Posted on 11/15/2011 2:19:21 PM PST by bestintxas
The U.S. Postal Service released its annual financial results on Tuesday, and they're nothing to write home about.
The agency reported an annual loss of $5.1 billion, as declining mail volumes and mounting benefit costs take their toll. The Postal Service said its losses would have been roughly $10.6 billion if not for the passage of legislation postponing a $5.5 billion payment required to fund retiree health benefits.
PrintCommentRevenues from First-Class Mail, the Postal Service's largest and most profitable product, declined 6% from the previous fiscal year to $32 billion. Total mail volume declined by 3 billion pieces, or 1.7%.
"The continuing and inevitable electronic migration of First-Class Mail, which provides approximately 49 percent of our revenue, underscores the need to streamline our infrastructure and make changes to our business model," Postal Service CFO Joe Corbett said in a statement accompanying the figures.
Postmaster General and CEO Patrick Donahoe said in the statement that the Postal Service must reduce its annual costs by $20 billion by the end of 2015 to return to profitability.
Last year's losses hit $8.5 billion, despite deep cuts in expenses and staffing. Mail volume is down more than 20% over the past four years.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
If it was private, would already be bankrupt and gone.
What to do? One word: Privatize.
I cannot seem to truthfully comment without...
So hey, let the government run healthcare, what could possibly go wrong?
I have been trying to do my part to keep them afloat. Whenever I get junk mail I do not want, with an enclosed business reply envelope, I send all the stuff back (after removing my name/address info). Especially good for unwanted credit card offers. Sometimes they are quite heavy.
Well your records could end up in some basement undelivered for 10 years
I do that too
I have no idea if the disparity is as much now but at one time, postal employees were far better paid than other federal employees.
In 1974 I was a lowly GS-7 working overtime one Saturday in the federal building. Around 11, I took my lunch break and was eating in the break room. A young man who was a janitor came by and was cleaning up. We got into a conversation and he was a postal grade 1. We compared salaries and he was making more than I was.
My job required a college degree along with scoring pretty high on the FSEE. I think his required nothing other than being able to work.
If a private company believes they can deliver a letter from Miami to Nome, Alaska for $.44 they will take on the task.
Everyone else understands that the entirety of USPS’ work can be done. Y the Internet or FedEx.
The law requires that postal costs be met through the collection of postage from mail users, not taxes.
What this particular payment amounts to is a bit of PROFIT TAKING by Congress in a way they believe gets around the Postal Reorganization Act which prohibits such actions.
Your propagandists out there know this ~ but they don't want you to know that. Frankly, what's going on sounds silly, but that's Congress for you ~ the trick was to help balance the budget. Well, they sure forgot about that quick didn't they?
Thank goodness we voted in Republicans in 2010 so that no more money will be flushed down the Post office/Fannie Mae/Amtrak Sewer!!
The level 1s and 2s have been reserved for disabled veterans for most of a century. Expressing jealousy over the payment to multiply injured and disabled war veterans is not polite.
The big differential was at GS 5. Before Postal Reorganization postal PFS 5 was tied to GS 5 ~ your typical postal worker at that level was a clerk or a carrier. After Reorganization the postal workers got something like a 10% to 15% pay raise in the first collective bargaining agreement. It was very much in line with the then very high rate of inflation brought to you by JIMMY KKKATAH.
GS5's and so forth in the US government did not get a pay raise that year, nor the next, that was comparable to the Postal raise.
That SAVED TAXPAYERS TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Again, postal workers are paid out of postage revenues. Government workers are paid out of tax revenues.
Every now and then you'll hear some uninformed regular government unionista complaining about the disparity where Postal workers get paid more ~ to which all I can say is of course, they work for a living.
Didn’t matter. You haven’t been paying tax dollars for the USPS since 1973.
FedEx doesn’t understand that.
Sign up for lots of junk mail. That’ll keep the postman happy!
I guess he could have been disabled but he sure as heck did not appear to be. Appeared to me to be around 18 years old but that was a long time ago.
Are you trying to tell me that a postal grade 1 is paid more than a postal grade 5?
“Everyone else understands that the entirety of USPS’ work can be done. Y the Internet or FedEx.”
I think going totally internet would be chaotic for business. Efficient yes, but the way folks change email addresses and without a good way to verify who you are sending something to, it would be a mess.
FedEx turns a profit, I’m sure they understand what it takes and how much it costs to deliver a letter package from point A to point B.
“I think going totally internet would be chaotic for business.”
Those businesses that figure out how to make a total transition from mail to the Internet will survive and those that don’t will fail.
However, the US tax payer should not have to keep the USPS running simply because some businesses are unable to make such a transition.
It’s not a business issue, it is in the fundamental design of the internet. It is just not designed to do what the postal service does.
On the other hand, fedex is an great example of a delivery business, but they are not staffed for door to door delivery like the usps is. They really do something that today there is no replacement for.
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