Posted on 09/04/2011 4:49:11 PM PDT by Free ThinkerNY
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.
The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is getting 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If they are allowed to set rates at will then their monopoly on first class letter postage should be eliminated.
Ordinarily a full array of stamp vending equipment requires some serious maintenance costs.
Since postal employee costs (whether at work stations controlling sorting equipment, or on carrier routes, or doing maintenance) occur in quanta of 8 hours duration, a minor savings of 2 or 3 hours may well not be recoverable.
With a typical finance station operation, 2 clerks will cost 16 hours per day. If you put in stamp machines that save 2 hours, but generate maybe 4 hours of maintenance time per week, your net savings are -2 hours. That is, the machines cost you more than they were worth. A larger station might generate a savings of 8 hours per day, so the machines might appear to be worth it, but you still have to have maintenance, and that might be 8 hours of maintenance time per week.
For many years the justification for vending machines was simple customer convenience and as long as the maintenance personnel could be paid for, that was OK.
Now the organization is short of money so every possible savings must be taken. Removing the vending machines from everywhere but a few dozen very large finance stations around the nation is probably the correct route to take.
No, it's not because this saves anybody's job, but rather it's because it's time to cut back on frills like those machine maintenance hours!
Yup, it’s the unions again. They must be so proud. They’ve run yet another business into the ground.
Thanks all, I lost my job on 8/31 and my hubby is a rural carrier of the non union type. Yes, it would put thousands out of a job.
Stopping Sat delivery is okay by me.
Closing post office is okay also. I live not too far from 2 tiny towns, with each having their own post office, definitely less than a mile apart and located on the same highway, with only one stoplight between the two. Has always seemed to me to be a real waste of money.
Yes, checks are letters.
USPS is also required by law to provide UNIVERSAL DELIVERY SERVICE.
Frankly, no one wants to do business under that standard ~ they only want to handle high revenue pieces deliverable in downtown business districts in about 200 cities nationwide.
That can’t be. My stamps say Forever on them. /s
The salary is 50K and the benefits are another 35-40K with 4 weeks of vacation. They have some the best retirement and HC benefits on the planet.
The means should be the free market, the amount should be the free market clearing price for labor and benefits.
The long term consequence is a healthier economy, which benefits everyone, instead of just a select few.
True, but the Constitution has been amended many times and many ways... some of them good.
Yep sell it off. A private company will buy it and end up running at profit. 5 day delivery is fine.
I think your real question is would the NYT distort the record even though they only manage to steal $1 million a year?
Well, what do you think? Do you think the people at the NYT are honest? I don't. Maybe you do. Maybe you drive a mob owned newspaper/magazine delivery truck in Manhattan or something? Frankly, I don't know and I don't care but I have observed over the years that NO MATTER HOW SLIGHT THE SUBSIDY the MSM wants their piece.
I have to ask why you want to protect the NYT ~ like this is FreeRepublic ~ our purpose is NOT to defend the NYT.
I 100% agree. However, as you must admit, it's operating expenses are simply not grounded in reality. I mean, those numbers say it all... 80%.
When I was young, the postal carriers were some of the most dedicated and hard working employees and they always stood out to me because of it. Those people didn't have to even think twice about going out of their way to help a customer. Heck, we even exchanged Christmas gifts with them all the years I grew up and we only knew their first names. My dad told me that if they were willing to get out in a blizzard to deliver our mail, I needed to get my ass out there and help. On more than several occasions, I was out on the old 8n plowing a path for the mailman or pulling them out of a stuck spot.
That was 40 years ago. It's not the same now, especially in the city. I see our carriers in the neighborhood sleeping in their vehicles all the time. God forbid it snows after I leave for work and can't shovel 6" of snow in front of the box, they drive right past.
I was standing in the driveway one day at work taking pictures of the building and the mail carrier pulled up behind me and started blowing the horn? Confused, I moved onto the sidewalk so she could drive the truck 5 more feet and shut it off, get out and deliver a small box. Getting out where she was sitting didn't even cross her lazy mind.
Quite frankly, I'd rather throw rocks at them nowadays.
I agree, the service is still critical, we need them. But it really needs to be reeled in. Step 1 is busting up the union.
how many million will that add to the jobless rate in this nation?
UPS would love to take over USPS parcel. We may be union, but make a profit through hard work and logistics founded in the private sector.
By the way way USPS out sources some small sorting to UPS because they can do it cheaper.
To put this in perspective, UPS workers belong to the Teamsters Union.
What does the genesis of the workforce have to do with anything? I knew a guy who retired from the NYPD with a generous pension, moved to California and took a job with the USPS, from which he also retired with a generous pension. And my guess is that there are a lot of military retirees who have done the same thing and all they did in the military is shine their own shoes for 20 years. The USPS is an anachronism that needs to go the way of the buggy whip, or at least be forced into bankruptcy so that whoever takes over what’s left over starts with a clean slate.
So you are getting a good deal that the rest of us are paying for. That’s the problem with taking any definitive action, there are always people who’s ox will be gored so they are opposed to what should be a no-brainer.
You claim it is taxpayer subsidized.
It's up to you to PROVE such a false contention.
The problem here is they've got to cut costs but CONGRESS won't let them! Unless those costs get cut they won't be in business anymore.
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