Posted on 01/21/2013 8:29:48 PM PST by Lancey Howard
(Reuters) - While delivering mail on Chicago's North Side, Lakesha Dortch-Hardy spoke about how much she loves her job at the U.S. Postal Service, and how much it would hurt if jobs such as hers were to disappear.
"These jobs are the middle class ..." said Dortch-Hardy, a tall, energetic 38-year-old, who took long strides as she wheeled her cart along a row of two- and three-story brick apartment houses. "Without this job, I don't know where I'd be right now."
The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service has eliminated 168,000 jobs since 2006, and more cuts could result as it struggles to avoid its own "fiscal cliff." As the United States honors Martin Luther King's civil rights legacy on Monday, many African-American workers may be facing new obstacles to achieving and maintaining a middle-class life style.
African-Americans represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population and 11.6 percent of the labor force, according to a 2012 U.S. Department of Labor report. Nearly one in five African-American workers hold government jobs such as mail clerks, firefighters and teachers, the report said.
"There's a long tradition of the public sector being more friendly, or less hostile, to African-American workers," said Robert Zieger, emeritus professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "The Post Office is the best example."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Given that there's a very clear trade off in work time between office and street, and that office time, and parts of street time are further categorized as having something to do with administering what's going on, or sorting and handling mail, any given route is going to have different opportunities for productivity improvement.
Turning foot routes into motorized routes enabled every carrier to handle more mail volume, and to get through the route faster. Adding 9 digit zip codes allowed USPS to use machines to sequence the mail for the carrier routes ~ which cut back on office time required to case the mail.
Anyone who's had the slightest experience with carrier service knows these things ~ there are no secrets. The fact you mention none of them suggests you simply don't know enough about the topic to discuss it rationally.
I shall dutifully report your attack to management and they will dispose off you as they see fit.
Somebody get the CATS ready
(1) Business to customer. You see that delivered every day.
(2) Customer to business. You probably never see that since most business that deal big time in mail send a truck over to pick up their mail at the back platform. Carriers don't handle that part.
(3) Then, there's business to business. That consists of things that need to be mailed ~ usually with signatures on them! Much of it simply confirms previous agreements made by phone or other electronic communication. That's been the case for well over 100 years!
Most weekday delivery to retail or other businesses is little different from what householders get ~ many advertisements mixed with a variety of business related pieces, and nasty letters from lawyers. Without lawyers ........... well, you figure that out.
The current problem is a consequence of the Great Obama Recession. Once he figures out that he's the problem and gets out the way, mail volumes will increase.
GOP: "This medicine may taste bad at first, but it's good for you in the long run."
Rats: "Here ya go - - free stuff!"
Yeah, the GOP needs a better strategy.
Over time the medallions have become worth more and more, and certainly you could eliminate them ~ leaving an awful lot of cab drivers very angry at you, and residual elements of the Sicilian mob, and current Jamaican crews, and Dominican gangs ready to move in and start up killing cabbies so they can make room for their buddies/members.
The medallion system only looks evil ~ the replacement is undoubtedly evil.
The next issue of City Journal will have an article on how the GOP helps urbanites.
If you’re not reading City Journal you’re missing some of the best conservative ideas on urban life and politics.
We need an aggressive urban agenda. If we could just move urbanites into our camp by a few percentage points the election map would look very good.
How did the medallion save cabbies’ lives? I’d love to hear you explain this.
Keep in mind that the medallion is an arbitrary limit on the number of cabs available. Mafias thrive in oligopolies/monopolies.
A real nasty bunch at my post office. Two weeks ago I was shipping a package and thought that MLK Day fell on Monday the 14th. Highly insulted, my clerk hissed, “Don’t you have a calendar?”
I’m surprised the USPS didn’t develop a hosting service and server farms of its own to help bring in income...since electronic communications could be seen as an evolutionary step from paper mail service, it would help the USPS become relevant, profitable, and yet still serve its constitutional niche.
