Posted on 09/15/2011 9:20:38 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The US Postal Service unveiled Thursday a drastic downsizing scheme for the embattled public company, including cutting 35,000 jobs, as it seeks to avoid collapse amid a "new reality" in the economy.
"Faced with a massive nationwide infrastructure that is no longer financially sustainable," the USPS said it was proposing sweeping changes aimed at saving the organization up to $3 billion a year.
Among the proposals being studied were cutting more than half of its processing facilities, limiting service, and eliminating as many as 35,000 jobs, the company said in a statement.
They are thinking of bringing back the pony-express.
Ordered some books from Amazon and the tracking says they are coming via USPS with a USPS tracking number but the detail tracking shows it coming via Fedex Smartpost.
In that case, your package was actually shipped via FedEx, who utilized USPS for the "last mile" delivery (aka FedEx SmartPost service). What's a bit interesting is that the converse occurs as well; USPS has a contract with FedEx to bundle priority letters and fly them to destination via the FedEx network.
Actually, no. They are governmental in that they have their own police force, and regulations with the force of law, they do not pay taxes, and members of the board of governors are appointed by the President. But they are almost entirely self-sufficient in income (the government pays for mail to the blind, etc.).
The strike began just after midnight on March 18, 1970, as members of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) local #36 voted 1,555 to 1,055 to walk out the next morning. Even as NALC president James Rademacher urged his membership to return to work, the wild-cat strike spread across the nation. By the time President Nixon appeared on television to announce his decision to call up the reserves to help move mail in New York City, the strike had spread to 100 US cities, and involved over 200,000 postal workers.
As workers marched in picket lines in front of post offices from New York to Los Angeles, Americans who might have taken their mail for granted in previous weeks were anxiously seeking a resolution to the strike. At a time before cell phones and the internet, when fax machines were brand new and few in number, mail carriers toted the nation’s commerce and information in their bags. Letters, bills and checks to pay those bills, birthday cards, passports, legal documents, and even draft notices piled up in mail sacks on post office floors across the nation.
The strike came to an end a little over a week after it began. Postal workers eventually secured a larger pay increase. The troubles that had led to the 1970 strike were not unique to postal workers. By the late 1960s it had become evident that the centuries old institution of the Post Office Department was crumbling under the strain of post World War II mail volumes. The solution to many of these problems at that time was the reorganization of the Department on July 1, 1971 into the U.S. Postal Service. But that is another story for another blog and another time.
I was aware of that one, I didn’t consider it a national strike, but with the information that you provided a case can be made to call it that.
yes, what they don't want to talk about is the pay, the benefits, and the PENSIONS eating up all the money....
so cut jobs already....at least that will be less pension money owed....and then if they do declare bankruptcy, they can all go on to the Pension Guarentee plan......
If they made say 350,000 cuts then I might be impressed...
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