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Time to Save the Post Office
The battered national consensus behind a national universal postal service--conceived by Benjamin Franklin--is heading for a free fall due to bad management, corporate barracudas and a bevy of editors and reporters enamored with the supremacy of the Internet which makes up their world.
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is pursuing a strategy of cutting or delaying services while increasing prices. Usually that is a sure prescription for continuing decline. For Mr. Donahoe, the drop in first class mail has left the Post Office with over-capacity. So he is closing over 200 processing centers, and shuttering hundreds of post offices, including Philadelphia’s original Ben Franklin post offices. He mistakenly thinks closing additional USPS facilities’ will not result in revenue reductions and service abandonment.
Never mind the intangibles of convenience, safety (eg. receiving medicines) and collegiality that characterizes many rural, small town and suburban post offices.
Mr. Donahoe tells reporters that he is acting the way any beleaguered business executive would, even though he knows that the Postal Service is not just another big business feeding off corporate welfare. The USPS has not taken any taxpayer money since 1971.
By contrast the federal government has taken money from the USPS and owes our Postal Service between $50 and $70 billion dollars in excess retirement benefits payments. The other overpayments to the federal government are for the unprecedented advanced payment of health benefits of future retirees of the next 75 years by 2016, amounting to $5 billion a year (Congress is considering a bill to rectify this problem). Without corrective legislation, the Postal Service says it would have lost $8.5 billion this year. (By comparison, in addition to lost lives and destruction, the Afghan War quagmire costs the U.S. taxpayer over $2 billion a week.)
If all this sounds bizarre to you, it is. No other public department is a defacto creditor of the federal government. The USPS is a hybrid public corporation, created in 1970, from the old Post Office Department. It has been run into the ground on the installment plan by commercial competitors aggressively taking advantage of a weak-willed, unimaginative succession of postmaster generals ruled by a corporate Board of Governors ideologically rooting for corporate privatizers.
In his media interviews of woe, Mr. Donahoe talks precious little either about revenue increases or about long-overdue expansions of service. Abolished because of banking industry pressure in 1966, the Postal Savings System for simple savings accounts needed by tens of millions of “unbanked” Americans could be reactivated. Mr. Donahoe has been telling people that he’s thinking about it, but this self-styled salesman has proposed nothing to date. (See the letter urging this expansion by the Appleseed Foundation, dated October 14, 2011, at: http://www.savethepostoffice.com/sites/default/files/appleseed_11.11.11%20copy.pdf
Each time I ask Mr. Donahoe to tell us how he is increasing revenue through this remarkable local network of 32,000 post offices, there is no response. Postal Regulatory Commission Chairperson Ruth Goldway has proposed about two dozen ways to increase revenue. Why not explore new ways to use the Internet to produce new revenue?
My conversations with postal workers and letter carriers are filled with revenue increasing ideas from them. These workers are frustrated because the suggestion forms they are asked to regularly fill out are sent to headquarters with nary a feedback. One simple idea, establish a more vigorous staff culture of selling existing and new services. Poor morale loses sales. Are there too many “supervisors” lording it over their underlings? Why can’t Express Mail or parcel post shipments rise from their abysmal level of under 10% of the current marketplace.
The USPS is aggressive in selling new stamps, but it falls down when confronted by FedEx, UPS and others in the lucrative overnight express delivery and package business. The truck bays in Congress itself are full of these company vehicles. Let’s recognize that Congress often has tied the Post Office’s hands on what it can sell. But that cannot excuse post office problems such as long lines, long phone delays, other mismatches between staff and levels of fluctuating business, including a USPS proposal to reduce their time of delivery standards.
Recessions take their toll, more from many large companies (take the auto companies) than from the Postal Service on a percentage of sales basis. So there is no need to panic and stripmine the Postal Service. This could create a decline in usage and a fatal downward revenue spiral.
Sometimes the problem is illustrated by simple experiences. A month ago I wanted to send an Express Mail package from Washington, DC to Darien, Connecticut. The branch manager told my associate that the USPS could not guarantee next day delivery for Express Mail! The postal worker said the computer told her to tell patrons about this risk. So my colleague went to FedEx to ensure overnight delivery. On her way back home she stopped at another postal branch and was told “why of course your Express Mail will get there tomorrow. That’s what Express Mail is about.” Multiply that first response thousands of times and you get thousands of lost sales.
Postal staff know about “lost sales” to individuals and businesses. They use the phrase “lost sales” all the time when they bewail management. This is a management that spends too much of its time cutting, abandoning, closing, delaying and outsourcing postal services to K-Mart and Walmart locations.
