Posted on 01/21/2013 8:29:48 PM PST by Lancey Howard
(Reuters) - While delivering mail on Chicago's North Side, Lakesha Dortch-Hardy spoke about how much she loves her job at the U.S. Postal Service, and how much it would hurt if jobs such as hers were to disappear.
"These jobs are the middle class ..." said Dortch-Hardy, a tall, energetic 38-year-old, who took long strides as she wheeled her cart along a row of two- and three-story brick apartment houses. "Without this job, I don't know where I'd be right now."
The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service has eliminated 168,000 jobs since 2006, and more cuts could result as it struggles to avoid its own "fiscal cliff." As the United States honors Martin Luther King's civil rights legacy on Monday, many African-American workers may be facing new obstacles to achieving and maintaining a middle-class life style.
African-Americans represent 13.1 percent of the U.S. population and 11.6 percent of the labor force, according to a 2012 U.S. Department of Labor report. Nearly one in five African-American workers hold government jobs such as mail clerks, firefighters and teachers, the report said.
"There's a long tradition of the public sector being more friendly, or less hostile, to African-American workers," said Robert Zieger, emeritus professor of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "The Post Office is the best example."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Government doing what it does best: giving out jobs to non-productive people who will vote to keep expanding government.
I just love videos of postal employees sorting mail while wearing headphones while listening to RAP. You just gotta know their minds are really on the task they are assigned.
The postal service has become nothing more than a political card in race relations that is held by the Democrat party.
I remember when I was a child in the 1950’s and our postman (David, a Hispanic man) could be predicted to give us our mail within a period of +/- 15 minutes every day. He walked his route 6 days a week. In the summer we always had a glass of cold water for him. He knew the names of everyone on his route and they all knew him. No one ever got the wrong mail!
The Zip code was introduced and nothing improved with the system. Then, the politically and racially correct postal service got little jeeps to ride around in to deliver mail. Next came an army of different postmen (excuse me...post persons) each day and you never knew who was delivering the mail that day.
As all of this was going on, the price of postage and services kept going up due to the increased costs the system incurred by astounding pay rates for people who did jobs that required very little intelligence.
Consequently, our postal system prides itself on it’s ability to run customers off and to deliver mail to the wrong mail boxes.
Now, they want to cut Saturday delivery out??????? What’s next? Mail only on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday?
Yes..... or at least on three alternate days.
The fact is, there is little mail. The business use has dwindled . Private mail communication is almost non existent.
The need for what you describe simply doesn’t exist in the manner it once did.
“If you are white and don’t have prior military service you can’t get a job with the postal service”
I’m a Vietnam veteran who is white. In the 1970’s I was told flat out I wouldn’t be hired by the Postal Service despite vet’s prefs because (a) I was white and (b) Vietnam vets were regarded as dangerous & unhinged.
Reverse discrimination is a long held tradition in govt.
they really are nice and they do work hard.
Standing at a window and processing one customer at a time? Taking 5 minutes to sell a stamp?
Exactly what is “hard work?”
Interesting typo
If you meant the word - brilliant!
It's a shift of the government's handling of certain sectors of society, still in plantation control mode- but portrayed as 'fair'
I’m white -no military service. They hired me - in Memphis! Maintenance was the exception to that rule. The test was pretty hard. They dumbed it down 2 years ago because Maintenance was 90% white. Now we have custodians that don’t know a/c from d/c qualifying to be electronic technicians
Something to keep in mind in all this: There are 3 major unions w/in the USPS. This is YET another problem with public employees Unions that even FDR said should not exist. Obamaumao would want to expand, truly.
First, there are some real dedicated public servants who are not trammeled by the constant public crabbing. But here are the unions— who have made a career in not working and lining their pockets/pensions.
The Postal Carriers Union—the person that delivers to the door mail, as well as Rural Carriers (which may now be only part time and only contracted out non union).
The Letter Sorters/Mail Handlers- the people in back who “sort” the mail (it is done by sorting pre-coding machines which have taken over much of non-bulk personal mail,zip codes and all)
The Counter workers— yes, a separate union for the “face” of the USPS to the public. Everyone has personally experienced their work rules. With lines outside the door, and say, 5 stations-— they would have 2 open. Truly. In some POs these are the most “irritated” irascible types, and have noticed act bothered to have customers. With exceptions of course.
Civil Service laws... protect the positions.
Dock Workers who are on clock with no work.
Energy costs, maintenance of trucks buildings. Overhead.
But mostly— vast numbers of pensioned after very short work times (and pensioned for life) and work comp lifers.
Ben Franklin would not recognize the service. In Europe the postal services are all privatized. Reports from anyone?
The last part of this excerpt provides the reason for the first part. The only reason there is a strong Negro middle class is due to the Government jobs, or the requirement for the private contractors to hire them, all due to affirmative action and not merit. Over 60% of all Government employees in the DC area are Negroes.
Masters degrees? Let me look at where they got the degrees from: Degree mills? The insipid USDA Masters program? Light weight local programs that have no real education value?
