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The Postal Service's proposal to drop a day of delivery
is not the solution to its financial problems
 he Postal Service laid out a wide-ranging—some would say radical—plan in March for coping with its current economic problems and future business challenges. It featured headline-grabbing initiatives, such as eliminating Saturday mail delivery, and more mundane, nuts-and-bolts proposals, like streamlining the regulatory process.
The NALC supports many of the plan’s recommendations and goals, especially relief from the burden of accelerated pre-funding of retiree health care and recovery of CSRS pension fund overcharges.
But other aspects—particularly cutting service back to five days a week—are foolhardy and the union will fight them with all our might.
How you can help 'Save Saturday Delivery'
Please write to the Postal Regulatory Commission and submit a comment in support of Saturday delivery, as the PRC’s support of Saturday delivery will be key in getting congressional support to maintain Saturday delivery.
Based on your own experiences, and using your own words, please weigh in on the importance of Saturday delivery to you, to your postal customers and to the community you serve.
Please use the following "talking points" to guide your statement—don’t just copy and paste them—and encourage your friends and family to do the same. Together, we can save Saturday delivery and the future of the Postal Service.
"Talking points"
- Saturday delivery is crucial for the Postal Service’s long-term survival. Without it, the USPS will be less competitive, mail demand will decline further and it will lead to a downward spiral.
- Ending Saturday delivery does little to reduce costs. It saves just 4 percent of costs while cutting out 17 percent of daily deliveries.
- Many people depend on Saturday delivery—seniors who need their mail-order prescription drugs, small businesses on Main Street trying to meet payroll, and major businesses like eBay whose business models depend on Saturday delivery.
- Eliminating Saturday delivery should be a last, not first, resort. More time should be spent determining if mail volume declines will slow—if not reverse—as the recession ends.
Additionally, please remind the PRC that:
- The Postal Service’s deficit was caused by the unfair requirement to pre-fund future retiree health benefits, and the Service has been overcharged $75 billion for its pension fund obligations. Fixing the $75 billion pension overpayment and using that money to pre-fund retiree health benefits would make the USPS profitable. The USPS budget can be stabilized without having to resort to sacrificing service.
How to comment:
By mail (preferred) to this address:
Postal Regulatory Commission
Attention: Office of Public Affairs & Government Relations
901 New York Avenue, N.W.,
Suite 200
Washington, D.C. 20268-0001
Refer to Docket N2010-1.
Via the web:
Click this link to go to the PRC’s contact page. (A new window will open when you click the link.)
Inside the page's comments form:
- Next to Send a Message, select Comment.
- Next to Subject Area, select Mail Delivery / Postal Services in the drop-down menu.
- In the Message field, type your comment, using your own words and guided by the talking points above. If you run out of room, simply submit another comment.
- Your name, e-mail address, daytime phone number and address are all option.
- Click the Submit button to send your comments, or the Clear button to start over.
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Five reasons to oppose 5-day:
1. It’s penny-wise and pound-foolish.
Saturday delivery is the Postal Service’s key strategic advantage over its private competitors, UPS and FedEx. Giving away our most important comparative advantage in the one area of the postal market that is likely to grow when the economy recovers—e-commerce package delivery—would be very risky. Over time, the loss of revenue would outweigh the short-term savings.
2. It will drive customers away.
Slower service—letters mailed on Friday nights would not be picked up until Monday morning or Monday afternoon—and less frequent delivery is likely to accelerate the shift to electronic invoicing and electronic bill paying. Booming businesses like mail order prescriptions would be threatened. Reduced service would also threaten one of the fastest growing segments of the mail—Parcel Select—as UPS, FedEx and other consolidators would reconsider their use
of last-mile delivery services by USPS letter carriers.
3. It would prompt the emergence of new competitors.
If the Postal Service doesn’t deliver on Saturdays, other companies will step in to fill the void. Within days of the Postal Service’s March 2 announcement, multiple press accounts quoted executives from niche delivery firms welcoming the news. Many companies would view the Postal Service’s exit from Saturday delivery as a business opportunity. Once established, competitors will demand a “level playing field” and ask Congress to open the nation’s mailboxes to their services, making it impossible to enforce the monopoly and maintain affordable universal service.
