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Comment by jbooth | Hacker News Reader

Every union "no layoff" provision I've ever seen was a case of the union choosing to forego contracted CoL raises and some various health benefits in exchange for keeping jobs. Typically it will be cost-neutral compared to layoffs and keeping benefits.

The employer wouldn't sign up to it if it was a pure money loser. They're not crazy :)

Also, Obama already suspended Saturday delivery. So not too sure what he has to do with a perceived unwillingness to shut down the post office. (He also cut taxes, stepped up immigration enforcement and didn't close gitmo).

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Obama already suspended Saturday delivery.

There was apparently a rogue delivery person four days ago, joyriding in the mail truck and asking me to sign for a delivery.

Sorry, my fault. They're going to end it soon, according to Obama's postmaster general and the legislation to do so is being filed by a democratic senator. http://www.businessinsider.com/say-goodbye-to-saturday-mail-...

Point still stands that "fox news said this about obama" does not correlate at all to what he's thinking or even doing. In fact you can usually assume the opposite.

> They're going to end it soon.

That isn't exactly true. The Postmaster General has been trying to get Saturday delivery canceled for a while now, but congress has not been willing to let it happen.

I like Saturday delivery when my package doesn't arrive on Friday. Congress wants their mail. ;)

So, the original contention was that Socialistobama would never, ever, ever consider reduction of service.

The truth is that his appointee is actively pursuing it. Regardless of whether Congress (ironically, mostly rural district republicans in congress) are impeding him as usual.

>Socialistobama

That label and the level of discourse it represents are not welcome here. Be civil.

Sorry I don't think Obama is any more of a socialist than Bush. My only point was that he wouldn't like the idea of getting rid of the union contracts which bankruptcy would allow. A Republican president would likely welcome such a change.

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They can always do the layoffs later, in the meantime they got more labor at a cheaper unit cost. It's typically a good deal, managers getting the advantage from a union sense of solidarity. If it was a really bad deal, you'd assume they wouldn't take it, right?

The only major risk is creating more pension liability by another year of service for some people, but if you're laying them off you have to pay that pension anyways, plus take a big short term hit paying out that much accumulated leave in one go.

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