The answer is mostly all of the above as I have spent over 20 years here in the DC area and have had to contend with hiring the ignorant and the pseudo-educated minorities just to keep my job or contracts (high tech engineering research & development).
I have had to deal working with minority Government employees who should be sweeping floors rather than be GS13's and above. In all these years I remember only three minorities who actually had an IQ and deserved their jobs. All three refused to associate with the others of their color and would say so to anyone who asked. Those three remain my friends to this day.
I never thought I would say or type things like this but after I was stationed here over 20 years ago I refused to ignore the facts as presented. It is a shame we have let things go this far.
In Fairfax Country it is blacks and Asians equal. The Asian women have taken over middle level management.
I had three packages stolen in less than a year - all being shipped by USPS.
They had ‘tracking’ numbers. Their tracking system is a joke. It doesn’t track.
They were insured. The value of the items, one was over $400, was clearly printed on the outsides of the boxes. Another joke. (you don’t want post office employees wasting their time on boxes worth less than $50).
To add insult to injury you have to wait A MONTH to report any package missing. (need to give them time to cover their tracks)
BTW - almost every time I have posted an anti-USPS message here on Free Republic I have received a FRe-mail from a post office worker. A nasty one!
Somebody had in mind that they needed such a body to keep USPS from raising prices too high ~ Bwahahahaha ~ in the end ~ that's now ~ the PRC has acted to keep USPS from raising prices sufficiently to recover costs.
The PRC also has the authority to prevent USPS from closing down a post office for failure to make a profit. That's in the law. So, when USPS, by law, cannot and is not supposed to make a profit, they can never close down a post office unless, literally, it burns to the ground.
My proposal was to do an end run around the law by evacuating selected buildings and then lending them to fire departments FOR PRACTICE! A fire starting team of well practiced professionals would arrive and begin burning the building in a safe manner. Firemen would come in and train in a safe live fire environment.
Once burned that post office could be closed.
BTW, I proposed that only in emulation of the Fairfax County dilapidated building disposal program ~ they cleared the immediate area of a number of buildings that'd been caved in when we had a 4 foot snowfall several years back.
It worked great ~ everything from a residential garage to a large Circuit City retail building with a large warehouse facility, then an old steak joint, a ChiChi's and a Bob's Big Boy! I feel much safer with a well trained body of firemen in the community; the right of the community and its firemen to dispose of old nasty buildings should never be abridged by being overly concerned over how high the flames might get.
Then, back to the Postal Service, we needed to get rid of 28,000 unneeded post offices as early as 1976. Then, too, rural route service needed improved by a massive restructuring of the head-out offices, and the extension of rural delivery to small towns. Finally, with a regular program of following up on personnel requirements as modern automation and computer equipment was installed, they would never have OVERHIRED and would not now need to lay anyone off.
That, BTW, has been the law since about the end of the Kingdom of Rome ~ and the founding of the Republica with its SPQR, and piles of law books, records and charts.
Although most folks encounter this law when the shipment involves unsealed food, e.g. frozen steaks that arrive rotten, it applies to anything shipped in glass ~ after all, glass is breakable!
The shipper failed to pack sufficiently to withstand normal handling. He should be happy to replace the items for you.
Yes, the black Congressmen who do what they can to protect black jobs at USPS also do what they can to protect those white jobs at USPS.
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See #60
That's why just dropping them won't give you a 20% cut in carrier costs. However, there's a slightly different situation that has to be dealt with ~ the routes are designed to be covered ~ end to end (counting office time, street time, stop time, fingering time) ~ in 8 hours.
5 day delivery requires 40 hours of work anyway. Counting national holidays, sick leave, internal emergencies (storms that take carriers of the streets), retirements, accidents (cars hit carrier delivery vehicles), and soon, you end up having an average employee who works 4.5 days per week, not 5.0 ~ which means you need substitutes, and not just a PTF, or an OT regular carrier, but a level 6 to cover that extra 1/2 day. He will also need to be able to handle 10 different routes per week ~ which means he'll be among the more intelligent carriers and will likely move up to supervisory positions muchfaster.
A high level of employee turnover in your higher paid positions increases training costs substantually.
Although it's far more complex than i can explain it in these few words, what we have currently are 5.5 day routes covered by 4.5 day average workers, and cutting Saturday gives us 5.0 day routes still covered by 4.5 day average workers. The potential savings end up being this side of less than 1/4 of average out of pocket costs or an average carrier on an average day.
Plus, because the volume of mail to be delivered has an impact on carrier needs, backing up Saturday's mail into a 5 day week will require more routes!
There are solutions to the dilemma ~ (1) contract routes, then the personnel coverage problem is up to the contractor (sort of a modification existing rural delivery rules), (2) whack all door delivery ~ gives us a few extra hours in older white suburbs ~ bet that'd be popular, (3) whack all curbside delivery by installing kiosks ~ which does eliminate most street time and reduces accident ~ savings in Workman's Comp costs are MAJOR!
None off that is terribly revolutionary. In fact plans to do exactly that were worked up in the old Post Office Department in the 1960s. Congress objected so those things were not done.
Write your Congresscritters
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