4. It would set a bad precedent.
If the language requiring six-day delivery were repealed, there would be no legal
barrier to prevent the Postal Service from reducing delivery days further, from 5-day to 4- or 3-day delivery. Indeed, Business Week magazine called on the Postal Service to shift immediately to 3-day delivery within days of the Postal Service’s announcement of its action plan. That would not only destroy half our jobs, but also likely lead to a death spiral for the Postal Service—less service leading to less mail volume leading to less service, and so on.
5. It’s not necessary.
The Postal Service has hidden financial strengths, with fully funded pension plans and, if the accounting is done properly, fully funded retiree health benefits. If we can convince Congress and the administration to fairly allocate pension costs and correct the $75 billion error made by the OPM when it established our retiree health fund, eliminating Saturday delivery would not be necessary.
Postmaster General Jack Potter acknowledged as much at a March 18 hearing before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee. “If that [recovering the $75 billion and applying it to future retiree health care] were to happen,” he said, “we wouldn’t have to go to six-, to five-day delivery.” Click here to watch video of the hearing on c-span.org. (The link opens a new browser window or tab.) The exchange above begins around the 49:30 mark.
IMPORTANT NOTE: The NALC's proposal will not threaten anyone's retiree health benefits. The law mandates the provision of these benefits even if the Postal Service's retiree health fund had no assets. The retiree health fund is designed to make sure that postage ratepayers reimburse the U.S. Treasury for future health benefits. But USPS is being massively overcharged for these costs and there are excess postal pension assets in the civil service retirement fund that should be used to cover retiree health costs in the future. The reforms we support will save the Postal Service billions and protect every postal employees' retiree health benefits.
It's payback time
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IG Williams |
In a special report, the USPS Office of Inspector General strengthens the case NALC has made over the past three years that the Office of Personnel Management badly miscalculated the postal surplus in the Civil Service Retirement Fund. The OIG’s investigative research unit report shows USPS was overcharged an astounding $75 billion for pension liabilities that should have been paid for by the U.S. Treasury, since they relate to service performed before USPS was created in 1971. This means the onerous prefunding schedule included in the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act is grossly inflated, since OPM shortchanged the Postal Service Retiree Health Fund in 2007, when the agency transferred the surplus into the fund. Fact Sheet
"The Postal Service has been overcharged $75 billion for its pension obligations," said USPS Inspector General David Williams in April in The Federal Times. "Fixing these overcharges will allow the Postal Service to address its real challenges and implement its plan at a safer pace. The Postal Service and its employees deserve justice in this matter and the ability to fix the real problems."
Click here to read more.
| BREAKING NEWS |
On July 29, the full Senate Appropriations Committee approved Fiscal Year 2011 appropriations bills that leave six-day mail delivery intact. Also on July 29, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services marked up its bill with language on six-day delivery untouched as well.
A House subcommittee has voted 8-1 to support H.R 5746, the bill introduced July 15 by Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) to address the Postal Service's financial problems. If passed, the bill would implement many of the Postal Regulatory Commission recommendations. It now goes to the full House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
The NALC is now calling on all legislative activists to recruit co-sponsors for H.R. 5746.
Click here to download the Fact Sheet. |
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| QUICK LINKS |
| Link: Obama budget backs six-day delivery
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| Congress: As of August 20, 51 representatives were co-sponsors of H.R 5746, "United States Postal Service's CSRS Obligation Modification Act of 2010," which addresses
the Postal Service's financial problems and calls for implementation of many of the PRC's recommendations.
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| Congress: As of August 20, 236 representatives were co-sponsors of H. Res. 173, expressing the sense of the House that USPS "should take all appropriate measures to ensure the continuation of its 6-day mail delivery service."
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| OIG: $75 billion over-charge for pension liabilities. OIG's report is here (PDF).
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| Statement: President Rolando's submitted statement to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Federal Service and General Government |
| Statement: President Rolando's news release on the Postal Service's lobbying effort |
| Fact sheet: Congressional mandates and the Great
Recession have caused the Postal Service’s recent financial challenges (PDF)
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| Fact sheet: Eliminating Saturday delivery is not the answer (PDF)
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| Fact sheet: Strengthening the Postal Service: Reforming its retiree health pre-funding schedule (PDF)
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| Fact sheet: Save the Postal Service: Demand fairness in USPS pension and retiree health funding (PDF)
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| Fact sheet: Postmaster General says correcting CSRS overcharge would end efforts to cut back mail service, ease Postal Service financial crisis (PDF)
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Postal Record:
Reinventing the Last Mile, March 2010
The right road to a solid future, April 2010
Standing tall, then and now, May 2010
Where does it end?, June 2010 |
| NALC Bulletin: Get the latest coverage here. |
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Obama budget backs six-day delivery
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Pres. Obama |
President Obama’s fiscal 2011 budget proposal requires the continuation of six-day delivery by the Postal Service.
