Posted on 09/15/2011 1:36:08 PM PDT by Graybeard58
The real issue surrounding the U.S. Postal Service's financial crunch is not whether payroll, benefits and services should be cut, but whether they can be cut. The crisis in the postal service, an independent agency, portends deeper and equally intractable problems in the larger federal behemoth.
Like most government agencies and many businesses, the postal service is trying to confront a perfect storm of diminishing revenue and rising costs. It expects to save $20 million this year by curbing what the postal service calls "standby time," in which workers have to be paid under their union contract for not working. (The less charitable term commonly used in describing this practice is "rubber rooms.")
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe's prescription, as described Sept. 6 by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, is to "save $20 billion and return to solvency by 2015 if it eliminates Saturday delivery; closes approximately 3,700 post offices; shrinks its workforce by 220,000; pulls out of the federal employee health care plan and creates its own; does away with a defined benefit retirement plan for new employees, offering them instead a defined contribution plan; and requests the return of $6.9 billion in overpayments to the Federal Employee Retirement System."
Forcefully blocking this approach are politics and public-employee unionism.
Politicians object to post-office closings, as Rep. Selim Noujaim, R-Waterbury,~CT~ did after learning two offices serving his East End district were on the list. His posture was almost identical to that of Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who opposed a plan to close a post office on remote Cliff Island.
If there is a single local, state or federal politician in a single district where a post office is to be closed who actually supports this aspect of the plan, he or she has yet to be heard from.
For their part, public-employee unions reflexively oppose changes to their benefits and job security. That's their role.
So, for Mr. Donahoe and Sen. Lieberman to talk in facile terms about laying off or forcing into retirement nearly a quarter million workers, and tampering with their health and retirement benefits, borders on embracing the impossible.
Does anyone suppose a President Romney or President Perry will have an easier time paring the bureaucratic monstrosity the federal government has become? They will not.
Ninety years ago, President Harding and the 67th Congress confronted a similar crisis in a much smaller federal government whose budget was just $6.3 billion — $70.9 billion in today's dollars, or one-fiftieth of current federal spending — by slashing nearly half the budget in two years.
Thanks in large part to public-employee unionism, which promises to obstruct and in some instances block needed reductions, such speedy right-sizing of the government likely can't be accomplished today. The fact Mr. Harding, a Republican, was able to succeed where all of his GOP successors have failed vindicates Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt's assertion in 1937 that "All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management.
The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress."
The postal service's struggle to survive therefore is more than a mere question of which post offices will be closed or which services will be curtailed. Rather, it's a test case for the larger government restructuring on which the nation's future prosperity and even survival may hinge.
Love your buttons. I’ve found many in Charleston.
The PO lost me with all their petty little rules to mail somthing......................
The PO lost me with all their petty little rules to mail somthing......................
I’ll pipe up as a processing clerk. An argument could be made that a sizeable chunk of revenue is derived from taxpayers. Nearly a quarter to a third of first class mail is government-generated.
buttons?
buttons?
buttons?
Waterbury Button Co. Oldest in America.
“The PO lost me with all their petty little rules to mail “
Those are aviation security rules that began after 9-11. Another way that Islam has complicated our lives.
If the USPS ditched their tiered bulk rate discount for nuisance, unsolicited junk mail, and charged a flat 1st class rate, the USPS might regain a competitive edge in the long range.
Yes, the USPS might have to implement a “do not deliver junk mail” list.
Regardless, Saturday home delivery must be cut.
Actually, two or three more days for each delivery route should be cut.
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