Want to do something about a great American institution that is perfectly capable of adapting and benefiting from new times? Visit savethepostoffice.com. If you want to help us build a strong residential postal user group, send an email to info@csrl.org.
43 Comments so far
Show AllThe author points out that the US Congress steals the US Postal Service's (USPS) money, just like they steal Social Security's money.
Twenty years ago I worked for an engineering firm that planned, designed and managed USPS projects and found that even though USPS managers were attempting to control costs, local politicians and business interests would lobby their Congresscritter to require the USPS to spend boatloads of money on bigger facilities than were needed and many (but not all) Congresscritters would put the heat on USPS to do so even though Congress was stealing money from the USPS and not giving USPS any money.
I extend my patronage to UPS for some shipments since their employees are union. I never use Fed Ex.
My thoughts exactly. The current fashionable business models call for laying off people, especially unionized people, and substituting poorly operating software and machines in their place, I see it in the USPS, CVS, the subway system etc. So you go somewhere and there are few or no knowledgable human beings, just some Hal of a computer. Add to that the Congress' ill willed activity to bankrupt the P.O., as mentioned by Nader and several posters here.
Our lettercarrier is wonderful, and the people at the local Post Office try, despite being undermined by understaffing. unordered supplies, disorganized methods. My instinct is that the Post Office is being deliberately mismanaged so people will support privatization, and the jobs will become hourly, part-time, temporary and without unions or benefits.
The Post Office is a wonderful idea, started by one of my favorite innovators of the civic arts, Ben Franklin. We really need it. The workers there need their jobs. The Post Office in every community provides stability and decent jobs. It is a lifeline for rural communities. (But they could start charging more for junk mail, especially unsolicited commercial junk mail. Nobody needs that.)
"He mistakenly thinks closing additional USPS facilities’ will not result in revenue reductions and service abandonment."
He is actually doing exactly what the script calls for. If you want to get rid of any public service, cut back that service and make it harder and more costly to obtain.
They ran the same play with public transport in hundreds of cities across America in the 1930s. If anybody doesn't think that Donahoe will have a seat on the board of FedEx, UPS and/or DHL should really rethink that.
I think the USPS needs to be saved. Its basic infrastructure is really a marvel. Someday we may find ourselves without an internet or electricity. Then what?
That said, I went into a PO yesterday to pick up a free Priority box. There was no info anywhere giving the price to send it (its a one price. any-weight deal). Of course I could have got in the mile-long line in order to ask... There must be 1000 variables in the price structure for sending a letter or package. Its like buying options on a new car.
They've got good ideas, they're just missing some key leadership/management I think.
moonpie - You can get that info on their website at www.usps.com/
Oh, the irony!
I think you bring up a good point about if the internet goes down or if there are long-term power outages as has occurred in the not so distant past. Many choices being made in this country point toward military control of the populace being justified in an emergency situation- such as when "communications are down"...I had not considered all this hullibaloo about downsizing the post office as that rhetoric, but now I can see it could easily be a symptom.
I use two post ofices in my area. Both have their price lists posted in plain sight and in large letters. Perhaps one might suggest that your local office do the same.
Yep. You cannot get any good information about your options unless you stand on the (long) line and speak with a clerk. The website tools are poorly designed, especially the ones that are supposed to let you fill out the proper customs forms. I have had many abortive attempts there, misprints, etc.
I never post comments and hate to write anything but I just have to put in a plug for the USPS. I live in a small city, classified as "rural" and we are likely to feel severe effects from the coming changes. I have lived in 3 other first world countries and can say that our USPS is, by far, the superior system. They are faster and more organized, and much cheaper, than the foreign mail services I have used. Everyone knows they are infinitely less expensive than UPS, FedX and DHL. And, at least in my town, the workers are much more friendly.
Which brings me to another point -(really, I do hate to write). I have known some of the postal workers in my town for years. I avoid the longest line times (lunch and closing when businesses are using the post office more), but I don't mind waiting even when I get caught in the rush because half of us waiting know the workers and each other, making for some great conversation, catching up on people's lives and the occasional mini town hall meeting.
I know this sounds like "Grover's Corner", but our town is actually a pretty busy place and gets visitors from all over the world.. Some of those visitors have commented to me on how much they admire our postal system. I know they mean it because I have had to use theirs in the past.
Anyway, I for one am over having good stuff disappear so some corporations can make more money. Two weeks ago I found myself in D.C. and joined the postal workers picket line, while Donahoe chatted inside talking to the "private sector" bosses. I met some great men and women in that line, who told me of the scam being played on them by Donahoe, and the corporate lackeys in government. It really fired me up and I and some like-minded folks are going to Occupy the Post Office next week - time to fight again for what is good in this country.