In setting the amount for “revenue forgone” to cover the costs of free and reduced rate mail, the spending plan says payments will be made “provided that 6-day delivery and rural delivery of mail shall continue at not less than the 1983 level....”
Looking to the future, the proposal, submitted to
Congress on February 1, states, “The Administration will work with the Postal Service, its employee unions, the Congress, and other stakeholders to make sure the Postal Service [remains] a pillar of the American economy and a vital public resource through the current crisis and over the long haul.”
See the USPS section of the budget, with key sections highlighted, here.
Likely to do more harm than good
As NALC President Rolando made clear to reporters who called for the union’s reaction to the USPS plan and in letters to the editors of both The Washington Post and The New York Times, the NALC agrees with and can support much of the USPS plan. Many of the actions make sense—so long as the NALC and the Postal Service work together through the collective bargaining process. But cutting service is and penny-wise and pound-foolish, likely to do more harm than good. That was the message of the letter Rolando sent to every letter carrier in America on March 17. Click here to read President Rolando's letter.
NALC statement on the PRC report on the postal pension surplus in CSRS
Fredric V. Rolando, President of the National Association of Letter Carriers, issued the following statement in response to a report issued by the Postal Regulatory Commission entitled "Civil Service Retirement System Cost and Benefit Allocation Principles" that was transmitted to the U.S. Postal Service on June 29, 2010:
"Today the PRC’s report confirmed that the Postal Service has been overcharged by at least $50-$55 billion for pension costs related to service preformed by the taxpayer-supported Post Office Department before 1971. Congress now has all the evidence it needs to quickly correct this error in the accounting within the Civil Service Retirement System. The report supports a broadly shared conclusion in the postal industry that the Postal Service has massively over-funded its pension liabilities and that the surplus funds in the CSRS postal account could be used to meet its obligations to pre-fund its future retiree health benefits."
"Given that the $5.5 billion annual cost of pre-funding retiree health costs – not the recession and not the Internet – is responsible for the Postal Service’s recent financial losses, we call on Congress and the Obama administration to act this year on legislation to relieve the Postal Service of this unfair burden."
The PRC report, which was prepared by an actuarial consultant in response to a request from the USPS after the USPS Office of Inspector General (OIG) concluded in a January 2010 report that the Postal Service was overcharged for CSRS pensions by $75 billion, also concluded that the "pure service-based allocation" method used by the OIG is "within the range of ‘fair and equitable’ options."
"This is great news for letter carriers and the Postal Service," President Rolando said, "we expect both Republicans and Democrats to work with the Obama administration to reward the Postal Service and its employees for all the hard work in recent years to fully fund all of its retirement obligations while providing the most affordable and high quality postal services in the world – despite the challenges of adapting to the most challenging economic times in generations."
The latest news on the NALC's fight
to save the Postal Service
Solid solidarity
Rev. Jesse Jackson joined APWU
President William Burrus
and more than 3,000 APWU members from
across the country in Detroit Tuesday to march in support of saving Saturday mail delivery. Our sister union held its national convention in The Motor City this week. Click here to watch a video posted on MLive.com and also check out coverage from the Detroit Free Press and ABC7 Action News.
Surprised? Not really
Dayton Daily News "Book Nook" writer
Vick Mickunas recently had an opportunity to compare personal deliveries made by both the Postal Service and FedEx. Happily, letter carriers won't find his results much of a shock. Click here to read the story.
FERS, too
According to GovernmentExecutive.com, an August
16 report by USPS Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Financial Accountability John Cihota found that a $6.8 billion overpayment to the Federal Employees Retirement System is also affecting the Postal Service's financial stability and operational efficiency. The agency's burden to its pension funds is unfair, he wrote. Click here to read the full story.
