ROANOKE TIMES 
                      Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times

DATE: Tuesday, July 2, 1996                  TAG: 9607020048
SECTION: BUSINESS                 PAGE: B-5  EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press 

UNIONS PICKET POST OFFICES OVER EFFORTS TO PRIVATIZE POSTAL SERVICE

Postal workers across Virginia - and the country - rallied outside post offices Monday to protest proposals to privatize the U.S. Postal Service.

``We want people to know that we're not going to settle for what they want to do the Postal Service,'' said Lillie Mae Jones, president of Norfolk-based Local 262 of the American Postal Workers Union.

National APWU President Moe Miller had asked locals to picket Monday, the Postal Service's 25th anniversary, to protest suggestions to award contracts to private companies to do certain mail functions.

Outside Norfolk's downtown post office, about 20 union members at a time carried picket signs reading ``Save Our Postal Service'' and handed fliers to passersby. Protesters also picketed outside the main post offices in Roanoke, Richmond and in Fairfax County.

``This isn't a strike. We're not asking people not to use the mail. Far from it. We just want to inform the public,'' said Myke Reid, legislative aide for the national APWU, who was in Norfolk to help with the protest.

On June 19, mail carriers around the country staged a similar one-day protest.

Reid said postal workers fear privatization would undermine the postal system. Corner mail boxes, some neighborhood post offices and uniform rates for first-class mail could be eliminated, he said.

``Their primary fear is privatization. They think the postal service is up for sale to the highest bidder. That's not true,'' said Dorothy Webster, U.S. Postal Service manager of consumer affairs and claims in Richmond., where postal workers picketed outside the main post office. ``We're dead set against that.''

Webster said the union has expressed concern that the use of private contractors could cause higher mailing costs, but that the worry is unfounded.

Reid said workers also were upset with Postmaster General Marvin Runyon's alleged effort to engineer for himself $1.5 million in retirement benefits.

``It shows the lack of respect that the postmaster general has for the Postal Service,'' he said.

Postmaster General Marvin Runyon said in a Jan. 31 speech that no private business would be able to carry out the post office's basic job of ``service guaranteed to everyone, everywhere, every day.''

But if privatization meant making the post office more businesslike and market-driven, ``we have something to talk about,'' Runyon said.

LENGTH: Medium:   54 lines
ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO:  AP. Members of the American Postal Workers Union express
          concern by picketing the main post office on Rutherford Avenue in 
          Roanoke over suggestions of privatization of mail service.