Gandhi, Mandela, and…Mailmen? Postal Workers Wage Hunger Strike "for Justice"
Almost a dozen current and retired Postal Service workers (out of a current workforce of more than 550,000) are staging a four-day hunger strike—just one day longer than the average First Class letter takes to be delivered across the country—to call attention to what they say is a plot to destroy the United States Postal Service.
From June 25 through June 28, the strikers were in Washington, D.C. to lobby Congress to change a 2006 law that forces the Post Office to "pre-fund" health-care and retirement by billions of dollars a year. Despite a 21-percent decline in mail volume over the past four years and labor costs that are far higher than competitors such as UPS and FEDEX, the strikers say it's the mandate, not a hidebound way of doing business, that's stamping out the Postal Service's future.
ReasonTV caught up with the hunger strikers on the steps of the Cannon Building in Washington.
Approximately 3 minutes.
Produced by Jim Epstein and Nick Gillespie.
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