The debate about the Postal Service’s future is heating up and Pushing the Envelope is interested in your views. Last week the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and International Security held a hearing on the Future of the Postal Service. The week before there was a hearing in the House on the Postal Service’s financial crisis and future viability, and on April 12, the Government Accountability Office issued a report laying out the strategies and options to maintain the Postal Service’s viability.
Some of the strategies under discussion include:
• Ending Saturday delivery.
• Reducing the size of the workforce.
• Making postal employees pay the same share of health and life insurance premiums that other federal employees pay.
• Generating revenue through new products.
• Allowing the Postal Service more pricing freedom.
• Restructuring the Postal Service’s network of mail processing facilities.
• Moving retail services from Post Offices to alternative access options.
Loading ...One item that is generating a great deal of discussion is whether the large payments the Postal Service must make for retiree health benefits should be restructured. One option is to give back some of the excess pension funding and allow the Postal Service to use these funds for other purposes. In January, the Office of Inspector General for the Postal Service issued a report that found the Postal Service had been overcharged $75 billion for its pension obligations from 1971 to 2009 because of an inequitable method of calculating the size of those obligations. Adding to this inequity is the fact that the Postal Service is currently required to fund 100 percent of its retiree health and pension obligations. Very few in private industry do this, and the rest of the federal government’s pension funding level is only 41 percent. In addition, the OIG believes that the forecast of the Postal Service’s future retiree health care costs is too high. Fixing these issues could save the Postal Service $7 billion a year.
What do you think? Which strategies will be most useful to the Postal Service? Should the mix of strategies include cutting delivery service?
This topic is hosted by the OIG’s Risk Analysis Research Center (RARC).
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1) Eliminate Saturday delivery service, but keep the post offices store location open for those folks who just have to have it right away. Checks come in the mail and sometimes those just can’t wait, but folks can come pick them up.
2)Centralized mailbox locations in neighborhoods, like the ones installed in new housing developments. 8 addresses per central mail box is perfectly reasonable. It is not unreasonable to ask folks to walk a house and a half to pick up their mail. This can also increase mail carrier efficency if they don’t have to walk to every individual house. One carrier can service a larger route if they can work faster, and that can reduce overhead.
3) Mail delivery times can be Slightly relaxed, by a day or so, if there are improved tracking services like UPS and FedEx have. Slower mail is OK as long as there is proof it is on the way.
4) Postal employees are federal employees. They should pay the same for benefits as all the rest of the federal employees.
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One way to solve the issue of red ink and restructure the system would be to do the following.
EVERYONE in the U.S. Postal Service, including Inspector General, take pay cuts and benefit reductions but still maintain an income above that of MOST Americans.
A) $10/hr should be suitable enough for anyone to live on.
B) STOP buying employees ridiculously high priced houses.
C) As government employees they still get their healthcare coverage provided for them.
D) The USPS website provides free boxes for shipping. Perhaps you could charge a $5 shipping and handling fee for shipping the large order of those free boxes to customers.
E) Perhaps you should extend the “If it fits it ships” motto to ALL packages & envelopes, not just the afor mentioned free shipping boxes.
F)Whatever you do… do NOT start deleting days of the week you deliver mail.
And finally G) Energy-efficient vehicles & buildings would significantly reduce the cost of oil and electric bills. PLUS, if you are driving hybrid vehicles then you could plug into your own building to recharge and the solar paneling (it’s the least environmental impacting energy source)would produce more than enough energy for your building so that would mean you could sell some left over energy generated to the power companies.
Those are just my thoughts.
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There are two extremely viable competitors: Fedex and UPS. Why is so hard to look at their business model and make a comparison?
They are more reliable, customer friendly, and are not attached to the federal government. Go Figure! Many people would rather use Fedex or UPS for the sole reason that they are not attached to government.
Constantly raising rates doesn’t make customers happy either.
A plan was given to senior management a couple of years ago, a friend of mine submitted it, but it has not come to fruition, maybe it’s worth considering again.
Offer a service through the internet, where you email a letter to USPS, they print it and send it for you. There could be choices for cards, font, etc.
USPS could save money by sending it electronically to the closest service center to the destination, print and mail it to recipient.
Sender could pay via credit card/paypal online.
For those that want the personal touch of a physical card, but don’t want the hassle of buying card/envelope/stamp.
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My idea is to charge for home delivery. People pay for a box and drive to the post office to pick up their mail. If they charge everyone a yearly fee for home delivery, business delivery, etc that should offset the gas, etc.
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Restructure – remove the bulk, redundancy, and bloat that government run entities produce.
Fire non producers – Government entities are the worst for never firing people that don’t perform well, or don’t care, and government jobs are one of the few places people can get away with it.
Expand services – One commenter mentioned becoming a fedex/ups drop point, and charging fedex and ups. Perfect idea.
Stop considering cutting service, laying off employees, or raising prices as solutions. No business has ever gotten anywhere by offering less and charging more, and your goal is to restructure as a profitable business. Once you teach people to live without you, they won’t come back.
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Why not drop Tuesday mail instead of Saturday mail? Our work gets so much Saturday mail that we need someone to go get it from the PO box before Monday’s mail arrives. But we get so little Tuesday mail that we don’t send anyone to the post office to get it. Homeowners would appreciate getting Saturday mail I’m sure too. I think it’d be best to look at overall, how much mail, for homeowners and business, gets delivered on all the days and drop the day with the lowest.
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Please do not eliminate Saturday delivery. Close un-needed post offices or something else.
