Posted on 09/05/2011 3:39:39 AM PDT by tobyhill
The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.
“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”
In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.
The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.
As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.
At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the agency’s predicament on Tuesday. So far, feuding Democrats and Republicans in Congress, still smarting from the brawl over the federal debt ceiling, have failed to agree on any solutions.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
For-profit businesses have incentives (and freedoms) that government-subsidized and/or owned enterprises don't. While privatization isn't the answer to every problem, it works great for some operations if structured and managed properly.
“I also invite all of you anti-USPS posters to walk a mile in a mail carrier’s shoes. Or seventeen miles. In 104 degrees and humid. Just a couple of weeks. Or in ten inches of snow for 17 miles. Or, like last winter here, 18 inches of snow.”
Those workers deserve better management.
Another example of union ruination. Postal workers can get the best and same insurance at a fraction of the cost other federal employees must pay. “Collective bargaining” has caused this bankruptcy. Unless there’s an extremely dramatic change it needs to fold and be privatized.
There is nothing in the Constitution that requires a daily delivery of subsidized junk mail, or even delivery.
“On top of that, why is government competing with the private sector delivering parcels in the first place?”
At the time the post office was envisioned as part of The Constitution, writing letters was as important as radio or television is today. It was a strategic military and commercial necessity. I don’t think the post office became a political playing field until after Vietnam when there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of unemployable veterans. The post office became not just a pork barrel jobs program, but a political cash cow. There was in the neighborhood of a million voters working in the PO so Congress took care of the postal workers with special retirement schemes.
My Mom is fond of saying “Pigs get fat but hogs get slaughtered.” The Post Office has become a hog when the people paying the bills are losing their homes. It’s time to let the Post Office go. The function it performs is no longer vital and can be handled better by commercial interests.
The no layoff clause is seriously hurting the ability of the USPS to trim the workforce. But here is what I don’t understand;
The USPS just signed a new contract with the APWU in May. We were all expecting the no layoff clause to go, and modest pay cuts. Instead, the no layoff clause was EXPANDED to cover all current employees. In the previous contract, layoffs were prohibited only for career employees with six years of service.
In addition, our pay was not cut, but frozen until 2013. (We haven’t had a raise since 2009, and that was 1.2%).
One problem not discussed in this article is AGE. Our workers are old! I work in a package sorting facility, and the average age of workers is somewhere between 55 and 57 years old. We desperately need an injection of a little youth into the workforce.
The no layoff clause is seriously hurting the ability of the USPS to trim the workforce. But here is what I don’t understand;
The USPS just signed a new contract with the APWU in May. We were all expecting the no layoff clause to go, and modest pay cuts. Instead, the no layoff clause was EXPANDED to cover all current employees. In the previous contract, layoffs were prohibited only for career employees with six years of service.
In addition, our pay was not cut, but frozen until 2013. (We haven’t had a raise since 2009, and that was 1.2%).
One problem not discussed in this article is AGE. Our workers are old! I work in a package sorting facility, and the average age of workers is somewhere between 55 and 57 years old. We desperately need an injection of a little youth into the workforce.
hahaha you got to be kidding.
First of all, its not the pay, its the bennies. Even though the pay is too high compared to the private sector.
Its like most of guv.con. Its a social engineered work program for mostly incompetent parasites.
I work there and I see the full spectrum. A lot of us really want to see the systemic changes made that would leave us leaner, more efficient, and competitive once again.
Some seem oblivious to it all.
There are some that do as little as possible, don’t care if you ever get your mail - or if their employer is solvent and providing a good value. They just want what they are “entitled” to.
Union rules. You can put them out the door, but the union will have them back in a month, with full pay for time off and a handful of grievances. Insanity!
BU,Bye!
Not No, but H___ No.
Let the untions eat some like we taxpayers do
There are people who just read past the parts they don’t like int he Constitution. Obama does it, and DB does it , and a bunch of others do too.
Ain’t nothing going to get fixed in the US until people have to “get it” that all the promises made in the past were all lies that were by nature, never going to be doable.
We have more people waiting for payouts for sitting home on their arse than we have people actually working.
Just curious. I’ve heard that before, but don’t know if it is true. I work for the USPS and pay about $300/month for family coverage. That is up over 200% from last year.
Still a bargain vs most private companies, but how much higher are premiums for the rest of the FedGov? Freepers, anyone know?
Also, we get all kinds of health insurance options from the union. They all suck, but they offer them. Most are lower cost catastrophic coverage, STD, LTD, etc.
People who oppose the constitutionality of carrier delivery are against national defense.
Seriously. “I don’t like it, therefore I reject reality and substitute my own.”
You would think, since the gov doesn't need to make a profit, that they would run FedEx and UPS out of business ... even without that "burden-of-making-profit" they are losers. Shut it down and put it on the museum wall right beside the blacksmith's shop.
Whatever else it is, it’s Obama’s fault! (Happening on Obama’s watch. Post hoc, propter hoc. Take it to the libs.)
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