Posted on 09/05/2011 3:39:39 AM PDT by tobyhill
The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.
“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.
The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.
As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.
At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the agency’s predicament on Tuesday. So far, feuding Democrats and Republicans in Congress, still smarting from the brawl over the federal debt ceiling, have failed to agree on any solutions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
They are now beginning to retire and that's breaking the back of the medical insurance operations.
Frankly, you probably won't get a real raise out of USPS (presuming it survives as an entity and isn't just disposed of the way they got rid of the Post Office Department) for half a century.
This is a consequence of mechanization, automation, computerization, improved processes and robotics.
Those 5 things are creating the greatest and most massive unemployment ever seen in this nation ~ ain't nobody goin' back to work, and even though USPS managed to get 700% productivity improvement since its inception, mail volumes quit growing in recent years but the productivity improvement continues to surge ~ so instead of being able to keep it hidden with additional mail, the employees will now need to take it in the rear.
BTW, although I worked in and among that thin film of folks who create the words and make USPS procedures stick together with the physical reality for many years, it's THEIR FAULT this is happening. If you just got rid of the smart guys who created the productivity improvements, the place would turn to cr*p in months and you could keep your jobs.
USPS must provide universal service. UPS and FEDEX only provide service where it’s economical to do so.
Remodel their organizaiton patterned on the FedEx model which according to reports, spends only 30% on labor. That or they can file for unemployment. Time to get lean and mean.
In those days all you had was Railway Express. They didn't do delivery so if you expected a parcel you had to go to the train station to get it.
BTW, railway express was so persuasive with Congress that they managed to keep the Post Office Department out of the business of larger parcels even after passenger rail service had been pretty much discontinued ~ (the baggage and express cars on passenger trains carried the Railway Express parcels).
That is what incentivized the Post Office Department's employees at Headquarters to quit and buy UPS which they reconfigured into the sort of parcel and express package service they'd developed for the Post Office Departent.
So, "why" ~ that's "why"!
Later on USPS developed a competing service called Express Mail.
BTW, the FedEx business model is simple ~ it's an airline with delivery trucks. It's owned by Chinese.
I hope they fire at the deadwood...there is a Hussein cultist occupying space at my local Post Office. Drives a huge gas guzzling truck with a Bush-bashing bumper sticker...always seems to have an attitude.
Raise the price on Junk Mail to that on standard mail and watch it disappear
95% of the mail I receive is for soliciting money or advertising
How about no layoffs, just outright firing?
The USPS first class rates are a deal that would go up immediately if taken over by Fedex or UPS. IMO, the problems are the union and the attitude of the carriers on the street which are intertwined. You could make the USPS over as a true service at your doorstep with a smile.
Of course I’m dreaming.
Just because the USPS is Constitutionally authorized doesn’t mean it’s Constitutionally mandated. Read it again.
“despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.”
Disgusting.
When I lived in New Hampshire I used to see the UPS truck drop off packages at the post office so the mail carriers could take care of the final delivery. It must have been cheaper for UPS to pay the USPS to do it than to do it themselves. I doubt that is just unique to my one area.
The UPS STORES are franchises with outrageous mark-ups. Taking my cartons to the local UPS warehouse saved me about $10 per equal shipment over the UPS STORE.
Taking equal shipments to the local post office saved me around $22 per shipment over the UPS STORE and about $10-12 over the UPS warehouse.
My savings are markedly substantial by utilizing the postal service for multiple shipments.
Turning all shipping over to private companies may not be all what you bargained for.....(with the caveat, of course, that the U.S. postal service was concurrently being managed properly).
Leni
If I were privatizing USPS you’d never see another postal carrier delivering mail to anyone’s door ~
Take your arguments to the Supreme Court ~ nothing anybody here can do about it.
Early on after The Marxist Onada usurped the US presidency didn’t he extol the USPO as being a positive example of what government can do?
The Post Office, in my life time anyway, has always operated at a deficit. Oh, well and Eureka. Now I see why Onada would say that. He thinks deficits are good things.
However, one thing I've pointed out for some time is that direct mail deliveries to homes and businesses may be a very unnecessary use of labor these days. Why not replace these home deliveries with expanded neighborhood post offices where individual customers can pick up their mail whenever it's convenient for them? The cost of a P.O. box may be much less than the cost of individual deliveries, when you break out the labor costs down to the individual customers.
Another alternative would be to have mail customers pay a premium for premium service -- like maybe a $500 annual fee for direct home or business deliveries.
Post office facilities would certainly become outdated if the USPS were to stop delivering to individual homes and businesses. They would need to expand their P.O. box areas and build larger parking lots, for one thing. But a lot of the problems associated with this kind of operation could be offset by simply leaving the P.O. box area of a post office building open for longer hours (maybe even 24/7) with no on-site staff available for customer service outside normal business hours.
What?!? Tell that to the carriers out of my office that are walking 17 miles every day. I did some city routes in good weather and it was extremely difficult. I just spoke with one of the retired carriers this weekend and he wouldn't have retired if it didn't trash his knees, and his hands were so stiff he had to pry them open several times a day. It still is difficult work, all the while getting yelled at if you're five minutes over time allotted to complete the route. Oh, yeah it's really freaking easy. Not.
So your recommendation is that I either (a) wait on a long-ass line just to get my mail, or (b) spend 70 bucks a year on a P.O. box just to get my mail?
It’d cost me less in taxes just to fund the damn post office.
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