For Whom Does the Post Exist?

Postmaster Mark Jamison writes an excellent article in Steve Hutkins' wonderful blog, savethepostoffice.com, about the big issues: does USPS exist merely to serve advertising mass mailers, or does it have an obligation to serve the nation? USPS management and frequently its Office of the Inspector General, and many of the people on the Postal Regulatory Commission, on the Board of Governors, in Congress, and the president, have the wrong answer.

Urgent Call to Action: Save First-Class Mail

The management of the US Postal Service has proposed a drastic and irreversible reduction in first-class mail delivery standards. Currently 41.5 percent of first-class mail is delivered in one day, 26.6 percent in two days, and 31.6 percent in three days. The proposal would eliminate one-day delivery altogether. Two-day deliveries would increase to 50.6 percent and three-day to 49.1 percent. The proposed increase in delivery time would be devastating to the many individuals, small businesses, and entrepreneurs who rely on first-class mail.

The proposal, the stated goal of which is to “bring operating costs in line with revenues,” would enable the USPS to eliminate 60 percent of the USPS’s processing-and-distribution plants, purportedly to cut costs. But the presumed savings are actually quite small (only $3 billion, or 4 percent of the USPS’s annual budget). All the mail would still have to be delivered. It would just have to be hauled farther to be processed, thus increasing fuel costs and the commensurate harm to the environment.

The possibility of raising revenues by increasing prices and expanding services is never mentioned. Bowing to pressure from the Direct Marketing Association, the postal service recently withdrew a request for an “exigent rate increase.” The USPS charges direct mailers less than what it costs to deliver their advertising mail, so in essence the direct mailers are stealing from the USPS with each piece of mail they send. Regarding the withdrawal of the proposed rate increase, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe exclaimed that the direct mailing industry is “way too fragile” to survive a price increase. Clearly, the health of that industry is more important to him than the health of the USPS.

In its projection of the effects of the proposed change in service standards, the USPS does not even mention the American people. It lists only the possible effects on “commercial mailers.” Noncommercial mailers—citizens, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and rural communities—are not given even the slightest consideration.

Because the reduction in service standards would enable the USPS to dismantle its extraordinary processing-and-distribution network, a return to the current service standards would be impossible, thus permanently undermining the USPS’s ability to serve the American people, further reducing mail volume and postal revenues, and further imperiling the US Postal Service itself. The vast majority of the American people won’t fully realize the effects of the proposed reduction in service until it’s too late.

The notice in the Federal Register invites comments from the public between now and October 21, 2011. Letters may be sent to Manager, Industry Engagement and Outreach, United States Postal Service, 475 L’Enfant Plaza, SW – Room 4617, Washington, DC 20260, or e-mailed to industryfeedback@usps.com.

In hopes of gathering more signatures, we have created a petition at Change.org calling for retention of the current first-class service standards. We have less than two weeks to gather as many signatures as possible. Please sign the petition and write your own letter, and ask others to do the same. Once USPS management’s proposal is accepted, there will be no turning back.

USPS: Vultures Roosting in the Eagle's Nest

The vultures on the verge of destroying the US Postal Service are not merely circling. They've landed in the nest, ready to plunder and privatize, having fully captured USPS management and oversight. It's clear to many that the the Post Office has enemies in Congress, to wit Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), among others. But it's also apparent that there are those in management and oversight who are just as determined to destroy the Post Office, who are in the service not of the American people but of those who consider the USPS their competition and who are eager to devour the advantages it currently maintains.

The postmaster general plans to make drastic cuts that will do away with first-class service, give the pickings to FedEx and the like, and continue propping up bulk mailers (who currently pay less than what it costs the USPS to process and deliver their junk mail). Those cuts will devastate small towns and inner cities, reduce the USPS to a third-class bulk mailer, and replace its middle-class workforce with a workforce of the working poor. All this for what?

Abdicating 6-day delivery to private postal services would, by Government Accountability Office estimates, save costs of only 4 percent of the USPS budget. USPS management has admitted that it wiped one small-town post office off the map because it "'cost' the USPS $1,500 a year more than it made in sales of stamps and money orders." Never mind the mandate that the USPS serve all Americans. Never mind that the USPS is not meant to make a profit but rather to be a self-sustaining service to the American people. Never mind that closing a post office because it is not "profitable" is against the law.

