University of South Florida St. Petersburg organizations, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and Fight Back Florida (FBF) are teaming up to support local mail men and women in a rally on Tuesday Sept. 27 at 4 p.m. to encourage the passing of H.R. 1351.

The rally is a bigger part of a national movement where Postal Workers and activists will gather in every congressional district in the U.S.

In St. Petersburg they will be meeting with Bill Young at his office and handing in his petitions.

Tyler Crawford, organizer for FBF and Jake Adair, founder of the St. Petersburg chapter of SDS will be joining Tuesday at the Save America’s Postal Service Rally.

“So basically, the Postal Service is having some big budget problems,” Crawford said. “A lot of people have come out and blamed these problems on a business shortfall. In their view, the Postal Service could be streamlined, privatized, and made more profitable.”

In 2006, the U.S. Congress passed a bill reforming the Postal Service's pension program. This means the Postal Service pays for all of its services, mail, employee salary, transportation cost, etc. simply through the profits made from postage and stamps.

All except for their retirement pensions. Congress, led by a Republican majority, decided that the Postal Service should also pay for their own retirement, instead of getting it through a government sponsored program paid by taxes. They added a provision in the bill that required the postal service to pay for their pension plans 75 years into the future and pay for the full cost of those pension programs within 10 years.

“No other federal agency or private enterprise has to pre-fund benefits like that, especially so aggressively,” Crawford said. “Before the 2006 law, the Postal Service actually was recording no losses even with the internet. They make a huge profit off postage and stamp revenue. They've actually managed already to pay $47 billion into their retirement pensions so far. Congressional bill 1351 would undo the 2006 law and then put $45 billion into their budget deficit and later pensions, fixing the budget.”

The current budget deficit is now being used by Congressmen Darrel Issa and others from the GOP to pass bills which would allow the Postal Service to lay off more than 120,000 of its workers and privatize the entire enterprise.

“We are basically trying to intervene because this is a part of a bigger attack on organized labor in the country,” Crawford said. “If Issa is successful, the union will be broken up essentially and they will hire a bunch of people to work for minimum wage with no benefits.”

Congressman Issa is also currently working to pass a federal law that suggests closing mail processing facilities and phasing out delivery to front-door mail slots.

This does not leave out St. Petersburg’s historic open-air post office.

“This is about more than just the Postal Service though. It's about the repeated measures being taken against it's workers and their legal right to bargain for better wages and benefits.”

For more information on the rally or to sign a petition visit http://www.saveamericaspostalservice.org/index.html.