Mail processing plant cuts to proceed this summer, Postmaster General says.
May 9th, 2012 | Postal Service | Posted by Sean Reilly
U.S. Postal Service leaders gave members of Congress some of what they wanted with today’s announcement that widespread post office closures are off the table. But what about plans to shutter or consolidate almost half of some 460 mail processing plants?
Wait until next Thursday for word on that, Postmaster General Pat Donahoe said at a news conference this morning. That’s two days after the Postal Service’s voluntary freeze on any plant closings expires. Although many lawmakers want that moratorium to be extended, the Postal Service will go forward, Donahoe said in a brief interview after the conference.
Although no wholesale closures are immediately in the works, “we’ll have some consolidations in the summer, the majority after the first of the year.” Donahoe said. “From a fiscally responsible standpoint, we have to move ahead on this. We’ve lost too much [mail] volume and we have to address the infrastructure.”
The final plans, though, are still being hammered out, said Donahoe, who declined to say whether the Postal Service will offer buyouts or early retirement incentives to processing plant workers. The agency has scheduled an announcement for next Thursday, May 17.
Tomorrow, incidentally, the Postal Service will reveal its second quarter financial results covering the three-month period from January through March. Both operating revenues and expenses will show a little improvement, Donahoe said, “but we’re still losing volume.”
Tags: Pat Donahoe, Postmaster General
Postal unions to take their case to income tax filers Tuesday
April 16th, 2012 | Postal Service Postal Service | Posted by Sean Reilly
Even if fewer people mail their income tax returns in this era of electronic everything, plenty of last-minute filers will likely be showing up at post offices today to meet the IRS’ deadline. Two unions plan to use the opportunity to press their case against proposed U.S. Postal Service cutbacks.
The American Postal Workers Union and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union are teaming up to do “informational leafleting” at numerous post offices around the country, particularly those that draw media coverage because they stay open late.
“We’re trying to just educate the public as to what would happen to the Postal Service if Congress doesn’t act,” NPMHU President John Hegarty said in a phone interview Monday.
In an apparent coincidence, the Senate will again try today to take up a bill that—as originally proposed—would let the Postal Service tap surplus pension contributions to pay for buyouts and early retirement incentives for up to 100,000 USPS employees. A procedural vote to move forward is set for 11:10 a.m. Washington time. Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and the bill’s other sponsors will need 60 votes to prevail; a first try last month garnered only 51. If they prevail in this round, they are expected to proceed with an amended bill that could be quite different from the original measure.
The Postal Service, which has lost almost $14 billion in the last two years, says it has to close post offices, slash the number of mail processing plants and end most Saturday delivery under a long-term plan to regain profitability. But postal unions say the cutbacks would “inflict long-term damage to the nation’s mail system,” according to a copy of the leaflet to be distributed tomorrow.
[Post updated at 9:14 a.m. Tuesday to note Senate vote this morning.]]
Tags: American Postal Workers Union, John Hegarty, National Postal Mail Handlers Union
U.S. Postal Service labor negotiations collapse
January 20th, 2012 | Postal Service Postal Service | Posted by Sean Reilly
This probably comes as a surprise to just about no one, but an impasse was officially declared today in contract talks between the U.S. Postal Service and two unions: the National Association of Letter Carriers and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. The next step will presumably be mediation or binding arbitration.
The impasse comes two months after prior contracts with both unions officially expired Nov. 20. All sides kept talking after that through two extensions, but could not agree on another extension to keep negotiations alive past today. The parties “currently are discussing how they will proceed,” USPS spokesman Mark Saunders said in a news release. “The existing contracts will be followed until terms of a new contract are resolved.”
The Postal Service is already in arbitration with the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. Members of its fourth union, the American Postal Workers Union, ratified a new contract last year that will run until May 2015.
No official word on what triggered today’s breakdown, but the Postal Service has made no secret of its desire for cost-cutting concessions, at least some of which labor was bound to resist. In a news release, NALC President Fredric Rolando said it was the Postal Service’s decision to end negotiations. Calling the decision a disappointment, Rolando said the union “will pursue a negotiated agreement through mediation and prepare to vigorously defend our members in interest arbitration, if it reaches that step.”