The devastating cuts proposed by the postmaster general—the projected savings of which are absurdly small—will serve only to weaken the USPS, not strengthen it, not put it on firm financial footing. All of the aspects of USPS service that are on the chopping block—6-day delivery, half the distribution network, half the retail network, half the workforce—represent USPS's greatest assets. So why proceed when the financial savings are so small and the resulting loss so devastating? The only conceivable answer is that the intent is not to save money or alleviate the USPS's financial difficulties, but to serve the interests of the vultures ready to devour this national treasure.

The planned devastation of the USPS is based not on need but on greed. The claim of financial emergency is a pretext to break the USPS up and feed the choice bits to the private mailing industry.

The postmaster general says he expects to close 16,000 post offices in six years—that's half of the nation's post offices! And he plans to close or consolidate as many as 313 of the 487 processing plants by 2013—destroying first-class service while estimating the destruction would "save" costs equal to only 4 percent of USPS's budget. When this happens—and USPS management is proceeding fast, in violation of federal law—there will be no more 44-cent postage. Only FedEx rates. There will be no more service to rural, remote, and distressed areas. Newspaper and magazine delivery will be eliminated.

The Internet could be the biggest source of new business imaginable. Customers could e-mail documents to the USPS, which would then print and deliver them from the destination post office. This would be a hugely popular service: next-day delivery anywhere in the country, of anything you can send to a printer. Fast, cheap, and hard copy. All it would require is leadership interested in providing a service to the public.

But what we have now is leadership more interested in providing profit to private moneyed interests than in serving the American people. That is the end result of setting up a public service to function "more like a business," as was done in changing the U.S. Post Office Department to the US Postal Service in 1970-71.

