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 ...
It’s Christmas-What do you expect? The other 50 weeks of the year, USPS does an incredibly good job. Most of the Priority Mail I’ve sent has arrived in two days—including coast to coast!
You can mail a letter for 45 cents because they operate in the red. I’d like to know what the actual cost is per letter.
Participating in experimental medication studies for extra Christmas cash are we?
That, or you're a mailman.
For the first four months I lived here, even after filling out their stupid cards and packets and several visits to see the postmaster, ALL of my mail forwarded to someone in a city 45 minutes away. It was such a joy stopping for gas or to withdraw money and discovering YET AGAIN all of my bank cards and credit cards were suspended because my statements were returned my financial institutions as my address is in correct.
I also had to petition several times to the Big 3 credit bureaus to have that address removed from my credit history. And, now when I have to verify financial information this other address is used as a "in the past 5 years you have lived at xxxx question" - damned if I could ever remember that zip code.
Then, after it was "fixed" I started getting the mail for whoever was getting mine previously.
Or how about packages left in the rain to be destroyed - I guess the "Christmas" you were referring to really is in July for that excuse to hold as much water as the box in the driveway did (because those three extra steps to set it in the corner by the door on the covered porch would just be so difficult).?
My grandmother's Christmas card was returned to me this year because it was addressed to "Grandma," even though my mother's addressed to "Mom" at the same residence with the same style address labels (only the name changed) was able to make it.
My personal favorite is the one jackass carrier that likes to fold everything in half when she stuffs it into the mailbox. I can always tell when she's filling in for the other one
The post office is a sad sad joke.
Wonder why you keep missing the point? Where does their BAIL OUT money came from? Money that is needed to keep their benefits going to their current and retired employees. They didn't plan for the future ten+ years ago with their salary and benefit packages.
What is the USPS bailout balance?
I have a good postman and the one before that was good, also. I reward them each Christmas and I hope others around me don’t take their good service for granted. And I get nervous when I see a substitute - wondering if he left or it is just for his vacation or sick days.
Only delivering Monday through Friday would be fine. I might be in the minority on this board but the USPO does a pretty good job for cheap. Priority mail is way less than sending something ground on UPS or FEDEX and it gets there in the same time or sooner. Mailing a letter is less than 50 cent and will arrive within 2 to 4 days ANYWHERE in the country. Compared to some country’s mail service it’s pretty damn good. I certainly would hate to have to use UPS or FedEx all the time.
I’ve bought amazon and some stuff does indeed ship USPS. I just received something today from Amazon that used USPS. I don’t know what company it was that shipped the items, but it was name brand cosmetics.
When they die that’s 6 they won’t have to fire!!
None of it ships via USPS. It’s all UPS and Fedex.
My UPS, and most Fed-Ex, packages from Amazon, e-Bay sellers, and a few others, get dropped at the Post Office for local delivery by Post Office...i.e., a notice left in my P.O. box.
OTOH, those deliveries have to have my (unserved) street address, or Amazon, etc won’t accept the order, meaning I have to disguise the P.O. box on the order in an acceptable manner. (The item ordered can not be shipped to the specified address, please blah, blah, blah....)
I have had items returned to sender, because the sender used my street address ‘as required by the carrier’, then used UPS or Fed-Ex just to drop-ship to our Post Office.
Post Office loses a LOT of shipping business that they end up delivering anyway.
Oh, dear - whatever will we do without all those mail order catalogues, discount coupons, and notices of available bargains from massive corporations in search of additional profits?
The waste baskets of America will be weeping for content.
Dear Upchuck,
“union” has nothing to do with the selection of your postmaster, that’s management/patronage/politics, but don’t let the facts get in the way of a good rant,
freegards,
T.
20 years and a full pension? No, I think you have postal workers confused with cops, firemen and soldiers and the 20 yrs/half pay for life equation is gradually changing for them too.
The 16 billion dollar loss has to do with the law congress passed where as the USPS has to pre-pay billions of dollars each year. The USPS is the only agency/business is the country has to put this much money into retirement and that is the main reason for all this talk of insolvency.
Mail volume is down and probably at some point going cutting down on delivery would make sense but that is not the reason why the USPS is currently losing money.
I don’t want to be a surrogate for the Post Office. There are some serious problems that need to be addressed. But the piling on fails to consider some of the facts:
The Post Office delivers more mail in one day than UPS or FedEx does in a year.
Claims have been made on the internet about retired postal workers getting 75,000 to 100,000 dollars a year in retirement. Perhaps this was true for some higher level members of management under the older retirement system. Today, if you work for 15 years and retire (after reaching retirement age), you draw a little more than $400 per month.
A surprise to many people: The Post Office delivers a sizeable amount of the packages for UPS and FedEx. In fact, through Parcel Select and SmartPost the Post Office delivers almost as many UPS and FedEx packages as those companies do. UPS and FedEx drop their packages off in mass each morning at the local post office. DHS doesn’t even deliver to certain parts of the country. They send their packages via the Post Office to these areas.
The Post Office is generally cheaper unless you mail a very heavy or very large package a very long distance.
UPS and FedEx do not want to take over the Post Office’s business, because, as things are, they are able to cherry pick the cost efficient routes and let the Post Office deliver the rest.
The Post Office delivers 175 billion pieces of mail a year. When you deliver that much mail, there will be some horror stories about misdelivered, damaged, or late mail. You rarely hear people tell about the majority of the mail, which is delivered correctly, safely, and on-time.
Always use the Post Office for overseas delivery. It costs anywhere from two to ten times as much to use UPS or FedEx. (Hint: I can’t attest to today, but I know that five years ago, if you mailed something overseas using a UPS Store, at the end of the day those employees went to the nearest Post Office and stood in line and mailed your packages via the Post Office. This is not a second-hand opinion. I know that this is the case.)
That is totally false. The taxpayers will be on the hook when the USPS defaults on its loans, which they surely will, as they are billions in the red.
I notice that you also didn’t compare the USPS to a private corporation, but to GM, another disgusting and undeserving recipient of government largesse...
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