To Whom It May Concern,
I HATE EMAIL!
Sincerely yours,
A Proud Luddite
Your carrier pigeon just landed on my windowsill with your post.
Not too proud I see. So where did you find the computer you used to post your hatred of posting and computers?
We soon forget that two years ago ups and fed ex successfully lobbied to get the German owned DHL out of the us domestic business and are now successfully lobbying against usps. These are the same people that advocate the free market.
In conjunction with that I'd point out that the USPS gets not one penny of tax income (even though they have to perform Department of State functions related to passports!). Do UPS and FedEx get tax breaks, incentives and hand-outs? I'll bet they do! Do they receive airport tax help? I'll bet they do! "Free market" my ass! Corporations get taxpayer money but the USPS doesn't.
Of course US airlines also keep foreign airlines from running domestic flights so they need not compete with them either. Funny how this "free market" thing works...
This might be the single most pressing domestic issue right now.
On top of saving 30,000-possibly 100,000 union jobs and pensions we're talking rural delivery, 250 distribution centers and 3,700 post offices. The blow to the economy would be massive. The blow to unionized workforces would be massive. The blow to rural communities would be massive. In urban areas you could easily see a tripling of the time it takes you to buy a stamp.
Many hundreds of thousands of people (I'm one of them) lost "normal" jobs and ended up doing internet sales. Post office cutbacks and rate increases imperil even that... and it's all a bogus, artificial Congress-created "crisis". On top of this the IRS and states are gunning for taxes from internet sales starting in 2012 that really will put the squeeze on people who've already been reduced to doing this sort of thing for a living. Apparently we won't tax rich people or corporations but if you're left selling the comic book or record collection online because there's no more work then Uncle Sam and your state officials have suddenly become extremely interested in putting a hand in your pocket.
Over 90% of what USPS delivers is junk mail that I immediately toss in the trash. So this isn't a business model that will work. Junk is junk. They really need to go after on line product delivery. They could easily destroy Fed-X and UPS if allowed by the corporate criminals in Congress.
We all hate junk mail. All except the USPS which derives much revenue from it.
Wow. Before you know it they'll stop us progressives from rounding up poor black and brown children and selling them to educrat cartels for Democratic campaign dollars.
And if we end the post office, all their unemployed aunts and uncles could start firms selling much cheaper postage to deliver first class mail for less. We can't have that. We earned our monopoly profits!
I have no doubt the master plan for the PO is its demise. Once it became clar regular mail volume would dminish in the face of email USPS should have been encouraged to diversify...become an ISP for example, invest in fiberopitc infrastructure similar to the rural electrofication projects. AS another poster suggests ask the employees what might be done to enhance and diversify service. One can only imagine what sort of software might have been developed had USPS been given the chance to head in some other directions 25 years ago.
There's really almost zero problem with the services the USPS provides. Contrary to what the MSM reports, USPS business went *UP* after the internet... it's a dipped a bit in the past few years, but I blame the poor economy. eBay and Amazon etc. have been a great boon for the USPS... you can't get the merchandise through a cable.
95% of the fiscal problem is the congressional attack on USPS via that absurd $5.5bn/yr fund that USPS is required to feed, unlike any other that government agency or business on Earth is required to sock away.
According to several articles I have read over the past few months:
In the course of the first three years of the Obama administration, USPS has cut costs by some $12 billion and reduced its career workforce by 110,000, despite the no-layoff clause in the union contract.
And, on Tuesday, September 6, 2011:
The chief executive of the US Postal Service, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, appeared before a Senate committee Tuesday to seek legislation giving him the power to wipe out 220,000 additional jobs, tear up union contracts, close thousands of local post offices and end Saturday delivery.
More to come:
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said that his goal was to cut payroll by an additional 138,000 jobs over the next three years. These cuts are in addition to the cuts of 220,000 jobs mentioned above.
In addition, if I recall, when employees are fired, they will NOT receive any severance packages, regardless of how long they have worked for USPS.
Right, this has NOTHING to do with the USPS losing money on its own merit. Just to give some idea from my personal experience... before the internet I paid about 30 bills/year and sent a smattering of greeting cards, received a few magazines and newsletters in the mail.
Post-internet I send over 1,000 packages per year via the USPS via internet orders, and my wife and I receive about 30 or 40 per year from internet purchases. I still pay 12 bills/year via mail. I still get one magazine and one newsletter. I still send a few greeting cards. And we subscribe to a DVD service that didn't exist pre-internet. There's no way in heck if I'm typical that the internet did anything other than give more business - A LOT MORE - to the USPS.
