Should have been privatized 30 years ago.
I know 6 people from my church’s bible study group that work for the post office. Every single one of them tells stories of working the system so they can get guaranteed pension and benefits.
Close it down, sell it to private contractors. No more million dollars house purchases for mail carriers.
If the government can’t break even running a monopoly for mail delivery, what make anyone think they will break even running a monopoly for health care?
USPS provides a service and brings in revenue.
What kind of revenue bring in HUD, Dept. of Education, Dept. of Energy, and so on?
I say, we subsidize parasites, we can subsidize USPS!
Does anyone else deliver letters and junk mail?
Post Office is a constitutional office. They couldn’t privatize any more than the U.S. Patent and Trademark office.
Too typical. They are on the verge of bankruptcy so they sign a new contract giving their union employees continued protection from layoffs, a 3 1/2% raise and COLAs. I hope that congress stays tough and gives them nothing. NO bailouts.
I keep seeing a certain word when reading about failed enterprises.
It’s...u....nions!
Remember the union label: “There’s nothing made that we cannot do for more money and less quality. And you have to buy it, or else!”
It may be that mail delivers trash for the most part. I pull it out of my mailbox and toss it into my trash barrel. The trash men charge more to take it away than USPS does to “deliver” it to me. I don’t want it. Junk mail is a totally useless activity. Like junk e-mail, which I never even look at.
Even when they have a good idea (drop Saturday delivery), the politicians won’t let them implement.
Here’s a quick fix:
Phase 1 - go to 3 day a week delivery for business, 2 day a week for residential.
Phase 2 - Charge for home delivery, provide cheaper post office boxes for those who opt out of home delivery. Provide ‘stand in line’ service for those who want to receive mail for free. Discard mail not picked up within 2 weeks unless an additional fee is paid.
Good. Defund all collectives.
Here are three recent stories that sum up the level of stupidity with which the USPS is run.
(1)
Half century of service earns South Sound postal worker a joyous goodbye
Retirement party: After 50 years, postal worker gets special send-off
ROLF BOONE; Staff writer | • Published April 29, 2011
TUMWATER - George Witherow will work one more four-hour shift today for the U.S. Postal Service and then, 50 years after he went to work for the federal government, he’ll finally call it quits.
Postal Worker George Witherow Retires After 50 Years
On Thursday, his co-workers, plus about 12 family members, threw a retirement party for him at the mail processing and distribution facility in Tumwater.
More than 50 people crowded into the facility’s break room to say goodbye to Witherow, who is 85. He was seated at the front of the room, balloons affixed to his chair and a stack of presents next to him. Co-workers, family members and friends shared their memories of Witherow for about an hour, then lined up to shake his hand or give him a farewell hug. His great-grandchildren helped him open gifts.
“I’d like to think we can always be friends,” Witherow said to his retirement party audience.
Witherow’s first job for the postal service was “facing letters,” manually adjusting letters by hand so that they could be processed through a machine. His final job was working as a review clerk, he said. Witherow recalled that when he started, a stamp cost three or four cents and there were no ZIP codes. He worked an early shift, which started at 4:30 a.m. and ended at 1 p.m., and then he would head to his East Olympia home, where he worked in his garden and tended to his cows, pigs and chickens until sundown.
Duke Matthews, who has worked for the postal service for 13 years, called Witherow a strong person, someone who enjoyed his job and took it all in stride. “He liked what he did,” Matthews said, adding that the work was sometimes thankless and hard.
“I enjoyed talking to him,” Matthews said.
Taped on the walls of the break room for Witherow’s retirement party were a number of his favorite expressions, including “Too soon we get old, too late we get smart,” and “Top o’ the morning to you and a jolly old balance of the day.” The second expression was one of Joe Taylor’s favorites.
Taylor, too, works for the postal service and recalled the first time he met Witherow, who greeted him with the expression. Taylor said it sounded weird the first time, but then it became a regular exchange for them, something they said to each other every morning.
“My only regret is that I didn’t know George long enough,” Taylor said.
