Posted on 12/22/2012 3:42:05 PM PST by traumer
Despite most of Congress leaving town for the holidays, postal workers are continuing a hunger strike protesting legislation to save the United States Postal Service (USPS) through budget cuts.
The hunger strike began Tuesday and is expected to end late Saturday, according to The Washington Post.
Six former and current postal workers, part of a group called Communities and Postal Workers United, are calling the strike “six days starving to save six-day delivery.” Their goal is to stop Congress from reducing postal delivery to five days a week. “We have to be on guard, to raise awareness and pressure the decision-makers as they wrangle back-room deals,” group spokesman Jamie Partridge, a retired letter carrier from Portland, said in a statement.
The same small, grassroots group staged a hunger strike in June to protest legislation proposed to overhaul the service.
The agency lost $16 billion in fiscal year 2012, and needs to cut around $22.5 billion from its annual budget by 2016.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
/johnny
What’s this idiots e-mail address?
Why not raise the price of postage to $10 per letter? That should bring in plenty of money for six, or even seven day service.
Another one requiring a double take as it seems to be from The Onion or similar. Amazing.
Canada post dropped Saturday delivery decades ago when it was still called Royal Mail. We somehow managed to survive.
>> Their goal is to stop Congress from reducing postal delivery to five days a week.
Congress’ treatment of USPS is appalling. But not surprising given USPS revenue is tied to counter sales, not taxation.
USPS must make the tough decisions any corporation is required to make in tough economic times. Hope it arrives at a commercially successful point. I wish USPS well.
Jamie Partridge? Was he the drummer?
96 hours?
Weak.
They need to go for 96 days.
Dittos
USPS claims they suffer because of Email and the digital age. BS, BS, BS!!!! What about Ebay, Amazon and all the online retailer business generated by the Internet? They dare not mention their FAT CAT PENSION liabilities, oh no!!
I wish them well too, I may be one of the few here that thinks that sending a letter across country for 45¢ is a bargain.
They really haven't had to make those "tough decisions" you speak of, in the past. They are a government agency after all.
“What third-world country is this happening in?” I wondered...
I sent a package priority mail from Seattle to Los Angeles on Monday. According to tracking it didn’t leave Seattle until Wednesday. It has yet to be delivered. And you can’t get a refund.
E-mail address? How dare you! :)
I do too. I think USPS's core problem is that they can't make critical business decisions without government approval so everything becomes a patronage issue.
Speaking of email address, whatever happened to the USPS’ plan to give everyone in the United States an email address and require them to use it?
>> They are a government agency after all.
True, but its different from the other agencies in that its revenue is not based on taxation, but through commercial sales.
They can run the Post office six days a week...
Service homes three days a week instead of six... Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Monday, Wednesday and Friday... nobody will miss the junk mail for a day...
Double the size of the area they cover.
Save the overhead cost by 50 % of the route delivery personnel and the fleet..
These clowns would probably go on a hunger strike to save the Pony Express...
Half of the folks get M-W-F the other half get T-Th-Sat.
On December 4th I ordered a package of specialty labels from a label distributor to place on bottles of homemade Belgian ale that were meant as Christmas gifts to be handed out at a work party the 19th. The company mailed the labels on the 6th via First Class Mail; by the seventeenth they had still not arrived. I contacted the company who opined that the labels had either been lost or misdelivered. They immediately sent a replacement shipment via UPS. Today the original order arrived, more than two weeks after shipment. USPS is a joke.
Good. Most of them could stand to lose weight anyway! :)
Since it became an independent agency and had to survive on postage rather than tax money back in the 1970s, the first class postage increases have just about matched inflation. So in real cost since it was 13¢ in 1973 has stayed the same and the more than tripling in nominal cost is entirely from the Federal Reserve and Treasury destroying the value of the dollar.
They've been sponsoring Spandex-clad potential road-kill drug users and encouraging both them and the amateur imitators to clog up the roads meant for cars and trucks for too long to mention.
Screw the USPS. I don't use them anymore. Too annoying, too expensive, too unreliable.
Hungry is good, show us all how strong you are. I won´t vote to increase your pay, but I like fat people to kick the habit.
