffed by Staples employees in 82 Staples stores. Then they downgraded the offerings to the ‘Approved Shipper’ status in hopes of ending the protests, but expanded nationally. In each case, the security and the sanctity of the mail, the training of clerks, and proper oversight were tossed out the window. This was bad for the consumer, bad for the USPS brand and an insult to our dedicated members.”
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