In many rural districts the USPS is still the most reliable connection to the larger world
In an effort to curb anticipated shortfalls, the U.S. Postal Service may discontinue Saturday delivery service, cut down on overtime, raise postal rates, and layoff about 30,000 of its 596,000 employees. According to a new article on Reuters.com, USPS chief financial officer Joseph Corbet made that announcement just hours ago.
The recent proliferation of private delivery companies and the surging popularity of electronic communications are expected to reduce the volume of first class mail in 2010 by 10 billion pieces. By 2020, mail volume is expected to drop by 37 percent, leaving the UPSP with a potential revenue shortfall of $238 billion by that time. No level of debt management would make so much as a dent in a shortfall like that.
Losses, losses, and more losses
The postal service has been reporting net losses since 2007. Last month it reported a loss of $297 million for the first quarter of its fiscal year. The competition created by FedEx and United Parcel Service, along with the increasing number of grocery stores and other retail establishments that now sell postage stamps and mail-related services, could soon cause post-office buildings to start boarding up.
Retiree health benefits
To make matters worse, according to the Reuter’s article, the Postal Service has warned that it may be unable to make cash payments of $6.6 billion this coming fall required to cover workers’ compensation liabilities and to fund retiree health plans. Similar payments were restructured by Congress last year, but there are no assurances that the same legislative leniency will be forthcoming this year.
PRC chair Ruth Y. Goldway
Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) chair Ruth Y. Goldway does not favor discontinuing Saturday mail service. According to a recent post on CBSnews.com, Goldway believes that cutting Saturday delivery would threaten the monopoly status of the postal service and undermine “the vitality of the mail system.”
Postmaster General John E. Potter
Possibly as a strategy to obtain other concessions, Postmaster General John E. Potter is pushing to eliminate Saturday service. CBSnews.com suggests that Potter may believe Congress and the PRC are more likely to relieve the USPS from its government-mandated obligations to provide health benefits for retirees rather than agree to a reduction in service days.
Postal customers
One thing is virtually certain: There will be another round of postage rate increases. Legal loopholes allow the USPS to make greater-than-inflation increases in extraordinary situations. The current situation probably qualifies as extraordinary by almost anyone’s definition. When you think about your own bottom line, remember that U.S. postal rates are significantly lower than those in most other places around the world. By the same token, if you’ll be making any bulk mailings in the near future, the anticipated price hike is one more good reason to keep same day cash loans in mind.
People have wait till Mon-Fri. Sat, Sun & hol no mail.
If mail isn't delivered on Saturdays it means there will be a two day pile-up of mail every week. That will be a hardship for businesses and delivery personnel. If there is a holiday on Monday or Friday there will be a three day pile-up. This could be a real problem for delivery service because the volume would be overwhelming.
Wednesday would be the best day for non-delivery. The only way there would be a two day pile-up of mail is if a holiday landed on Tuesday or Thursday.
That's right, Norm. But like any other semi-dinosaur, USPS will have to either evolve or die.
SImple solution; Bulk mail can sit for a lighter day, usually Tues or Wedn. It has been done for eons already…. Problem solved.
If they need to cut a day, why close on Saturday, the one day that working people can get to the post office? Close on Mondays.
I agree, kramercat. I also think many suffering newspapers should stop printing Monday papers.
usps is like all the other big corporations with it’s overpaid, top-heavy management positions. they have eliminated routes and carrier positions, but have yet to see a reduction in management. i would hate to see saturday delivery eliminated. eliminate management bonuses, and half of the management positions and put the focus back on customer service.
I have yet to hear any common sense. Sure no one wants to lose there job but lets face it if you dont have a product to deliver what do you do play cards at the post office at the tax payer expense.
The internet has been killing the amount of mail to the point most just get fliers in the mail that end up in the trash. The USPS should have been trimiming back the emplotment roster a long time ago instead they hired more to do less.
Most postal deliveries are done in a half a day and post man hides the rest since coming back would be idol and seen.
Now if you deliver one day less how can they justify keeping the same number of people. Nobody wants to say it but less work means less workers.
I, for one, am very happy with the USPS. Although there are some serious problems at the management level, almost every postal delivery person I’ve met has been hard working and courteous. If you have to cut costs by reducing the number of delivery days, I’d suggest Tuesday. Most mail goes out on either a Monday or a Friday. Working people need the local post office to be open on Saturday.
I am in agreement with those for continued Saturday deliveries. However, the main issue I have with the U.S.P.S. is the tremendous amount of junk mail. It is a huge waste of resources, both human and enviormental. I rip off my address (to be shredded) and the rest goes immediately into the recycle bin. I don’t even look at it. I see my neighbors doing the same thing as well. Most go directly from the mailbox into the trash (not all of them recycle).
My family has a history of career postal employment, thought I’m not. The solutions are obvious, but not being addressed. In a TV News report years ago, that problem was covered, but never ‘corrected’ by the Postal Service management or congress.
First, a little history. Civil service pay and benefits, prior to 1970, was ‘on par’ overall with the average working American citizen. However, that changed in the next 15 years, seeing benefits become ‘gold’ and management expenses and perks becoming ‘platinum’. At that same time, the postal service ‘reduced by incentives and semi-kickback programs’ the costs to corporations to do ‘bulk large-scale mailing’. The result, of course, was higher costs for all.
