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Postal Service moves forward on rate hikes, eliminating Saturday service
Postal Service letter-carrier Raymond Hou sorts through mail along his route in San Francisco.
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TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Stacey Vanek-Smith: The post office is holding a briefing today. It says it needs to raise its rates. It also wants to eliminate Saturday delivery. The postal service says it's been hit hard by the recession, which has eaten into junk mail advertisements -- and, of course the Internet has long been eroding its business. Our own Nancy Marshall Genzer joins us live from Washington, D.C. to talk about this with us. Good morning, Nancy.
Nancy Marshall Genzer: Good morning, Stacey.
Vanek-Smith: Nancy, what is the post office saying about all of this?
Marshall Genzer: Well as you mentioned, postal officials have scheduled a briefing for today. They're going to talk about the amount of the increase. They say look: The price of a first-class stamp hasn't gone up since last year, it's still 44 cents. They say they need to raise rates and cut Saturday delivery to save money. The postal service has lost almost $4 billion during the last fiscal year, and that is despite cost-cutting and the elimination of 40,000 full-time jobs.
Vanek-Smith: Hmmm. How is this likely to impact the businesses that rely on the postal service?
Marshall Genzer: Well it's kind of a mixed bag. On the one hand, you have the CEO of Hallmark telling The New York Times that postal service would lose business if it raised prices and stopped delivering mail on Saturdays. But then you have the top guy at Netflix saying he could live with mail delivery five days a week -- he says just don't raise prices. And there's another group of businesses and charities that depend on the postal service, and they formed a group called the Affordable Mail Alliance. And they say if they have to pay more to send out ads and letters, they'll have to cut jobs to make ends meet.
Vanek-Smith: So what's next?
Marshall Genzer: Well the request for a rate increase goes to the Postal Regulatory Commission, and that commission will start hearings on the increase next week. And Congress would actually have to approve the elimination of Saturday mail delivery, and so far there doesn't seem to be a lot of support on Capitol Hill for that. Some members of Congress say the post office should actually market its Saturday delivery so it could compete more with delivery companies like FedEx.
Vanek-Smith: Nancy Marshall Genzer in Washington, D.C. Thank you, Nancy.
Marshall Genzer: You're welcome.
Instead of rate increases to gain more revenue, US Postal Service can eliminate millions of dollars of waste caused by lost worker time when mail carriers take unauthorized cigarette breaks and other time off at apartment complexes, where they use their influence to obtain keys to gated and locked private facilities, such as recreation rooms and swimming pools.
Here is a complaint recently submitted to USPS online:
"On June 11, 2010 hold mail was requested by me to end June 16, 2010,and I arranged to be at home all day on June 16, 2010 to receive the volume of mail expected to exceed the capacity of my mailbox. The day before, when I returned home from travel, staff in the apartment complex office knew I had been gone because the mail carrier had told them of the hold mail.
On June 16, 2010 at about 1:45 p.m. as I left my apartment I saw the regular mail carrier for my address driving away from the mail box cluster where my mailbox is located but when I opened it there was no mail at all. The mail carrier was at the next cluster and when I walked to that one and asked him where my hold mail was he reached to his left without needing to look, picked up a folded 8 ½ X 11 printed sheet, removed 4 pieces of mail from the fold, and handed it to me. He kept the sheet of paper and didn’t mention my hold mail but when I did he said “You got a lot of mail!â€
His tone of voice, facial expression, and body language conveyed annoyance and resentment.
I replied that I stayed home to receive all that mail and asked him why he didn’t bring it but he refused to answer.
About 15 minutes later I was at the recreation center of the apartment complex when I saw the same mail carrier with a large quantity of mail under his arm open the locked swimming pool gate with a key attached to a chain with all of his other keys, then unlock the recreation room door with that key and enter. There was no one in the room and it is not the address for any postal customer. He emerged several minutes later and left the way he came in, again with his own key unlocking the pool gate to exit. The key is not needed to access any mailbox on the property.
This complaint, which includes photographic evidence of the mail carrier at the recreation center with a large quantity of mail, seeks an end to willful misconduct by this USPS employee who:
Violated postal rules by knowingly and deliberately failing to deliver hold mail after the hold ended. He knew all about the volume of mail which had accumulated and there were no events or conditions preventing delivery of the mail.
Violated postal rules by knowingly and deliberately confiscating mail in his possession in the USPS vehicle instead of delivering it to my mailbox, handing it over to me in person only after I asked for it. Again, there were no events or conditions preventing delivery of the mail.
Violated postal rules by requesting and keeping under authority as a mail carrier a key to access private property which is not the home or business address of a postal customer.
Violated postal rules by carrying mail into a building which is not the home or business address of a postal customer.
Violated postal rules by telling an unauthorized third party when my mail was on hold, a violation of the federal Privacy Act."
The week after the events described above, in which the mail carrier saw me photographing him engaged in misconduct, the same mail carrier entered the gated and locked areas again and used his camera to photograph me seated next to the pool, accompanied by his verbal taunts.
Clearly, one reason FedEx and United Parcel Service are beating USPS is that they don't coddle employees who engage in such pathological frolics.
The water meter reader doesn't roam about the gated and locked swimming pool and recreation room. Neither do United Parcel Service or FedEx drivers. Millions of workers all over the planet do their jobs every day without disturbing their customers at their homes in order to perform their bodily functions.
The Local Duty Inspector in Tucson, Arizona has received my complaint about this mail carrier misconduct but after several weeks the U.S. Postal Inspection Service division in Phoenix has done nothing but write a letter stating that I "...will only be contacted if additional information is needed."