Constitutionally, it would take an amendment to do away with the postal service. Congress could try to close it but the closure would be challenged in court and the courts would say to congress...”you must fund a viable post office or pass an amendment that 3/4th’s of the states must ratify”. The vagaries of the business world could put private mail firms out of business or make it too expensive to send some of the few paper documents that must needs be sent by mail(registered or otherwise).
An organized vigorous country must always need a strong postal system!
Alas! You sound just like the snotty, arrogant clerks at my post office.
Quit hanging around then you won’t hear it.
mafias thrive at the margins
-——That’s been the case for well over 100 years!-——
The times have changed. In the last 5 years there has not only been a change in routine business mail but in business methods. Business has adapted to new internet communications. The demand for signatures on original documents has decreased dramatically. A document received requiring execution can in many many instances be signed in colored ink and scanned and returned. It is known to be an electronic transmittal.
The list of documents scanned and transmitted is nearly endless and enormous in volume. Tasks that took days or weeks or overnight can be accomplished in one day, even if the participants are on different continents. The reduction of mail extends also to DHL and the other document carriers. Business is neither done by mail nor by phone....... it is done by e mail, sometimes endlessly long e mail chains. Those of us who automatically pick up the phone more often than not get a voice mail box . The party called simply doesnot answer the phone. One quickly leans to send an e mail if any sort of quick response is required.
The other aspect of mail reduction is invoicing and payments. Regular customer invoicing is or can be done by e mail. The same is true pf payments. Money is zapped directly from customer bank to vendor bank with ease. No mail man is involved, no trips to the bank, etc.
When the recession ends, business mail will not appreciably increase. It is simply no longer required like it once was.
Then, there are millions of documents that must, if sent, be sent by mail, or sent by some other authorized transportation service under an exception. Checks fall into that category! Clearing house banks have such an exception.
Still, lawyers like to send their bills ~
Called putting the personal touch on your clients!
The biggest single financial hit in postal history occurred when the telephone bills stopped. Used to be a phone bill was required to have XYZ information and sent to a company. Some of those bills went in large boxes, some of them went in many boxes ~ all at First Class postage rates.
Earlier there was a prohibition against having more than one message in a single envelope ~
Most folks probably think ordinary private communications have hurt mail volume. Actually, it's been business communications that've been lost ~ and ever since the telephone was invented, private communications haven't been a major mail component!
The xerox copy increased mail volume for a good long while ~ people who could not earlier afford to make multiple copies suddenly had cheap copies ~ and they sent them. Email has probably subverted some of that, but your meeting notices get lost in the flood of emails for cheap flowers for funerals, and cheap plane tickets to vacation spots on islands you never heard of.
As far as server farms are concerned, that's best kept in private hands in a disaggregated network of equipment.
OK, so how does limiting a cabbies’ upper mobility by allowing a small oligopoly to control taxi medalions free then from mafia influence?
For instance, how are they different than the slave hire badges of the Antebellum South?
http://www.wakeforestcoins.com/slave%20badges/slave%20badges.htm
Here’s some taxi medallions:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=taxi+medallion&FORM=HDRSC2
Sure.
I have lots of breakables shipped by UPS and Fedex, and they somehow seem to miraculously arrive intact, while the postal service looks likes it give the package the Sampsonite Gorilla Special Treatment, and they smile and shrug.
“So Sorry! Not our problem! You contact shipper. We have our money!”
Screw them. The USPS can rot in shipping provider Hell and shrug their shoulders. I am all too happy to let them carry letters they can mangle but I can still read, but I wouldn’t ship an indestructible anvil with their services.
Nothing personal to any mail carrier out there. Just making a living, I understand.
Well. I have nothing against most mail carriers. Just doing their job.
I wouldn’t ship anything via USPS I wasn’t prepared to totally lose. If my birthday card to someone gets lost, I’ll apologize to the recipient and re-send it.
You still have not answered my question.
I laughed at that so hard my sides hurt!
Thanks.
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