Posted on 02/08/2013 1:22:31 PM PST by Ouchthatonehurt
You know that feeling of pleasure you get when you see someone stand up to a bullying, incompetent boss? It’s viscerally satisfying, isn’t it?
That’s the way I felt this morning when I heard Postmaster General Patrick Donahue announce that the U.S. Postal Service intended to move forward with a plan to stop Saturday delivery of mail, effective sometime in August. In doing so, Donahue stuck his thumb in the eye of the U.S. Congress, the mail agency’s ultimate boss. Bravo, Mr. Donahue.
You may think I have incorrectly identified the incompetent party here. After all, it’s a deeply ingrained part of Americans’ worldview that our postal service is the epitome of inefficiency and bad management, the perfect example of a bungling, poorly run government bureaucracy. That view gets reinforced from all kinds of sources – jaded journalists, editorial cartoonists given more to clichés than to cleverness, free-market economists, and others.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Why, I think that reducing service, raising rates, begging taxpayer money and blaming everyone else is always a good way to get the public on your side.
Rubber band? You got lucky! I’ve had two boxes in the last two months jammed into the mailbox to the extent that I thought I was going to have get the Jaws of Life to pry the mailbox apart enough to extract the boxes. Fortunately, the items in the boxes were well packed and despite the damage to the boxes from semi-extreme extraction menthods, what was inside was ok. The mail carriers will do just about anything not to get out of their trucks and come to the door with anything.
Haha, you are right, I recall that happening here, too.
Yep, USPS is another one of their hosts and soon to be among their casualties.
The $5.4 billion payment is one of a number. They finally ran out of money.
I am tired of subsidizing the taxpayers!
Really? Thought they were paid like my local union employees.
A cop starting out in San Jose has a base salary and the tax payer contributes 100%. Or $38k + per year towand their retirement. same with fire fighters, librarians earning $200k in base salary and IT guys earning $80k base per year.
Si it’s completely different fir USPS?
Really ??? You seem passed at me for some reason. I’ve got two friends who are USPS. They are members of my lodge. I don’t have contact with them until next week but, I will ask them.
It’s my understanding they do belong to a union. It’s called something or other
The small rural post offices are nothing the big city APWU/NALC (bargaining unit) want to have kept in business ~ you are looking for NAPUS and National League of Postmasters. They have a right to consult with management, but are not unions ~
http://www.postmasters.org/ ~ you’ll find that the International Socialists are in league with this group to keep open useless small post offices ~ (note Bernie Sanders in the text). We want to close these guys down ~ 28,000 of them haven’t served a purpose since the 1920s.
http://www.postmasters.org/ ~ you’ll find that the International Socialists are in league with this group to keep open useless small post offices ~ (note Bernie Sanders in the text). We want to close these guys down ~ 28,000 of them haven’t served a purpose since the 1920s.
APWU has over 300k in members ...
Seems like there are at least 7 national unions and more than 50 local or regional.
Gotta go. Dinner time.
The big dogs are NALC and APWU ~ but they don’t work at those small post offices.
Ultimately postal retirees are paid an annuity by Office of Personnel Management (a us gub'mnt agency) but the employees and the USPS have paid funds into that system. This is done on an actuarially sound basis ~ no expectation of 8% returns like those police department local retirements assume ~
There's a HUGE fund that's built up from postal contributions ~ it's worth hundreds of billions of dollars. The US gub'mnt has borrowed it ~ to get around the debt limit!
Postal employees and retirees are currently subsidizing the US Government ~
Your mail-piece count is correct, but in 1969 there were almost 1 million employees. It's about 350,000 now.
Nonsense -- even posted twice, it's nonsense.
The USPS wasn't "forced to fund its unfunded liabilities", it was forced to fund nonexistent, potential, future liabilities. I'm sorry to say it was a Republican Congress that ordered it.
No other government branch was required to do the same. Why was that?
Folks regularly sat around drawing up enormously impressive charts showing the date when the POST OFFICE DEPARTMENT would employ every man, woman and child in the country!
There was a strike in 1969. The Postal Reorganization Act was passed in 1970. The USPS began in 1971.
It's really important to keep these dates straight. The first date I gave you was in 1966. It came from a major management presentation made available for review on June 11, 1966.
Mail began taking off as an advertising vehicle and using the old manual distribution systems and antiquated rules the POD was hiring people right and left to get it handled and delivered.
Along the way in that period the old national hub office at Chicago literally broke down and they couldn't even get the mail into the building. Tractor trailers were lined up for miles all over the Chicago region waiting for dock time at the main post office. Then there was the strike. Congress reeled under the weight of the customer complaints ~ many of them complained that they had no time or anything else ~ they begged Richard M. Nixon to save them!
I truly do -- and did -- understand the difference between 1966 and 1969. The fact remains that the Post Office employed some 960,000 in 1969.
My point was that the Post Office has severly reduced its workforce.
“Severly” is often spelled “severely”. Cheers.
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