Tags: American Postal Workers Union, National Association of Letter Carriers, National Postal Mail Handlers Union, National Rural Letter Carriers Association
Colbert unveils ‘Farewell to Postage’ stamp
September 16th, 2011 | Postal Service | Posted by Stephen Losey
Colbert's commemorative "Farewell to Postage" postage. (from colbertnation.com)
Stephen Colbert summed up the dilemma facing the U.S. Postal Service beautifully in this Wednesday night segment: “The survival of the Postal Service depends on swift congressional action … goodbye.”
Besides laying into Ben Franklin and the Forever Stamp, Colbert also announced his own line of custom stamps tweaking the Postal Service. (Though some in the agency would probably call it kicking them while they’re down.)
One talking head in the first video lets loose with the head-slapping inaccuracy that the Postal Service is funded with taxpayer dollars (its money actually comes from stamp revenue and other products it sells). But the second video — featuring an interview with former letter carrier and author Phil Rubio — is informative, and Rubio delivers a thoughtful defense of the Postal Service’s universal service mandate.
Tags: bankruptcy, Friday Fun, laugh so you don't cry, Stephen Colbert
Conan on USPS: ‘Please ignore the stench of death’
September 9th, 2011 | Postal Service | Posted by Stephen Losey
Forget “neither snow, nor rain, nor gloom of night.” Conan O’Brien on Wednesday unveiled a blackly comic new motto for the flailing U.S. Postal Service — one suitable for its current financial death spiral:
500
Tags: Conan O'Brien, Friday Fun, US Postal Service
Stay tuned: Post office closing study list out today
July 25th, 2011 | Postal Service Postal Service | Posted by Sean Reilly
Lest anyone’s forgotten, today’s the day that the U.S. Postal Service kicks off its biggest campaign to close post offices since . . . the last one, which quickly flamed out two years ago.
At a 10 a.m. news conference, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is expected to release a list of more than 3,600 post offices that could be shuttered after a newly created review process. (That list is supposed to be up on the Postal Service’s web site at 10:30 a.m.) On Wednesday, the agency will ask the Postal Regulatory Commission to formally weigh in on its plans, according to the National Association of Postmasters of the United States, one of two postmaster groups already fighting the possible changes.
If this all sounds familiar, that’s because in 2009 the Postal Service started a review of some 3,200 post offices, which was then winnowed to 1,000 facilities that merited further study. But the backlash from the public and members of Congress was fierce. Out of almost 32,000 post offices, the agency is now in the process of shutting down about 140 (or roughly .4 percent of the total) under the initiative.
Since 2009, the Postal Service’s financial plight has worsened and Donahoe has replaced John Potter as postmaster general. For anyone handicapping how successful this latest streamlining attempt will be, the question is what, if anything, has otherwise changed.
Is D.C. takeover a model for the U.S. Postal Service?
June 28th, 2011 | Postal Service Postal Service | Posted by Sean Reilly
Even before he was officially in a position to do much about it, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., was adamant that the U.S. Postal Service needed to cut costs faster and deeper. After Issa became chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this January, the looming question was just how he would push that agenda.
The answer: Treat America’s biggest mail carrier like the District of Columbia.
Back in the mid-1990s, the Republican-controlled Congress set up a “board of control” that essentially stripped the district of home rule with the goal of putting its problematic finances in order. Now, Issa wants to do something similar for the Postal Service, with the creation of a panel that could override the postmaster general, void union contracts, and basically prod the mail carrier to do whatever it takes to return to solvency, according to a newly introduced 132-page bill.
Here’s how it would work: If the Postal Service defaults on any obligations to the federal government (and an oversight committee spokesman confirmed that this would include the billions of dollars in prepayments into the USPS retiree health care fund due each September), it would quickly slide into what the bill delicately labels as a “control period.”
The President would then name a five-member commission (officially known as the Postal Service Financial Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority) that would assume overall management responsibility. Among other powers, the authority would approve the Postal Service’s budget and hire and fire top managers. Its tour of duty would end only when the Postal Service made it through two consecutive fiscal years in the black.
The bill would also give the Postal Service a green light to go to five-day-a-week delivery. But from the perspective of current USPS management, which desperately wants such authority, that appears to to be its only major positive. In a news release, agency leaders expressed disappointment that the legislation wouldn’t eliminate the prepayment requirement and that it “would create more government bureaucracy and slow our progress on streamlining our operations.”