Direct mail expected to increase by $1B in 2010
PromotionWorld.com's David Jackson debunks the myth that electronic diversion is killing direct mail, noting that advertisers plan to increase spending on direct mail soon. "Seventy-three percent of consumers prefer mail for receiving new product announcements or offers from companies they do business with, as compared to 18 percent for e-mail," he said. Click here for more
Cutting postal service would be a mistake
The Altoona Mirror printed a letter by Pennsylvania State Association President Joseph Antal, who noted that some effects of eliminating Saturday delivery might include "slower service for invoices and business correspondence...and undermining sales on Saturday and Sunday because there would be a lack of ability to target advertising mail for delivery on these most important shopping days of the week." Click here for the full letter
Pre-funding is to blame
A group comprised of four direct-mail organizations takes issue with claims made by the Affordable Mail Alliance. "The primary cause of the Postal Service’s immediate
financial woes is not mismanagement but rather the onerous and unfair burden...to prefund the retiree health benefits
obligation on an extremely aggressive payment schedule." Click here to read the full statement.
Arguing our case
A recent letter to the editor from NALC President
Fredric Rolando appeared in The Washington Post. "For the Postal Service to effectively plan for the future," Rolando wrote," Congress must lift unnecessary financial burdens, allowing the agency to think long term rather than make shortsighted cuts to stay above water." Click here to read the entire letter.
EPI: Congressional mandates are to blame: A recent
report by the Economic Policy Institute agrees with a growing consensus—that postal reform’s call for pre-funding future retiree health benefits is the reason for most of the Postal Service’s recent losses, accounting for “all of the operating losses in 2007 and 2008 and a significant portion” of 2009’s loss. “Were it not for the retiree health pre-funding mandate, the USPS would not face the same short-term pressure that has led the Postmaster General to propose cutting Saturday delivery.” Click here to read the report (PDF).
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Can we get to 100 percent?
The Dead Tree Edition blog
analyzed the June comments to the Postal Regulatory Commission's website about the Postal Service's plan to cut Saturday mail delivery service and found that more than 92 percent favored six-day delivery, "a huge turnaround from April and May." The blog found that "most of the support came from people who identified themselves as customers," and that more than 1/5 said the overfunding of pensions and the so-called pre-funding of retiree health benefits should be corrected before service is reduced. Click here to read the PRC summary (PDF) and click here to read the blog's report.
Click here to find out how you can help.
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An easy fix
Lawmakers "need to sign off, after delaying
repeatedly, on a proposal to lift [the] bizarre 2006 mandate on retirement benefits," the editors of the Peoria, IL Journal-Star write, referring to the law requiring the Postal Service to aggressively pre-fund
its future retiree health benefits fund." "That lawmakers have sat on their hands here should be cause for irritation from every American who has ever used a stamp and is frustrated with all these increases." Click here to read the editorial.
Cutbacks would hurt service
Missouri State Chair Kevin
Boyer was profiled in Thursday's Columbia Tribune and discussed the Postal Service's proposal to drop Saturday mail delivery service. “The two things we have over our competitors right now are: We’re universal; we’ll go to the last mile in the county; and we’ll deliver on Saturday, and they won’t,” he said. “If we lose those two things, then what do we have?” Click here to read the article (and see a picture of Boyer on his route).
PMG is sabotaging the USPS
The Wilmington News Journal printed a letter written by Branch 191 letter carrier and Carrier Corps member Donald P. Schneck, who noted that "a distorted image of the postal service’s financial status is being reinforced to the public." "When you're in the service business, you don't cut service to save money," he wrote, "you grow the business to increase revenue." Click here to read the letter.
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Everyone "should be so lucky"
The USPS has "contributed enough funds to cover all but 1 percent of future pensionobligations to its current workers...because it must," writes Alexander Hart for The New Republic, and it "is socking away about $5.5 billion a year in order to finance health care that its workers won't use for decades" which is "the primary reason it's losing so much money." Meanwhile, a 2007 survey showed that "75 percent of large employers hadn't put away a single cent toward future retiree health benefits"—something to think about the next time someone mocks the efficiency of the Post Office. Click here to read the full article.
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Most trusted, once again
The Postal Service once again
finds itself at the top of the Ponemon Institute’s list of most trusted federal agencies for privacy protection, according to the 2010 Privacy Trust Study of the United States Government—the sixth consecutive time the Service has earned the top spot in the annual study. Click here to read more.