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Does anybody actually think that with the total imept postal management and the idiot that over paid not once but twice, has the mentality to manage funds for future payments? the way they waste money , spending on worthless junk to process mail that they no longer even process, and spending all that money and time generating barcodes on mailboxes, doors, windows, bathroom stalls, vehicle dashboards, time clocks, hot cases, and installing GPS in vehicles when they have enough managment to street supervise every single carrier every day. Secondly why is there no proof of this overpayment, there has to be a copy of the electronic transfer and why was the idiot that overpaid not held responsible for investigating the matter. Every single manager and supervisor in the Post office should be arrested for impersonating a postal official. They have lost money for 200 consecutive years, why would anybody think different . I will say that every manager in the postal service is denying a village somewhere of an idiot. The gates are down, the lights are flashing, but there is no train coming.
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I pay most of by monthly bill on line either through the companies on line service or a third party payer. With the advent of these services why can’t the USPS develop a bill paying service and charge a fee. Why do all the mail carriers have a truck they use to deliver the mail in, it’s stop and start a waste of fuel. A few years ago the carriers walked and use little pull carts. Increase bulk fees. The USPS could be like other companies cut hours of employees reduce benefits like insurance, vacations, sick time,
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Why not offer the space on stamps themselves for sale? As advertising? Instead of a $.44 stamp it could be a $.50 or $.75 stamp with the company logo or pitch right on it.
I wonder how many square feet of stamps are sold everyday. What would such advertising space cost if it were a billboard? They could be sold exslusively to the company itself or for additional $, offered for sale within pre-selected zip codes.
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It will need to be a combination of solutions. The USPS need to run leaner and meaner. My suggestions are that you implement any, all or in combination of the following:
• End Saturday delivery for general mail — increase rates for special delivery, express services, and other services
• Reducing the size of the workforce — there is no reason why the USPS should hold onto non-producers… it needs to run like any other business. Cut the slackers!
• Increase automation where you can. Keep employees who are willing to learn new computerized systems and let go those who are not.
• Making postal employees pay the same share of health and life insurance premiums that other federal employees pay — everybody else pays, why not the USPS? Truth of the matter is that health care costs will continue to rise. It is not fair for the taxpayers to foot the entire health insurance bill for any government employee, local, state or federal. It is time for all employees (public, private, and government) to help pay health/life insurance costs! I say this AND I AM a government employee!
• Allowing the Postal Service more pricing freedom — if you’re going to raise prices, you should hit the bulk mailers with the next increase. Bulk mail continues to make up the majority of my mail, especially since most of my bills & bank statements come to me on-line. I don’t appreciate all the bulk mailed stuff. I end up throwing it all out anyway!
• Restructuring the Postal Service’s network of mail processing facilities — the USPS should look for overall efficiency where ever they can get it. If it means closing less busy neighborhood post offices, do so.
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raising rates again? are u people stupid,raising rates are going to push people away from using the postal service,i am one of them,i have not used the postal service in over 5 years ,because of all the rate increases,if people are smart they will do all the business online
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i agree with what jay schmidt said. these price increases are out of hand,just to mail a letter,if the post office would drop the price of stamps ,they would get a lot more custumers,when will the post office finally get it ,
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The post office should become more relevant in the Internet age by being the official creator and holder of the public security key used in e-mail encryption technology like PGP (“Pretty Good Protection”). PGP and related encryption technology is exactly analogous to the Post Office ensuring that the letters you send stay sealed in their envelope from the beginning to the end of their trip. Note that the Postal Service would not have the “private” key portion of the code, so they would not be able to “open” any e-mail messages. If the US Postal Service did this, everyone who wanted to send secure e-mail would have a solid organization supporting e-mail encryption technology. In addition, this would be a source of revenue for the Postal Service, since it would now be a national point of contact for anyone who wanted to send secure e-mail messages. They could even use this to extend their reach into the business of supporting the secure delivery of electronic mail for businesses like banking and medicine.
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I believe the postal service should go to a 5 day work week. But closing them on Saturdays would not be beneficial for most americans who can’t get to the post office during the week. Also get rid of the employees that are sucking the post office dry while being on so called light duty! Get rid of the union that protect those employees. I bet if they were followed around on their weekends they are lifting more than ten pounds! There are plenty of people who need jobs and would love to have the benefits that postal employees get. Especially the pay they make!
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After reading all these good ideas, its is apparent that if the usps can’t reduce costs it is because they ( the managemant) doesn’t want to.
Simply develope a brainstorming team to look at each idea and carry thru.
This is not brain surgery, just do it…
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#1 Go to a 5 day delivery schedule.
#2 Charge for home delivery, give Post Office Boxed away at no charge. ( You’re doing it backwards now ! )
3. Re-evaluate the cost versus profit from Special Issue / Collectors Stamps. It’s a stamp, keep it simple and inexpensive to produce.
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Our town has four post offices (which are not that busy). UPS has a retail store and Fed Ex has a drop off box. I would think about consolidation regarding these sites. People that want UPS drive to town so why should it be differenr for the USPS. I also think the USPS is having the same problems with escalating retirement benefits as is every state, county and municipality. Raising prices will not solve your issues.
Vernon, NJ
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Come on Mike…….it costs 44 cents to maill a letter up to 5000 miles. We have the cheapest Postal System in the world. If you compare what inflation has done in 40 years, the cost of a postage stamp has not kept up. I am amazed at the people who have nice cars and homes but complain about the cost of a 44 cent stamp.
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I think saturday service can be dropped would save lots.
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