The United States Postal Service is a national treasure that needs to be saved from the formidable forces arrayed against it. And those forces are not only in Congress, but in the USPS itself. Those who seek to save the USPS will not succeed unless they recognize the threat within, and they must do so very quickly or it will be too late.

~~~

John Nichols writes good Save the Post Office columns in The Nation and The Capital Times. And there's always a lot of good information at Save the Post Office, which Steve Hutkins puts together.

USPS Under Threat

The Postmaster General is in the process of:

• reducing the postal distribution network from some 520 processing and distribution centers to “less than 200,”
• increasing delivery times by at least 1 or 2 days for all mail,
• closing 15,000 “unprofitable” post offices,
• destroying 220,000 of the 645,000 postal jobs.

He also wants to:

• reduce delivery from 6 days per week to 5 days per week,
• break the employee unions, lay off middle-class union employees, and replace them with part-time, low-wage, low-benefit employees,
• take away promised retirement benefits employees have worked for,
• take away promised medical insurance benefits employees have worked for.

Why? The big lie is, “USPS is in financial trouble, because volume is down.”

Not true. The “crisis” is entirely a manufactured one. It was manufactured by a 2006 law passed by Congress and signed by George W. Bush. This law requires USPS to:

• pay $5.5 billion yearly to the U.S. treasury, every year for 10 years,
• never raise postage rates, for any kind of mail, faster than the rate of inflation.

If it were not for these arbitrary and deadly requirements, USPS would not be in a financial “crisis.”

The $5.5 billion per year is supposed to pay for medical insurance benefits for future retirees for the next 75 years. No other company, and no other government agency, has to prepay 75 years worth of future benefits.

USPS has already overpaid at least $50 billion into its pension fund. USPS is in no danger of running out of money for retirees.

Postage rates on catalogs and other kinds of “bulk mail” are lower than the cost of delivery. This was true in 2006, it was known in 2006, and it is still true. The 2006 law makes sure these rates stay lower than what it costs USPS to deliver the mail.

Fuel costs have risen faster than the rate of inflation. The 2006 law makes sure USPS cannot increase its prices as much as its costs have increased.

The effect of these destructive requirements is to bankrupt the Postal Service.

Instead of asking the Postal Regulatory Commission for permission to raise prices, the Postmaster General is closing most of the postal distribution network, closing thousands of post offices, destroying hundreds of thousands of decent jobs, and planning to drastically reduce postal service.

It’s as if the people who wrote the 2006 law, and Postmaster General Donahoe, were trying to destroy the Postal Service.

Who would do this? Who will benefit?

The private mailing industry will benefit. After the US Postal Service reduces its distribution network to the point where it can no longer provide service within 1 to 3 days, anyone who needs to send a piece of mail to get somewhere quickly will have to send it FedEx, or some other private service, at a much higher price.

The U.S. Postal Service owns a huge amount of very valuable property: usually a large Post Office in the center of every town. Once the post offices and processing and distribution centers are closed, they will be sold, at low prices, to private companies. Once these post offices and processing centers are gone, USPS will never again be able to recover them.

The Direct Marketing Association and other big mailers of the “Mailers Technical Advisory Committee” want to keep their postage rates low—whatever the cost.

• The cost will be thousands of lost post offices. The loss of some of these will devastate their towns.
• The cost will be hundreds of thousands of lost middle-class jobs. In a bad economy, this loss will multiply to many more unemployed people.
• The cost will be a lesser postal distribution network, no longer able to provide first-class service.
• The cost to remote areas will be that postal service will simply be unavailable.
• The cost to the economy will be the loss of a service essential to millions of people and business.

The USPS has been adding 3 million delivery addresses per year, as population grows. Reducing the distribution network and closing post offices, capacity will not be available when population, prosperity, and need for postal service increase.

The U.S. Postal Service is not a business. It is a public service. Its destruction will do great harm to the U.S. economy.

What should be done?

• Congress must pass House Resolution 1351. This would allow USPS to use the $50 billion it overpaid into its pension fund to cover its obligation under the 2006 law to prepay future medical insurance for future retirees.
• Congress must reject House Resolution 2309 and all similar bills. H.R. 2309 would close thousands more post offices and break the employee unions, replacing decent jobs with low-wage, low-benefit jobs.
• Congress must repeal the 2006 “Postal Accountability Enhancement Act,” which is the cause of the crisis.
• Postage rates on all kinds of mail must at least cover their costs.
• The Department of Justice must investigate and stop the Postmaster General’s actions to close post offices and processing and distribution centers in violation of current law. By law, post offices and processing centers cannot be closed unless USPS can show that the closing will not hurt service. The closings always hurt service. USPS acts without providing required information to the community and unions, without regard to public input, without regard to reduction of service.

Please sign the petition at http://www.change.org/petitions/dont-let-the-usps-be-destroyed. We plan to send the petition to Congress on Sept. 27, 2011.

For more information, see savethepostoffice.com, and follow the links in the “petition activity” tab under “The story so far” on the Change.org petition page.

Contact your representative and senators at http://www.contactingthecongress.org/.

Visit the American Postal Workers Union website at http://www.capwiz.com/apwu/home/ to send your congressional representative an e-mail message and/or find their mailing address.

Contact President Barack Obama via Web Form.

Website: www.whitehouse.gov

Washington Office: District of Columbia 20500

Phone: (202) 456-1414
Fax: (202) 456-2461

Experts on this issue include:

Steve Hutkins writes a brilliant website devoted to exposing USPS attempts to destroy itself:

http://www.savethepostoffice.com/

This post from Sept. 11, 2011 is a good overview:

http://www.savethepostoffice.com/whats-wrong-postal-service-how-about-whats-wrong-media

This post from Aug. 13, 2011 explains that USPS has precipitated a crisis in order to win destructive change not normally possible:

http://www.savethepostoffice.com/shock-doctrine-why-postal-service-scaring-hell-out-us

Carol Miller brings the important perspective of the isolated rural Western town, hard hit by the ruthless and unnecessary abandonment of postal service:

http://www.dailyyonder.com/closing-rural-po-ko-punch/2011/08/12/3472

Cliff Guffey, president of APWU, presented this excellent rebuttal of USPS claims, to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs on Sept. 6, 2011:

http://www.apwu.org/news/nsb/2011/nsb19-110906-senatehearing.pdf

Chuck Zlatkin, Legislative and Political Director of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, the largest local of the American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO, reiterates that USPS is telling the country the Big Lie about itself, in order to turn itself into an employer in the Walmart mode:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Destroying-the-Postal-Serv-by-Chuck-Zlatkin-110905-492.html

Zlatkin is also quoted in Allison Kilkenny’s piece in Truthout, exposing USPS actions as class warfare:

http://www.truth-out.org/last-union/1315492298

This Truthout link also includes a video of Thom Hartman interviewing Chuck Zlatkin.

—TomRW