Sides form over threat to Saturday mail service
New York Times coverage of the recent joint congressional committee hearing on the Postal Service's
proposal to drop Saturday mail delivery service. The article includes a photo of San Francisco Branch 214 member Raymond Hou delivering mail on his route. Click here to read the story.
Decades-old overpayments
Since 1972, "the Postal Service has continually paid more than it should have paid " into the Civil Service Retirement System, said Michael Thompson, director of capital investments for the Postal Service Office of Inspector General, on Federal News Radio. Refunding this overpayment would help save Saturday delivery because PMG Potter "has already testified that there would be no reason to go to five day delivery for at least 10 years," Thompson said. Click here to read more the latest from FNR.
A different standard?
Writing in the Friday, June 25 Washington Post, Economic Policy Institute senior adviser Tom Kiley notes that most companies do not pre-fund retiree health benefits at all, and yet USPS' "retiree health obligations are already 41 percent pre-funded, enough to cover all benefits through 2025." The Service "continues to cover all of its retiree health obligations on a pay-as-you-go basis," he says, asking: "Why should the Postal Service be held to a different standard than are other employers when it meets its current retiree health obligations every year?" Click here to read Kiley's letter to the editor.
Don't keep customers waiting
If the USPS goes ahead
with its rash plan to kill off
Saturday delivery, Amazon Vice President of Global Public Policy Paul Misener warned that his Fortune 100 company would be forced to move a sixth of its U.S. postal business to other carriers. "Amazon’s customers have come to appreciate and expect Saturday delivery," he told Wednesday's congressional hearing. "They expect the items they purchased this week to be delivered as soon as possible." Click the links to read coverage of the hearings from Federal News Radio and from American Consumer News.
Losing Saturdays would lead to less use
At
Wednesday's Postal Regulatory Commission Hearing in Rapid City, SD, on the Postal Service's "action plan," rural carriers argued that dropping Saturday mail delivery service would mean longer drives for rural customers to the nearest open post office—and that's around half of the mail patrons in the Dakotas. Click here to read the story from the Rapid City Journal.
Dropping Saturdays would hurt newspapers
The
editorial page of Thursday's Mitchell, SD, Daily Republic, stated: "We wholeheartedly are against dropping Saturday postal service and ask that others who feel the same way discuss this issue with our congressional representatives." Click here to read the complete editorial.
CVS, Medco oppose ending Saturday delivery
CVS
Caremark and Medco Health Solutions say the Postal Service’s proposal to end Saturday delivery would delay needed
medicines and may boost mail-order drug prices. “Eliminating Saturday delivery would create difficulties for many individuals and could be dangerous for patients who need their medications on time,” said CVS' Ken Czarnecki in testimony for a Postal Regulatory Commission hearing in Chicago. Click here to read more from Bloomberg Businessweek.
Senators from Alaska, Hawaii want field hearings
Sens. Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Sens. Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii have written the Postal Regulatory Commission, asking for hearings in their states before the USPS makes any decision about changing the number of weekly mail delivery days.
“As you are likely aware, mail delivery in Alaska and Hawaii is very different from the other 48 states, as is our constituents’ reliance on that mail delivery for basic and necessary items,” reads the letter. Click the links to read further coverage in the Fairbanks News-Miner and from KTUU-TV.
Always universal
USPS employees travel more than 4
million miles to deliver more than a half-billion pieces of mail each day, writes Leigh Donaldson in Maine's Portland Press Herald. This, in a country where 35 percent of all Americans and 50 percent of rural residents still have no broadband Internet access. "The Postal Service...has been crippled by poor political and managerial choices, as well as accounting errors that have left it with unsustainable pension liabilities," Donaldson says. "Our postal system should stay true to its original mission and remain a public utility, and our government should work toward maintaining it as a job creator by maximizing its substantial potential." Click here to read more.
Eliminating service could have dire consequences
Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D-SD) told the Mitchell, SD Daily Republic that cutting Saturday mail service "would be devastating to our most remote and rural communities,” noting that many senior citizens and veterans depend on receiving medications in the mail, and how her state's harsh winters can prevent people from getting to town to get their mail. “We need to provide the peace of mind that Saturday deliveries will continue,” she said. “The Postal service has other options.” Click here to read more.
