Postal Reform: A Call From the Trenches

Postal increases can force employers to shed jobs, as Cuddledown did after the recent postal hikes: Bradley had to lay off 10 of the company’s 90 employees. Another 8-percent hike, he said, will mean another eight $30,000-a-year jobs shed. “This can’t go on,” he said.

At the NEMOA conference, Bradley and his co-presenter Jim O’Brien of Time Inc., challenged mailers in other states to also engage in grass-roots activism and to seek assistance from their legislators. Indeed, the Maine mailers are admirably exercising the most basic right of all Americans: To stand up and be heard.