Postal Workers Visit City of Their Genesis For National Convention
By John Ostapkovich
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The Pennsylvania Convention Center is buzzing this week with members of the postal workers' union, who are attending their biennial meeting, through Thursday.
About 8,000 members of the National Association of Letter Carriers are here, many with family members.
"This is a great town and we're just happy to be here," said Kevin Card of Portland, Ore., 27 years a letter carrier and now helping his colleagues injured on the job get health care and worker's compensation.
He says convention sessions cover a wide range of topics: "Basic contract knowledge for our contract, but also political organizing, what's happening in our community efforts to work with our food drive, and also anything having to do with the life of a letter carrier, whether it's retirement, whether it's health care, any of those things we cover in a very extensive manner."
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Card says the US Postal Service is not a dinosaur but doing very well, thank you, thanks to the huge upswing in package deliveries from online shopping. He says USPS finances dip into the red only because Congress ordered it to pre-pay 75 years of expected retiree medical benefits in ten years.
(In 1775 in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress founded the United States Post Office and named Benjamin Franklin the first postmaster general.)