Just say no
Memphis postal worker Cora Haywood is
canvassing businesses in her own grassroots effort to preserve Saturday delivery, handing out homemade T-shirts and even planning a rally. "We want to keep (delivery) at six days, same as we have enjoyed until now," Haywood said, noting that many elderly people do not have access to the Internet and depend entirely on the mail. Click here to read more from the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
Physical mail still preferred
ZDNet's DocuMentor takes a
look at analysis of a recent Pitney Bowes survey that shows many consumers prefer physical mail for bills, invoices, financial statements, and catalogs. "Doc" finds it interesting that customers still trust physical communications more than the electronic kind, and bets response rates to physical mail are also higher than the electronic variety. Click here to read more.
"I always feel like part of him is here with me"
For
all
the fancy, multimedia modes of communication, nothing beats the thrill of opening the mailbox and finding a personal letter, written and addressed just to you.
CNN iReporters remember some of their most treasured letters. Click here to read more.
Think about the jobs, too
"Do we really need more
unemployment," writes Rockford, IL Branch 245 e-Activist and Carrier Corps member Jerry Pyfer on his local Register Star's editorial page, "or should more realistic funding ease the financial pressure to preserve American jobs?" Pyfer also reminds Northern Illinois readers that the USPS Inspector General found that the USPS is owed a $75 billion refund of overcharges by the Civil Service retirement System pension fund—a refund that PMG Potter told Congress would help squash discussions of dropping a day of delivery service. Click here to read more.
Ending the Post Office as we know it
Modesto, CA Branch 1291 letter carrier Stephen Manchester refutes many of the fallacies behind the Postal Service's moves to do away with Saturday delivery. "Reducing service and ending one of the advantages we have over our competitors are not going to help make us solvent," Manchester wrote in Tuesday's Modesto Bee. "It's the start of a downward spiral." Click here to read more
Letters from grandma, pharmacy deliveries
The North Dakota Newspaper Association has launched an information campaign about the threat to six-day delivery. "Expecting a letter from Grandma [or] medicine from the pharmacy?" asks a flyer. "Don't expect it in Saturday's mail—that is, if the Postal Service has its way and discontinues delivery of the mail on Saturdays."
The flyer discusses the misguided plan's implications and calls on customers to contact senators with messages of support. Click here to see a PDF of the flyer.
Cutting service would hurt global, local businesses
In Sacramento, the Postal Regulatory Commission heard from global and small business owners
and others who rely on six-day mail delivery. Sharif Sleiman of eBay said USPS handles about 80 percent of his company's packages, generating about $1.7 billion in Postal Service revenue. Six-day delivery is one factor that makes USPS so attractive to eBay sellers, he said. Click to read coverage in The Sacramento Bee, Capital Public Radio and Sacramento's CBS13. There were seven total public hearings on the proposed delivery-day cut scheduled.
"We are a service"
In Las Vegas, the Postal Regulatory Commission held the first of its seven national public hearings on the Postal Service's penny-wise and pound-foolish proposal to slash service by dropping a day of mail delivery. "Destroying good jobs by cutting Saturday delivery at a time when we have a job crisis makes no sense,"
Nevada State Association of Letter Carriers Vice President Rich Griffin testified. Click the links to read more hearing coverage in the Las Vegas Sun and the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
More than just mail delivery
The Postal Regulatory Commission also plans to look more closely at the overall social value of the USPS.
Among its evaluation topics are the community and public safety impacts of letter carriers. Click here for the write-up on DMNews.com.
Taking our time, getting it right
The Postal Service has criticized the PRC’s decision to leave open until October 12 its docket on the question of dropping a day of delivery, but a blogger argues that the timeframe is necessary. The Rag Content blog gets it: "The Postal Service ... cannot rush this process or [condemn] the Commission for taking its time in listening to all parties. Due diligence is needed." Click here to read more.
"Do not mail" registry rejected
On Monday, the Spokane, Washington city council rejected 6-to-1 a non-binding resolution asking the state legislature to create a registry that would allow people to decline bulk mail. Carriers argued the idea would hurt the already struggling Postal Service as well as businesses that depend on mail marketing. "We’re talking about a lot of jobs, not just postal service, but also in the private sector," Spokane Branch 442 President Martin Mueller told the council. Read more online in the Spin Control blog of the Spokane Spokesman-Review.
