Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act
POSTAL ACCOUNTABILITY AND ENHANCEMENT ACT -- (House of Representatives - July 26, 2005)
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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 22. This will be the first major postal reform bill to receive our consideration in 35 years. I would like to, obviously, credit the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Tom Davis) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh), the subcommittee chairman, for their great work as well as the ranking member, the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), and the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) for all of the great work they have done.
But I would be remiss if I did not mention the number of other people who have worked so hard on this, namely, the postal employees themselves who have been very active in this whole process, including the leadership of the American Postal Workers Union, the National Letter Carriers Union, and the National Mail Handlers Union who have been active and committed to this whole process.
All of us will remember in the days and weeks following September 11, we had a series of anthrax attacks conducted through the U.S. mail system. Tragically, among the victims of these attacks were included the lives of two of our postal workers, Joseph Curseen, Jr., and Thomas Morris, Jr., at the Brentwood facility in the D.C. area.
At that time, all of our postal workers, every clerk, every mail handler, was faced with a difficult choice, and that choice was to continue to come to work every day in a very difficult environment caused by anthrax exposure, and perhaps even endangering their families; or staying away from work and thereby risking the stability of our own economy and upsetting the flow of commerce and shaking the confidence of the American people.
The American postal workers, every clerk, every carrier, every mail handler chose to come to work under those conditions. They came here because they felt it was their particular patriotic duty to do so. H.R. 22 takes note of their service and regards postal employees as partners and a great asset toward affecting postal reform.
Notably, this bill does not seek to curtail essential worker rights, it does not reduce worker protections with respect to collective bargaining, and it deserves our support. I ask only that we resist any amendments that would weaken this bill.
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