U.S. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe announced Wednesday morning that mail delivery on Saturdays will be halted beginning in August.linkThe AP reports that ending Saturday delivery will save USPS $2 billion annually. The 237-year-old agency will continue to deliver packages six days a week.
Long overdue IMHO.
from what I heard on NPR, USPS is in violation of Congressional mandate to deliver 6 d/w, so it's going to be another drama vs (Repug) Congress. I suppose the Repugs will again kick the USPS in the balls, like they did with the bankruptcy-inducing forward financing of the USPS pension fund.
I would think continuing to deliver packages 6 days a week would satisfy the mandate. As for the pension funding, a complete non-issue. They need to forward finance their pensions like every other quasi-federal agency who offers Federal retirement benefits has to do.
no other Fed agency, nor any corporation, funds their pension through 2075 __NOW__. It's nothing but a Repug War on Employees to bust USPS and its unionized employees. Has NOTHING to do with real pension requirements.
The USPS is neither a federal agency nor "any corporation".
doesn't matter. It's being blatantly, viciously ed by the Repugs War on Employees/Unions/Govt
Of course it matters. They're not part of the government but get to offer their employees governmental retirement benefits backed by the taxpayers. They need to pay for those benefits. This is not a debatable topic. If some corporation worked out a deal for the government to provide retirement benefits for that corporation's employees wouldn't you want that corporation to have to front the money to cover those benefits?
This is true, but they have been contributing to that retirement money. The Postal service was in the black, until congress decided they must prefund 75 years in 7 years. On top of that, the Postal service had escrow accounts that congress stole, and spent at the same time. If you look at the OMB site, one of their historical do ents shows the postal service money flow. Congress would cry when they were in the red, but gladly spend the money when they had excess revenue.
I believe the retirement prefunding requirement is the sole cause of the Postal service being in the red. Worse yet, there is no fund. Congress just spends it.
Last edited by Wild Cobra; 02-06-2013 at 03:39 PM.
Here is what the Postal Service says:
USPS dot com link: Postal Service Announces New Delivery Schedule
Six Days of Package Delivery, Five Days of Mail Delivery Begins August 2013
February 06, 2013
Release No. 13-019
WASHINGTON — The United States Postal Service announced plans today to transition to a new delivery schedule during the week of Aug. 5, 2013 that includes package delivery Monday through Saturday, and mail delivery Monday through Friday. The Postal Service expects to generate cost savings of approximately $2 billion annually, once the plan is fully implemented.
“The Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial realities resulting from America’s changing mailing habits,” said Patrick R. Donahoe, Postmaster General and CEO. “We developed this approach by working with our customers to understand their delivery needs and by identifying creative ways to generate significant cost savings.”
Over the past several years, the Postal Service has advocated shifting to a five-day delivery schedule for mail and packages. However, recent strong growth in package delivery (14 percent volume increase since 2010) and projections of continued strong package growth throughout the coming decade led to the revised approach to maintain package delivery six days per week.
“Our customers see strong value in the national delivery platform we provide and maintaining a six-day delivery schedule for packages is an important part of that platform,” said Donahoe. “As consumers increasingly use and rely on delivery services — especially due to the rise of e-commerce — we can play an increasingly vital role as a delivery provider of choice, and as a driver of growth opportunities for America’s businesses.”
Once implemented during August of 2013, mail delivery to street addresses will occur Monday through Friday. Packages will continue to be delivered six days per week. Mail addressed to PO Boxes will continue to be delivered on Saturdays. Post Offices currently open on Saturdays will remain open on Saturdays.
Market research conducted by the Postal Service and independent research by major news organizations indicate that nearly seven out of ten Americans (70 percent) supported the switch to five-day delivery as a way for the Postal Service to reduce costs in its effort to return the organization to financial stability.¹ Support for this approach will likely be even higher since the Postal Service plans to maintain six-day package delivery.
The Postal Service is making the announcement today, more than six months in advance of implementing five-day mail delivery schedule, to give residential and business customers time to plan and adjust. The Postal Service plans to publish specific guidance in the near future for residential and business customers about its new delivery schedule.
Given the ongoing financial challenges, the Postal Service Board of Governors last month directed postal management to accelerate the restructuring of Postal Service operations in order to strengthen Postal Service finances.
“The American public understands the financial challenges of the Postal Service and supports these steps as a responsible and reasonable approach to improving our financial situation,” said Donahoe. “The Postal Service has a responsibility to take the steps necessary to return to long-term financial stability and ensure the continued affordability of the U.S. Mail.”
The operational plan for the new delivery schedule anticipates a combination of employee reassignment and attrition and is expected to achieve cost savings of approximately $2 billion annually when fully implemented.