This is about destroying unions and the commons. It's not about a failed business model.
Incidentally if half the distribution centers go it could mean that weekly magazines wouldn't make it in a week any longer. As if print media didn't have problems already this could be a whole other wave of layoffs for people in literate jobs.
"This is about destroying unions and the commons."
Exactly. Well done.
Odd but recently I ordered an ordinary book from Barnes & Noble. I requested it be shipped to my son but billed to me.
What they did is to ship the book to me. Upon receipt, I notice the item was shipped via FedEx BUT delivered my USPS! Because of a time problem and my nearest PO was a distance on a horrendously busy highway almost always under construction, I took it to a much closer FexEx facility where I paid more than twice what it cost to send it to me in the first place.
This is one of the great tragedies here in the United States. Trying to turn the USPS into a Third World entity. The Congress has completly failed and is really been an enemy of the USPS. Actually they are the enablers of failure of many government Agencies like Social Security etc.
They need to be saved and fine tuned to compete with the compiitition now.
Save the USPS.
If they can degrade our Postal Service there is no end to it.
Even Congresspersons who send "junk" mail to their lists of constituents ought to recognize this.
Ralph is being too kind here.
Are Tea Party Congresspersons enemies of Ben Franklin? Do they understand the Power of the Stamp? Do they have any conception of the Written Contract?
Have they bothered to attempt to update their Passports? Good luck with that, thanks to Homeland Security's absolutely useless multi-billion-dollar budget.
This attack on the Postal Service is treason.
No discussion of "efficiency" is relevant. The Postal Service was intended to connect all with one another, NOT to be run as yet another capitalist entity such as UPS or Fed->Ex. The Western State reactionaries ought to recognize this. Imagine that your communication with the rest of the world is billed by for example your physical distance from the nearest County Seat while you are sitting on 60,000 acres of arid cattle grazing, a hundred and fifty miles away, and you have to get all written communications from Fed->Ex. Price per mile for "delivery"?
Who says you even own that land?! A Deed Recorded at the County Courthouse on paper and signed by the SIGNATURE IN INK of the County Recorder, overseen by the County Auditor.
Who wants all this digitized? That is how Goldman-Sachs destroyed the global economy: who "owns" your mortgage? Will the Future be Digitized? How do we hold government to account in the absence of a time-stamped paper trail? As it is, utilities already send bills through the USPS without date/time stamp, a crime.
Wake up People! Persons. Individuals. An earlier post here laid out the threat. This attack on the Postal System is an attack on any semblance of Democracy, and an attack on our mutuality.
Write your Congresscritter. HaHa! Confront him/her with serious Deliberation, face-to-face. If push comes to shove, wrap your fingers around his neck and squeeze. Welcome arrest! Be prepared. Know your lawyer and make a down payment. (I know many lawyers who are as fed up as you are...!)
Occupy Congress! Tell Mitch McConnell, in his face, one on one, that we are weary of his Kentucky Sophistry. Spit on his face. Infect him with your Spirit. Replace Sophistry.
TREASON!
Nothing could be clearer. This assault on the Postal Service has been years evolving, and now they are in for the KILL. (Why do UPS drivers wear shorts in winter? Because their trucks are heated and all their movements are timed.)
Ralph raises the question. It is amazing how the MSM have NOT.
Rarely have I been so angry. The attack on the USPS is a direct assault on the people of this nation.
Wake up.
-30-
Another great article, Ralph. This year, I'm giving leaving a gift of appreciation for my regular postman in my mailbox. He's gone out of his way to find missing packages for me, in the past, and most importantly, he's got a family to support.
Ben Franklin used his position as head of the postal service to send his publications for free and to embargo his competitor's publications.
Oh no, not Ben! Another life that has to be reconsidered.
I don't know that we need to reconsider the life, but we most definitely should reconsider what we have been told about the man, and how the fiction about him is used to justify and protect those in power and the system that keeps them in power.
There is a fantasy oft repeated that the "founding fathers" had great ideas and set up a great system that has since been corrupted and that we need to restore what they intended. But even the most cursory examination of the lives of these founding fathers - Franklin, Washington, Hancock, Adams, Jefferson, for example, and they were the "best" supposedly - is sufficient to disabuse us of that fantasy.
Slave owning, self-serving, land grabbing, genocide waging, democracy crushing...
These men were the very archetype for the Wall Street hustlers, and they set up a system to support and advance that behavior. Any "enlightenment" principles involved amounted to nothing more than empty words, which were used to get the poor working class people to do the actual fighting and dying to get rid of the British crown corporations and leave the field so that the "founding fathers" could get the booty from the ongoing exploitation and genocide.
