The Fight to Secure NAPS' Legislative Priorities

November 10, 2023

The 2024 Legislative Training Seminar (LTS) will promote NAPS’ central legislative priorities though aggressive legislative advocacy and equipping NAPS members with critical tools to help elect members of Congress who support those priorities. NAPS’ prime legislative priorities include enacting legislation:

• that protects postal employees who deliver mail, defends postal property and safeguards the U.S. mail, whether inside or outside a postal facility.
• to achieve a fair consultative process over EAS pay and benefits.
• to attain due process rights for all EAS employees by allowing those facing an adverse personnel decision to appeal the decision to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
• to repeal the Social Security Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) and Government Pension Offset (GPO).

NAPS also wants:

• to ensure Congress fully exercises its legitimate and appropriate oversight responsibilities regarding postal operations, finances and services.
• to defend the earned retirement and health benefits of current and future NAPS retirees.

NAPS anticipates a volatile legislative session, with the consequential 2024 presidential and congressional elections quickly approaching. Therefore, NAPS activists will travel to the U.S. Capitol to enlighten members of the Senate and House of Representatives of the importance of passing NAPS-promoted legislation, resisting efforts to move bills harmful to EAS-level postal employees and advancing issues that will enhance the Postal Service and its employees.

LTS provides the most effective vehicle for supervisors, managers and postmasters to deliver their message directly to their elected members of Congress, including an overwhelming majority who seek NAPS’ support for their reelection. To hold our elected representatives accountable, we must reinforce our priorities with them.

NAPS will arm LTS delegates with the essential tools, vital information and robust confidence to be exemplary lobbyists on behalf of the 48,000 EAS-level postal personnel represented by NAPS. No matter whether an LTS delegate is a first-timer or an LTS veteran, all delegates will benefit from participating in exciting legislative and political seminars, engaging with key legislators and policymakers who make presentations to the assembled delegates and—most importantly—delivering our message to Capitol Hill on legislation and issues that impact NAPS members and the U.S. Postal Service.

A prime element of LTS is to optimize the political power wielded by NAPS members in promoting our legislative agenda on Capitol Hill. This strategy will be valuable in an election year, where all 435 House members are up for a contract renewal with their constituents; 34 Senate seats will be contested. We also will learn how to employ online and digital communications with our elected representatives to complement our work at LTS 2024.

The unambiguous message LTS delegates will deliver is that EAS-level postal employees and the Postal Service are fundamental to the success of our nation as vital cogs of our country’s essential infrastructure. Internal congressional politics and dysfunction cannot distract our elected leaders from performing their constitutional responsi-bility to oversee and nurture the Postal Service.

Finally, NAPS LTS delegates will arrive in the nation’s capital only days from the publication of the White House Fiscal Year 2025 federal budget and the beginning of the congressional budget process. With the recent budget rhetoric still at a boiling point over the fiscal year 2024 budget, the stakes could not be higher next year.

So, it is time for all NAPS members to engage: If not now, when? If not us, then who? See you there.