The Postal Service is currently implementing major restructuring throughout its retail, delivery and mail processing operations. Since 2006, the Postal Service has reduced its annual cost base by approximately $15 billion, reduced the size of its career workforce by 193,000 or 28 percent, and has consolidated more than 200 mail processing locations. During these unprecedented initiatives, the Postal Service continued to deliver record high levels of service to its customers.
While the change in the delivery schedule announced today is one of the actions needed to restore the financial health of the Postal Service, legislative change is urgently needed to address matters outside the Postal Service’s control. The Postal Service continues to seek legislation to provide it with greater flexibility to control costs and generate new revenue and encourages the 113th Congress to make postal reform legislation an urgent priority.
The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.
taxpayers guarantee Ms of pensions, like Congress, president, the entire govt.
that still doesn't justify the Repugs ing USPS with an insane forward-pension funding requirement.
congress, president, entire govt = government employees
post office =/= government employees
Yet is is authorized by the cons ution.
Isn't it ironic?
If it were up to me I'd cut all the ties between the post office and the government and let the post office do as they please. But that's not going to happen. You raise a valid point, but what congress does with the money once they get it and whether or not the post office needs to be funding their pension obligations are two separate issues.
How does the government fund it's pension obligations?
Government agencies fund the pension obligations to their employees out of whatever pile of money they're appropriated by congress.
Mon, Wed, Fri is what they should do. Then the deliveryperson would only be a part-time job. No benefits or pension. Also I wouldn't get junk mail every day
should do that to your job.
This is a terrible idea and I hope it doesn't work out. Millions of Americans depend on the postal service and rely on the mail running 6 days a week. This is just another downfall of technology and how we are headed toward Wall-E. We're gonna all get fat and sit on our asses in chairs that hover above the ground and we're gonna watch tv all day and drink soda.
In!
They'll always be wars. There won't always be snail mail
Absolutely has to be done tbh. USPS are doing , this will save good money..
Exactly. There is no retirement fund, lockbox, etc. Why should the USPS have to do it differently, when it is one of the few things mandated by the cons ution?
Why We Must Rescue the U.S. Postal Service From the Brink of Death
The third and current part of the life of the post office began in 2006 with the passage of the misleadingly led Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.
A bit of background is necessary to understand this historic piece of legislation. In 2001 the GAO placed the Postal Service on its high-risk list because of concerns about its economic future given the poor management and labor relations and increased compe ion from electronic mail. At the request of Congress and GAO, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) conducted a review of the Postal Service’s liability to the Civil Service Retirement System. Almost everyone expected OPM to discover huge liabilities. Instead, it concluded that USPS had overfunded its pension plan by more than $70 billion. In 2003, GAO raised the estimated overfunding to more than $100 billion.
In a sane world, USPS would have been able to use these funds to expand services, pay down existing debt and invest in new technology. But Washington is anything but sane. The USPS is considered part of the unified budget used for scoring purposes to estimate any legislation’s impact on the deficit. If USPS were to tap into its surplus funds it would increase the overall federal deficit.
For three years Congress debated what to do. Finally, in 2006 it passed a law that requires the Postal Service to pre-pay its health insurance fund by depositing an additional $5 billion a year for the next 10 years into the insurance fund to offset for the phantom accounting deficit under the unified budget. No other public or private agency is required to do anything remotely comparable.
In 2007, unsurprisingly, USPS suffered a $5 billion deficit. Today that deficit is over $20 billion and is used to justify the death of the post office by amputation of its work force, its processing centers and its local offices. The 2006 law also specifically prohibited USPS from offering new products that would create “an unfair or otherwise inappropriate compe ive advantage for the Postal Service….”
Elaine C. Kamarck of Harvard Kennedy School of Government has observed the essential contradiction in Congress’ at ude toward the post office from the very beginning of its new life as a corporation. “Congress wants it to be self-sufficient but doesn’t want it to make money.” Kamarck continues:
“For example, in the mid-1970s, the post office was told to remove copy machines from post offices under pressure from lobbyists representing office equipment stores who feared that USPS was taking away its business. Later when the USPS initiated a 'Pack and Send' service, the outcry from Mailboxes Etc. and other private packing stores successfully challenged the service.
"Years later, when Internet shopping took off, the delivery of packages to individual households should have resulted in a dramatic increase in USPS business. But parcel shipments were generated by large organizations and the USPS was not allowed to negotiate discounts and thus lost business. It was forbidden by law from lowering prices to get more business. This resulted in the entirely incredible situation in the 1990s where the United States government negotiated an agreement for the delivery of U.S. government package services with Fed Ex because the USPS was not allowed to negotiate for lower prices!”
http://www.alternet.org/economy/why-...tter790532&t=7
We can spend 4 Billion every week on illegal wars and murder all over the world, bail out banks, etc...but we need USPS to close on Saturdays to save 2 billion a year lol
Because they're not a federal agency. Post office employees are not government employees. If you want to make the post office part of the government, that's a separate conversation.
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