By FRANK SOJAK
Cambria County is home to one of Pennsylvania’s major labor leaders, though most have ever heard of him.
Joseph G. Antal of Ebensburg is prepared to start another year of serving the 17,000 letter carriers as head of the Pennsylvania State Letter Carriers Association.
And 2008 will be busy for Antal.
During that presidential-election year, Antal will be traveling the state, lobbying for presidential candidates and candidates running for other offices.
The union says it supports candidates who will best serve working families.
Issues such as outsourcing, the implementation of the next generation of automated equipment and conducting elections by mail also will keep him busy.
The 67-year-old Antal delivered mail in Johnstown for 38 years, retiring in 2002.
He took the association’s reins upon the death of its former president.
Antal, who works out of offices in Philadelphia, Harrisburg and other large cities across the state, was elected to two-year terms in 2003, 2005 and 2007. His current term expires in September 2009.
He had been serving as vice president of the state association before moving into the presidency.
Antal served for 23 years as president of Local 451 of the union, which represents mail carriers in the Johnstown area.
The main issue facing the union now is outsourcing, Antal said.
He said the union had a major problem in the past year or so with the U.S. Postal Service contracting out letter-carrier positions in an effort to save money.
He said whenever a position became open due to a retirement, management would fill the job with a contractor.
“Service suffered,” Antal said in places where that happened. “When you have career letter carriers, they will be dependable and reliable. The people who were being contracted out were not doing the job.”
He said the practice started in Florida and has spread to other states.
In Pennsylvania, the practice was being conducted in Lancaster with the northeastern Cambria County town of Gallitzin on the schedule, he said. No contractor ever was assigned to Gallitzin.
The union went to Congress in an attempt to stop the practice, he said.
The union walked away with an agreement with the Postal Service to place a moratorium on the practice for six months while both sides try to resolve the issue.
“We’re making progress,” he said.
Another matter the union is addressing is the implementation of advanced automated equipment, he said.
He said when he started delivering mail, letter carriers sorted their own mail, staying out of harsh weather for part of the day.
Today’s sorting equipment means less work inside and more time outdoors, he said.
The next generation of equipment will mean even more time that the carriers will be outside, he said.
He said the union is working with management to ensure that the implementation is done in the best interests of customers while keeping the impact on letter carriers to a minimum.
Several weeks ago, Antal, wrote a letter to The Tribune-Democrat’s Readers’ Forum about a Vote-by-Mail program that has been adopted by the National Association of Letter Carriers.
Antal said the union is concerned about the low number of people who vote.
The state of Oregon has been conducting its elections by mail for a number of years and has been successful with as many as 86 percent of eligible voters casting ballots, he said. A number of other states also have conducting voting by mail in a various ways, he said.
Another matter facing the Postal Service and its employees is electronic mail.
In the old days, the Postal Service had a monopoly on mail.
The electronic age has changed that, with e-mails being sent via the Internet.
Antal said that although the Postal Service is doing well, the growth of e-mail has had an effect.
“People are sending e-mails instead of letters,” he said.
He said big shippers such as United Parcel Service have taken some work away from the Postal Service, but it has not been a problem.
“We get our share of packages,” he said. “It can’t compare with what e-mails have done.”
Antal said the future of his union is bright.
“We will see a decline in membership because of automation, but you will always need a letter carrier,” he said. “There is no machine that can take a letter to a mailbox.”
As for unions in general, he said there was an attempt in Congress last year to make it easier for unions to organize. He said if the bill would be introduced again next year and became law, unionism would see an upturn.