Go for it.
I am waiting. When do I get my "history lesson?"
Assuming that's true I'm not sure what at all this has to do with the issue at hand. It is my understanding in any event that Franklin delayed delivery of rival papers; if you have information that he stole postal services that'd be news to me and I'd appreciate a reference.
Nader led off the article with a reference to Franklin, which is a common enough device, and seemingly innocent. Authors feel that their argument will seem to have more weight if a "founding father" is cited, and that people will then be more likely to listen. Critics of the ruling class in the US of all sorts are hyper-sensitive to possibility of being subjected to the charge of being "un-American." However, using this device sets parameters on the ensuing debate and restricts the range of options people will then consider.
Strangely, much damning evidence that I have read about Franklin comes from those who praise him, as in the recent popular biography.
I think that both of these points are extremely important. First, that calls for "restoration" of "America" back to the "good old days," or revival of the "original intent of the founding fathers," carry with them hidden limitations. They also reinforce and perpetuate all of the mythology about the "American dream" and "our representative democracy" etc.
Secondly, one need not always go to critics of the ruling class (who often are not serious critics, and who have a hidden agenda such as "restoring the American dream") but rather, the damning truth about the ruling class can often be found in their own words and actions as well as in the words of their sycophants and apologists and defenders.
For example, the admirer of Franklin sees his control over the post office and use of that power to promote himself and punish competitors as clever, as an example of initiative and industriousness that we should all emulate. I see the same activities as monopolistic and corrupt, as anti-social, distinctest and exploitative. How each person sees it has nothing to do with what "the facts really are," but rather upon which side the person is on, which side the person identifies with - working class or ruling class.
sometimes we "Progressives" canbe very reactionary. The post office was started by Benjamin Franklyn so that he could have a distribution vehicle for his privately owned newspapers and other publications. He did not want to nor did he have the resources to commit to a massive undertaking that was the USPS.
it's true that Congress has required the USS to fund their future pension and retirement benefits. This is actually a pretty good thing. that said, i agree with those of you that want to save the USPS. here are some ideas,
1) Double the price of forst class mail.
2) End fourth class and bulk mail. Magazines and Newspapers can use FEdExp or UPS for those people who still insist on having a hardcopy.
3) Cut delivery to Three days per week.
4) Close half of all post offices. There are four within ten miles of my house ..i live in a community with less than 15,000 year round residents.
5) Provide some kind of buy out and/ early retirement for the employees that will lose their jobs. it will be less expensive in the long term.
6) Turn the Post office into fulfillment facilities for people selling their products on EBay, Amazon and Craig's List etc. i am sure there are other profit centers that can be created as well. Bring this thing i to the 21st century. Make it worth saving?
Ralph fails to tell the REAL REASON the Postal Service is in such difficulty. It is not due to mismanagement nor inefficiency. The Postal Service is one of the best run and efficient organizations around.
However, seven years ago when the Bush administration and a Republican Congress passed legislation mandating that the Postal Service fund their medical and retirement plan to cover ALL EMPLOYEES PAST AND FUTURE for the next 75 years AND those funds had to paid into the medical/retirement system within the next 10 years AND the payments could only be made out of postage stamp sales, that is why the Postal Service is in such dire difficulty. This legislation was made by the Republicans in an attempt to bankrupt the Postal Service and turn it over to private enterprise.
The only congressional person I hear discussing this in the media is Senator Bernie Sanders. Where are the voices and the outrage of our congressional delegation? Where is the outrage of President Obama on this subject particularly when all this came to light while he was doing his Jobs Tour and not once did he talk about saving 120,000 postal employee jobs. What has happened to news reporting in this country? It's incomprehensible how news is not disseminated anymore or the news that is disseminated is done so with a spin.
Are you aware that the Postal Service delivers 25-per cent of UPS and FedEx deliveries because the private carriers (WHO CHARGE A LOT MORE) refuse to deliver to rural America. -- they day it's not cost effective. So, they deliver to the post office and the post office takes it from there. Even where I live in semi-rural America, I do have UPS and in recent years FedEx delivery to my house but the post office delivers the DHL and Airborne Express deliveries. Do away with the post office, you say -- how much do you think it would cost for UPS or FedEx to deliver your bills or letters? People DO still write letters and send greeting cards even in this day of the internet.
No matter how community-oriented and straight-talking Mr Nader has been over the decades, we still don't vote for him. Instead, we opt for 4x insider-trading crooks who flee service like George W Bush.
I am seriously wondering about our collective sanity.