The agency adds that it’s not really interested in another $10 billion in Treasury borrowing authority that the legislation would provide. While the expanded line of credit would be available only during the control period subject to the authority’s approval, “the Postal Service does not need to incur additional debt–we need the money back that is already owed to us,” the release says in an allusion to overpayments into its pension program identified by the USPS inspector general and an outside actuarial firm.
In case anyone’s forgotten, incidentally, the Postal Service stopped paying employer contributions into the Federal Employees Retirement System last Friday as a way of holding on to more of its fast evaporating cash.
No hearing or markup on Issa’s legislation has been scheduled at this point.
Tags: Darrell Issa, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, U.S. Postal Service
Postal Service app downloads cross the million mark
June 7th, 2011 | Postal Service Postal Service | Posted by Sean Reilly
Contrary to what you might sometimes think, a lot of Americans are still using the U.S. Postal Service, which today announced more than 1 million downloads of its free mobile application, or “app,” to iPhone, iPod touch and iPad customers.
“We’re expanding access to our products and services,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a news release. “We know simpler is better—a million mobile customers can’t be wrong.”
Among other services, the app allows users to look up ZIP codes, find nearby post offices and track packages. It debuted in December 2009 and consistently ranks among the top ten free business apps available through the itunes.com apps store, the news release said.
For the record, the Postal Service actually crossed the million-mark threshold last Friday, June 3, according to a spokeswoman.
Impact of Postal Service job cuts varies by organization
May 31st, 2011 | Postal Service Postal Service | Posted by Sean Reilly
Lest anyone forget, today’s the last day on the job for some U.S. Postal Service administrative employees who agreed to leave or retire early in return for a $20,000 buyout. It’s part of an organizational “redesign” aimed at cutting some 3,000 administrative positions, or almost 21 percent of the total.
But that overall number masks some pretty big differences in how the reductions are being apportioned among different USPS organizations.
At Federal Times’ request, the Postal Service provided a breakout of the impact on area offices, district offices and headquarters and HQ-related field units, such as the USPS accounting service center. The chart includes the initial number of positions, the projected level after the redesign takes effect and the difference between the two figures. (Fed Times has added the percentages.) Proportionately, the numbers show that area offices are taking the biggest hit, losing more than 27 percent of their posts. HQ and its field units get off much easier, with about a 16 percent reduction. District offices are in the middle.
Asked why HQ and its field units are taking the smallest share of the cuts percentage-wise, spokesman Mark Saunders said “because our plans are to continue to identify opportunities to consolidate and centralize work into our centers.”
| USPS ORGANIZATION | BASE | NEW | REDUCTION |
| HEADQUARTERS & HQ FIELD UNITS | 7,276 | 6,099 | -1,177(-16.2%) |
| AREA ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES | 1,123 | 817 | -306(-27.2%) |
| DISTRICT ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES | 5,791 | 4,347 | -1,444(-24.9%) |
| TOTAL: | 14,190 | 11,263 | -2,927(-20.6%) |
Tags: U.S. Postal Service
USPS-canine relations still troubled
May 19th, 2011 | Postal Service Postal Service | Posted by Sean Reilly
Yep, dogs do occasionally bite, and there are plenty of mail carriers who can attest to it, according to new U.S. Postal Service rankings that put Houston at the head of the pack (lame wordplay totally intended).
For at least the fourth straight year, the Texas city led the country in hostile dog-carrier encounters with 62 in 2010. Runners-up were San Diego and Columbus, Ohio, with 45 each, followed by Los Angeles with 44 and Louisville, Ky., with 40.
In all, 5,669 postal workers were attacked last year, and the medical expenses cost the Postal Service almost $1.2 million. If you’re looking for any trends, warmer areas typically have more attacks because “dogs are out for longer periods over the year,” USPS spokesman Mark Saunders said in an email. For anyone who’s been on the receiving end of a canine’s canines, though, this won’t come as a surprise: The majority of attacks result from humans’ failure “to practice responsible pet ownership,” Saunders added.
The Postal Service issued the rankings in connection with Dog Bite Prevention Week, which runs through Saturday. There’s apparently plenty to prevent: More than 4.7 million Americans are bitten each year, the bulk of them children, the agency said.
Tags: Dog Bite Prevention Week, Houston, U.S. Postal Service