• by Dana Blankenhorn , April 9, 2003

The magazine industry won a major victory yesterday, after securing a Congressional vote that is expected to keep postage rates stable through 2006. However the coming war over postal reform remains to be fought.

S. 380, which allows the Postal Service to forego new contributions to its pension fund, passed the House Tuesday and will be signed by President Bush. Jim Kregan, executive vice president, government affairs for the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA), said rates have been rising 10% per year, and the bill will save the industry $200 million per year in postage costs.

The scene now shifts to a commission on postal reform headed by former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson which is due to report July 31, and efforts to put its recommendations into law, said Kregan.

The MPA told the commission in February it favors new labor arbitration procedures, cost-based rates and work-sharing with private companies who might perform some postal functions for less, said Jim O'Brien, director of distribution and postal affairs for Time Inc. But the industry needs to press its case now before Congressmen and Senators who will have to turn any recommendations into a Postal Reform law before they become effective, O'Brien said.

"Sit down with them and talk about what the Postal Service means to your business, how many jobs you have in their area, and help make these people advocates of postal reform," he said.

O'Brien credited a meeting organized by catalog retailer Chris Bradley of Portland, Maine, with passage of the current bill. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine wound up spearheading passage of S. 380. "I didn't have a grand design" said Bradley, CEO of Cuddledown of Maine, which makes and sells down comforters">down comforters and bed linens. "We did a couple of meetings last year."

But he agreed with O'Brien that such meetings are important. "This sort of effort needs to take place across the country," he said. "We need to sit down at a local level with our representatives and tell them about the jobs at stake here. We have more jobs than are collectively in the UPS and Postal Service. We're dependent on a functioning postal service."