Regular paper mail will disappear in our children's lifetime, if not our own. Change is necessary. Isn't energy conservation supposed to be a goal? Think of the gasoline saved by reducing residential mail delivery immediately to twice a week. Nothing in our paper mail is more urgent than that.
Why is it that whenever there is a news story regarding the US Postal Service and the money it's losing, the reporter always says the money loss is due to the Internet, as if it were THAT simple.
I'm a letter carrier with the USPS. And I know that as much as there has been volume loss due to the Internet when it comes to how customers transact their business, I also know that the Internet drives business to the mail; with companies like eBay, Netflix, Amazon... even FedEx and UPS ships with the US Postal Service! It is a tight balancing act between revenue lost and revenue gained combined with operating efficiencies in how the budget gets balanced.
But hardly EVER do any of these reports EVER point out the fact that the US Postal Service has been hit even HARDER in the pocket by something more than the Internet. A requirement was placed on it by the US government to not only pay as it goes with its current retiree health care(as most employers do), but also to put aside an additional $5.5 billion a year for its FUTURE retiree health care. Let me say that again: The USPS pays for its current retirees AND also puts aside an additional $5.5 billion a year into a fund for its future retiree health care. Do you know of ANY other government agency and/or private company that does that?
Let me break down some of the numbers: Since 2007 the US Postal Service has lost $11.7 billion. Over the same period of time, the USPS was required to put aside $12.4 billion in to a fund for its future retiree health care. If you remove the strict prefunding requirement for future retiree health care, the USPS stood to PROFIT $700 million. Not bad for a not for profit agency.
What's more is the Inspector General of the US Postal Service determined that the USPS was overcharged by the US government in the amount of $75 billion for its commitment towards the Civil Service Retirement Fund for employees who were actually a part of the old Post Office Department of the US government before postal reform in 1971. This reform allowed the Service to operate more as a business and generate revenue from products and services sold rather than through tax subsidies from the US government. If the US government were to reimburse the USPS this $75 billion, it would fully pay for the future retiree health care fund and would also put the USPS well into the black. There would be no need for rate increases -OR- any need of eliminating services(i.e. Saturday carrier street delivery.)
So please, don't just report/dwell on the sensational aspects of the US Postal Service by easily pointing the finger at the Internet, but rather report the WHOLE story so the American people can be well informed about THEIR US Postal Service.
For anyone interested in the issues facing the US Postal Service, I invite you to visit the letter carriers' union website at NALC.org
Why is it that whenever there is a news story regarding the US Postal Service and the money it's losing, the reporter always says the money loss is due to the Internet, as if it were THAT simple. I'm a letter carrier with the USPS. And I know that as much as there has been volume loss due to the Internet when it comes to how customers transact their business, I also know that the Internet drives business to the mail; with companies like eBay, Netflix, Amazon... even FedEx and UPS ships with the US Postal Service! It is a tight balancing act between revenue lost and revenue gained combined with operating efficiencies in how the budget gets balanced. But hardly EVER do any of these reports EVER point out the fact that the US Postal Service has been hit even HARDER in the pocket by something more than the Internet. A requirement was placed on it by the US government to not only pay as it goes with its current retiree health care(as most employers do), but also to put aside an additional $5.5 billion a year for its FUTURE retiree health care. Let me say that again: The USPS pays for its current retirees AND also puts aside an additional $5.5 billion a year into a fund for its future retiree health care. Do you know of ANY other government agency and/or private company that does that? Let me break down some of the numbers: Since 2007 the US Postal Service has lost $11.7 billion. Over the same period of time, the USPS was required to put aside $12.4 billion in to a fund for its future retiree health care. If you remove the strict prefunding requirement for future retiree health care, the USPS stood to PROFIT $700 million. Not bad for a not for profit agency. What's more is the Inspector General of the US Postal Service determined that the USPS was overcharged by the US government in the amount of $75 billion for its commitment towards the Civil Service Retirement Fund for employees who were actually a part of the old Post Office Department of the US government before postal reform in 1971. This reform allowed the Service to operate more as a business and generate revenue from products and services sold rather than through tax subsidies from the US government. If the US government were to reimburse the USPS this $75 billion, it would fully pay for the future retiree health care fund and would also put the USPS well into the black. There would be no need for rate increases -OR- any need of eliminating services(i.e. Saturday carrier street delivery.) So please, don't just report/dwell on the sensational aspects of the US Postal Service by easily pointing the finger at the Internet, but rather report the WHOLE story so the American people can be well informed about THEIR US Postal Service. For anyone interested in the issues facing the US Postal Service, I invite you to visit the letter carriers' union website at NALC.org
I am a letter carrier.
First class mail seems to have
all but vanished in the last few months.
Craft blames management and management
blames craft. It has been the same sad
story for decades. The Internet has very quickly
made us irrelevant for first class mail.
The Unions don't want to close Saturday and
they have clout with congress.
The carrier I case next to says he feels
like he works on The Titanic and I am beginning
to feel the same
This continues decade(s)-long trend of near turnover of the USA's postal system to business mailers at the exclusion of the public. USPS customer service in many post offices has become deplorable as assets have been sold off, overnight hours eliminated, window services reduced or complicated and the public 'nickled and dimed' and increasingly incovenienced. USPS management fails to realize the value to well-trained, personable, efficient window clerks--and that many individual customers enjoy doing business with these people. If forced to use automated vending machines (which incidentally don't accept cash or issue single postage stamps anymore), we'll have to do what some of USPS's signs advise: Everything that can be done at the post office can be done on-line! (Or via a business other than USPS?)