Witherow was born and raised in Pennsylvania and moved to the Olympia area to join his brother in the late 1950s, he said. By then, Witherow was in his early 30s and was looking for steady work after a period in which his past employers, both General Motors and General Electric, had laid him off. “I needed a job,” he said about his early days in Olympia.
After his pastor spotted an opening for him at the post office, Witherow got the job. He started in 1961, three days before his 35th birthday. His first few years were spent working at the federal building downtown, followed by a long stint at the main Olympia post office and then the distribution center in Tumwater.
On his list of things to do after retirement: taking a trip to Pennsylvania with his grandson.
(2)
Oldest Postal Worker retires at 95 years old
July 2nd, 2010 8:34 pm CT Stanley Cravens St. Louis Postal Service
Postal worker retires at the age of 95.Credits: USPS LinkIt’s not known whether Chester Reed planned all along on working for the Postal Service until he was 95 years old, or if it just crept up on him, but he finally decided he was ready for retirement. Working to the age of 95 earned Reed the well-deserved honor of being the oldest employee of the United States Postal Service.
Mr. Reed’s last day on the job was Wednesday, June 30, ending a career that spanned 62 years, 10 months, and 12 days of combined military service and postal employment. He served in the Air Force for 25 years, retiring as a sergeant. Chester then worked for the Postal Service for 37 years, ending his career as a mail handler operating a fork lift at the San Bernardino, CA mail processing facility. Amazingly, Reed didn’t use any sick days during his Postal Service employment, retiring with nearly two years of accumulated sick leave that will be credited to his retirement.
To what does Chester credit for his good health and ability to work so long? A good working environment for one thing, but something else he will always mention are the onion sandwiches he eats everyday. Apparently, an onion sandwich a day kept the doctor away!
Chester Reed may be officially retired, but it won’t be a sitting-around-taking-it-easy kind of retirement. Reed loves to travel, and plans on taking a few trips with his 57 year old son. Russia, Ireland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland are the countries he’d most like to see next. On one of his previous trips with his son, Reed went to Rio de Janeiro where he went hang gliding,..., at the age of 93! With that kind of energy and sense of adventure, Chester still has an exciting life ahead of him.
Neither rain, sleet, snow, or age was able to keep this postal worker from the completion of his appointed rounds. Congratulations, Chester Reed, on an amazing career!
(3)
85-year-old Chapel Hill letter carrier in Sunday’s Parade magazine
Rudy Tempesta, 85, the longest-serving mailman in the nation, is featured in Sunday’s Parade magazine.
For 65 years—first in New York City, and since 1959 in Chapel Hill — Rudy has been delivering good news and bad, checks and bills, letters and magazines, catalogs and packages, the magazine reports. For the past 20 years, his route has been a seven-mile stretch in the central part of Chapel Hill: North Estes Drive and the pretty residential streets—Somerset, Granville, Cumberland, Halifax—that curl off and around it.
At 85, he has no plans to retire soon, he tells Parade.
“I’ve still got children in college,” he says. “And I love to work. It’s better than sitting home all day watching television and getting fat.”
Well I for one hope the USPS does not go belly up.
I will NEVER, NEVER, NEVER do online banking of any sort.
I pay my bills religiously on the 15th and 30th and my mail lady is subcontracted by the Post Office and not an employee, and does a good job.
In the last several months they lost 4 packages I had coming. all of them were replaced by the sellers but I no longer count on getting things on time unless UPS or Fedex handles them.
I recently had a package sent by USPS delivered by UPS. Evidently, USPS ousources some of its services.
There seems to be a lot of that going around.
My plan, done for Postmaster General William F. Bolger would have done two things:
(1) Close about 25,000 post offices and other facilities devoted to servicing less than 10% of the nation's mail needs, and
(2) Reorganized rural delivery ~ which wouldn't have cost any rural carriers a job, but would have allowed those 25,000 post offices to be closed.
The savings over 30 years ago were a MINIMUM of $800,000,000 per annum ~ that's about $10 billion per year now.
I still have a copy.
This Herr guy is remarkably timid. Apparently the former letter carriers got to him. He should have called me first.
The sole requirement being that they must deliver and pick up first class mail from every address in the USA 4 times per week.