USPS May Cut Saturday Delivery Service
Saturday mail delivery may soon be a thing of the past for the United States Postal Service, according to reports issued Tuesday. Postmaster General John Potter said that a dramatic reshaping of the agency and significant changes to mail delivery were critical to reducing its massive debt, as he began to outline a proposed overhaul of the country's mail service.
The Postal Service is struggling financially, and could lose up to $7 billion in 2010 according to Potter. Last year, the USPS posted $3.8 billion in losses and mail volume was down 13 percent. Officials say this decline in volume will continue, and is caused by a combination of both the recession and the predominance of email and other electronic forms of communication. Mail volume went from 213 billion pieces in 2006 to a projected 166 billion in 2010.
The USPS is trying to find ways to get out of the red without having to resort to taxpayer aid. Potter is expected to back dropping Saturday service as well as the possibility of raising rates.
Potter said:
"We need to rethink everything and every approach to move the Postal Service forward. We need to reinvest, redefine and reinvigorate the value of mail to business and households."
Potter had raised the issue of cost-cutting last year, but lawmakers were not convinced. With more losses and a drop in mail volume, Potter will be making the pitch once more. Eliminating Saturday service requires approval from both its regulator and Congress.
Potter will also be asking Congress to reverse a 2006 law that requires the USPS to prepay its retiree health benefits at a cost of $5 billion per year. He also noted that an emergency rate increase is on the agenda, and that it would be a moderate one.
The USPS has already borrowed $10 billion from the US Treasury, and is expected to borrow another $3 billion in 2010. This would leave the agency just $2 billion under the $15 billion cap set by Congress.
Comments
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.
whattt??? no! i hope they won't push through with this.. many of us working people can only send their mails on weekends.. because we cannot send them during office hours because we have work. Saturdays are the only chances we've got. Please don't take them away from us. Pretty please.