Prolly best to ixnay mention of email. You can bet the porky legislators are still salivating over an email tax.
My local postmaster has gone way beyond proving the Peter Principle to be true. Just in speaking with him I wonder, why/how did he ever get promoted to postmaster? Answer: union.
My local rural service was so bad I fought back the only way I know how: I got a box at the UPS store in town. Yes, it costs $12/month but I now get all my mail and packages promptly. And, amazingly, my Netflix movies now arrive.
IMHO, they need to drop Saturday delivery completely and cut weekdays back to every other day.
And to the idiots on a hunger strike: May you suffer long and hard. I suggest you spend your idle time trying to help USPS management figure a way out of this mess.
The post office, has the most comprehensive, and expensive health plan in the federal industry.
Their retirement plan outshines those of other federal agencies, combined.
The USPS has bveen in the red for over 15 years. Time to cut the cord.
USPS is so stupid. Intelligent letters/emails/communications are worthless when the Heads are in control. I’m sure none of them have ever received mail that they didn’t deliver to themselves.
No wonder they are losing ground to other carriers.
Thanks for the laugh.
FMCDH(BITS)
“Communities and Postal Workers United”
Shouldn’t that be ‘Communists and Postal Workers United’?
Are you implying the Post Office is a TWINKIE. Them’s fighting words, hehe.
LOL. I know a few that look like they have not missed many meals, as well.
The mail volume on Saturday is no less than any other day of the week. Ending Saturday delivery will only add to Monday's delivery which is already the biggest volume day of the week. The labor saved from Saturday will have to be added to Monday or the mail won't be delivered till Tuesday or even Wednesday.
The people in the article are understandably ridiculed, but, ending Saturday delivery is a false economy.
I disagree with your comments.
Mail should be delivered 3 days a week, Mon, Wed, and Friday and if one of those is a holiday, then substitute Saturday.
Snail mail is a dying business (similar to newspapers) and needs to restructure to be in synch with their new size.
Almost nothing of critical (next day) time value goes in the mail these days anyway.
I like my current mailman—he’s a good guy. The previous one was kinda nasty and I suspect he was a leftist of sorts. My mail requested deliveries often were screwed up with him. I suspect he was messing with me since I get a lot of conservative type mail but I cant prove it. Just a hunch.
I buy a ton of stuff from Amazon (I know it’s on the FReeper sh!t list don’t bother to tell me not to use them).
None of it ships via USPS. It’s all UPS and Fedex.
The reality is that first class mail is a dying business just like newspapers and needs to restructure to reflect that.
My Fedex and UPS drivers all take the time to put packages on our front porch (an extra 10 steps maybe?).
Two days ago our USPS carrier left a package in our driveway in a day-long the driving rain. It was a kids game I’d ordered for Christmas, was completely soaked and ruined.
I tend to agree with you. My family members have lived in many different countries but the USPS has been much more reliable than the service in other countries.
You are right, what whimps. The should get a starvation consultant from Ethiopia....they know how to run starvation there!
Yep. They only have to work 20 years and they can collect a full pension. If they got their job at 18, they can retire at 38. They get that fat cat pension for the next 50 or so years!
They're on retirement benefits twice as long as they worked.
Government jobs are a scam. They've become the public masters, and the taxpayers have become their "servants".
The Post Office must change its structure and delivery schedule if it is going to survive without being a black hole for endless bailouts, the first of which will need to occur in 2013. The PO is mandated, but 6 day delivery is not.
It seems like the feel good response to everything these days is that “we must save it”!?!? What?!? Who stood up and save the business of ice houses given the advent of refrigerators? How about stables with the advent of the automobile? As habits shift and technology evolves, we cannot rest on our nostalgic laurels and pour money down the drain for the purpose of feeling good about our actions.
Unionized government employees are the most protected class from economic change. Very difficult to starve the beast.
Four of this nation’s five richest counties are suburbs of Washington,DC.That is *not* a coincidence.
Yea...i stopped using priority around Christmas time a few years back when a package from Virginia to Houston Texas did not get delivered by Christmas eve...and I mailed it on the 16th of December that year.
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