It became a well known incentive that ‘to be a civil service, in particular management’, was a higher-profitable package than the normal citizen environment.
The solutions to the ongoing problems at the Postal Svc should be apparent. They want to reduce ‘workers’ and ‘service’, but are unwilling to address the run-away wastes of management, management pay-packages, and most importantly the ‘bulk mailing rates to corporations’.
Solutions Practical:
1. First, reduce management, not just workers, and drastically ‘equalize’ the pay and benefit packages to the civilian workforce for all, reducing management travel and other expenses.
2. For bulk-mailers, qualified as those sending more than 50,000 pcs annually, more than ‘double’ the per-piece price of these mailings. This would bring two firm results:
A. GIve the American people what they want….Reduced JUNK MAIL.
B. Increase ‘parity, profits and fair play’ between corporations and small family businesses, charities-churches and other community groups as to rates.
C. Cease the ‘management waste’ in pandering to corporate desires, and allow Americans to ‘no longer subsidize’ corporate use of the Postal Service.
3. For ‘qualified account statements’, the rates would only be increased by 50%, thus having nill effect to citizens recieving statements monthly on thier accounts, utilities, etc.
What would the RESULTS be:
1. Less weight-bulk. This would allow the Postal Service to ‘reduce equipment and some management and non-management’ needs. Less corporate junk mail results in less strain on the system, allowing more to be delivered with less resources.
2. Profitability. The Postal service, gaining both from increased fair rates for bulk high-volume users, would be able to eliminate ‘marketing managers and contractors’ entirely, as well as profit from a more equitable and fair-to-costs rates on bulk.
3. Corporate parity. Corporate ability to profit would not be hampered, they are now just paying ‘fairly the costs’ to deliver bulk. Small business owners and charities would see ‘more fair rates’ for their much smaller less frequent mailings, than the huge-discounts now afforded only largest and most frequent bulk companies.
4. American Happiness. Americans would see a likely 50% REDUCTION in Junk Mail, bringing less ‘waste and frustration’ and more satisfaction with what they recieve in the mail from the Postal Service.
5. Environment. Litterally millions of tons of immediately discarded ‘waste advertisement’ media would be elliminated, bringing about the eco-results of a better community landfill.
6. Postal Service ‘mindset’ of the last 25 years would be changed from ‘favorable discount treatment to corporate facist interests’ to the Franklin model of ‘all the people’ gaining parity as to costs for the service. Elimination of departments and marketing management and I.C.s would bring about greater reductions in costs overall. And the ‘management profit’ basis model would be flipped, to a more ‘civil service’ rather than ‘profit me’ approach to working for the Fed and Postal Service.
7. Saturday service could continue, and ‘return’ to what it was some 30 years ago. When my father and uncles would work a ‘short day’ on Saturday sometimes when volume was pared and deliveries quicker (due to less junk mail). Worker ‘satisfaction’ would be increased, with the reduction of pressures, and the increase in ‘productivity results’.
Overall, the problems were created after 1970…with a move to make federal employment ‘king’ in overall benefits packages to what average america was and is getting.
BUt the greatest disease is the subsidizing of corporate bulk-mailers (the sheer weight and logistics carry burden), is our problem.
Stop the junk mail, and the Postal Service will not only turn a profit soon, but return to the taxpayer some of the ‘bail out’ monies of the last decade while seeing more Americans ‘pleased’ to open mailboxes (far less junk waste).
It is unfair for american citizens to ‘pay’ for corporate use of the Postal Service, and at the same time suffer the ‘abuses of junk-mail mass-mail repeat postings’ by these same corporations.
Freedom…means equality, and that means parity in benefits, and in ‘who pays for the service’. And just a last note, 100000 bulk fliers for which 80+% will be quickly trashed by the recievers, add real weight to the truck, fuel costs, and postal carrier delivering your mail. ANd that is a burden of ‘expense’ we all are paying, so corporations can gain. That is not ‘Patriotic’, or fair-play.
The people that want to cut letter carrier and clerk salaries are the miserable, jealous people that could not pull off a union job. Now onto Sat. delivery. We are the only nation that has it. This is a global embarassment; Especially since we speak of a greener planet and preserving natural resources. Sat. Delivery is not necessary in this 2010 world. If its good for the rest of the world it is good for us. These are working folks that could spend more time with their families on Sats. Maybe taking in a little league game. It is not a police force or fire dept that has to work on weekends. As much as many of you folks want to live in the days of yesteryear; Saturday mail delivery is a lesson in futility and a complete waste all the way around, from environmental issues, monetary issues and time spent with family issues.
i am so tired of hearing about cutting out the saturday delivery.
the people who are running the u.s.ps. are about as dumb as dumb can get, there are many was to curb costs, simple common sense ways.
Do they do it NO. Do they get rid of 10 people who make $100,000 a year for doing nothing? No. It’s straight to the little guy, and again athe union can be blamed for all the money spent here. It will cost them more in the long run to be rid of saturday service.
I do NOT think that the usps should cut saturday service. many people still use the usps (netflix, letters, shipping, etc…) cutting saturday service will lower there profitss even more. i see no good coming from this