GAO report attacks postal labor, stiffs Congress
The Government Accountability Office issued its report on potential changes in the Postal Service’s business model. President Rolando expressed the union’s deep disappointment in the report’s failure to deliver what Congress asked for, criticizing the GAO for instead producing “a full-throated attack on collective bargaining.” The full statement is here.
Only Congress can authorize a service cutback
President Rolando says USPS's "reckless drive to end Saturday delivery...distracts us from the real solution, eliminating the crushing burden of a deeply flawed health benefits pre-funding policy. Their website and public relations campaign appear designed to fool mailers and the American people that 5-day delivery is a done deal." Click here to read the statement.
Pulling USPS out of the red
On Federal News Radio's "Your Turn," NALC President Fred Rolando explained how the USPS plan to get rid of Saturday delivery would not address the real problems the Service faces—that doing so would simply make the USPS less attractive to those who want to send something during the weekend, and it would eliminate future revenue generation. Click here to read more and to listen to the interview with FNR senior correspondent Mike Causey.
The plan is already backfiring
In Maryland, the Economist magazine plans to experiment with private delivery this summer in anticipation of a possible end to Saturday mail delivery. A plastic wrapper on magazines delivered this week in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., explains the test to subscribers—and provides a clear, tangible demonstration of how the USPS plan to cut Saturday delivery is backfiring—it is pushing business out of the Postal Service.
Congress questions USPS's 'worst-case scenario'
A House subcommittee grilled Postmaster General Potter Thursday, April 15, about his plan to drop Saturday delivery as one way to head off a projected $238 billion loss over the next 10 years—a dollar amount he admitted in his testimony represented a "theoretical" worst-case scenario. One lawmaker, Gerry Connolly (D-VA), expressed skepticism about the reliability of the projected loss, calling it "fake" and "smoke and mirrors."
Read NALC's recap here.
Read testimony coverage from Reuters here.
Providing immense, irreplaceable public service
"The Postal Service's economic turbulence has fostered the fantasy that it is no longer necessary in an age when 'warp-speed Internet' is constantly juxtaposed against 'snail mail.' [W]e must recognize that the Postal Service can and must remain public if we are to maintain the essential infrastructures of democracy." Click here to read more from The Nation's John Nichols.
NNA continues support for six-day mail delivery
National Newspaper Association Postal Chairman Max Heath says the Postal Service has underestimated the public’s concern about a change in the number of delivery days. "This change will affect the delivery of medicines, home movies and timely bill payments," Heath said. "[It] is more of a high stakes gamble, with a lower payoff, than experts can see so far.” Click here to read more, including a statement from NNA President Cheryl Kaechele.
Is Congress biting the mailman?
"It is distressing to see that Congress is apparently willing to go along with financially squeezing the Postal Service, causing tens of thousands of postal workers to lose their jobs and ending Saturday mail delivery." Click here to read more from Talking Points Memo's Dean Baker.
Five-day service faces resistance in House
"While I understand the seriousness of the Postal Service's fiscal issues, I remain supportive of a six-day delivery schedule," House Financial Services Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., whose panel controls the small appropriations bill that mandates six-day delivery, said in an article that appears on NationalJournal.com. "I will be in conversations in coming weeks with the senior postal leadership and the postal unions in an effort to avoid service cuts."
PRC Chairman: Five-day delivery is 'not a done deal'
Postal Regulatory Commission Chairman Ruth Goldway cut through the Postal Service's media blitz by clarifying that the decision to cut a day of service cannot happen until after her panel issues its opinion. "It's not a done deal by any means," she said. The PRC plans to hold meetings across the country with everyday customers before consulting with lawmakers on an ultimate decision. Read about it on The Washington Post's Federal Eye blog.
President Rolando advances to Congress the union's stance
NALC President Fredric V. Rolando delivered a statement to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Federal Service and General Government in response to the Postal Service's seven-point "Envisioning America's Future Postal Service."
Click here to read the complete statement. Click here to read a related press release.
Cutting Saturday mail self-defeating?
"This is a country that increasingly demands speed; you'd think that someone, if only in an effort not to fall further behind, would be suggesting a seventh day of delivery be added.
" Read more from CNN contributor Bob Greene here.
Postal Service cutbacks could hurt Netflix’s bottom line
Dropping Saturday delivery would be a serious blow to the DVD rental service's finely tuned business model. Click here to read an article by The Big Money's Ethan Epstein.
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