Facing serious financial problems, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is trying to find ways to make up for lowered revenue.
The USPS says that mail volume is projected to fall from 177 billion in 2009 to 150 billion in 2020, a 37 percent decline in first-class mail alone. Revenue from first-class mail will go down from 51 percent to about 35 percent by 2020.
A number of tactics are being proposed to counter the shortfall, including restructuring retiree health benefits payments, modernized customer access, a “modest” price increase, and fewer delivery days.
The fewer delivery days would eliminate Saturday postal service, which has some members of Congress up in arms.
On March 6, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) held a rally at the Huntington Station Post Office, in Long Island, New York, to extol the virtues of the workers of the USPS.
According to Israel, a cut in the current Monday to Saturday postal delivery service would mean delay. He cited veterans and seniors who await their checks in the mail, adding if their check were due on the day the service was cut that would delay their much needed benefits.
Rep. Israel was clear in placing his blame for the USPS’s current dilemma on mismanagement by the upper echelon of the organization.
“Americans rely on a fully-functional postal system for regular deliveries of Social Security checks, veteran’s benefits payments, medications, and communication from loved ones,” said Rep. Israel.
“Many small businesses don’t shut down on Saturday and our retailers and other small businesses depend on reliable postal service. Mail volume is down and we need to deal with that reality, but that doesn’t mean we should take the drastic step of depriving Americans of weekend mail delivery. I’m proud to be joined today by Long Island postal workers to oppose cutting of Saturday delivery.”
Walter Barton, president of the Long Island Merged Branch 6000 of the National Association of Letter Carriers added that postal workers have already suffered difficult job cuts.
“It’s becoming harder for us to continue to offer the service that Americans expect and deserve and further cuts will not only imperil our workers, but hurt seniors and others who rely on the Post Office for critical deliveries and communication,” said Barton.
Barton spoke proudly on how postal letter carriers are front line sales generators through a program called “Customer Connect” and how this program increased postal revenue by close to $900 million dollars. He added that letter carriers participate annually in a national food drive and have collected almost 1 billion pounds of food for the hungry. Postal carriers are men and women who are a trusted presence in the community and who have saved lives through their attentive concern for their customers.
Both Rep. Israel and Barton pointed out that the USPS had overpaid $75 billion into the Civil Service Retirement System. This is the third time an overpayment of billions of dollars has been made. This was reported by the US Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General in January of 2010.
Both Israel and Barton called for solutions to the current fiscal circumstance of the Postal Service that would disallow any cut in delivery services. Rep. Israel told Postal Management to “Cut the fat, cut the waste, not the mail.
The USPS says that mail volume is projected to fall from 177 billion in 2009 to 150 billion in 2020, a 37 percent decline in first-class mail alone. Revenue from first-class mail will go down from 51 percent to about 35 percent by 2020.
A number of tactics are being proposed to counter the shortfall, including restructuring retiree health benefits payments, modernized customer access, a “modest” price increase, and fewer delivery days.
The fewer delivery days would eliminate Saturday postal service, which has some members of Congress up in arms.
On March 6, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) held a rally at the Huntington Station Post Office, in Long Island, New York, to extol the virtues of the workers of the USPS.
According to Israel, a cut in the current Monday to Saturday postal delivery service would mean delay. He cited veterans and seniors who await their checks in the mail, adding if their check were due on the day the service was cut that would delay their much needed benefits.
Rep. Israel was clear in placing his blame for the USPS’s current dilemma on mismanagement by the upper echelon of the organization.
“Americans rely on a fully-functional postal system for regular deliveries of Social Security checks, veteran’s benefits payments, medications, and communication from loved ones,” said Rep. Israel.
“Many small businesses don’t shut down on Saturday and our retailers and other small businesses depend on reliable postal service. Mail volume is down and we need to deal with that reality, but that doesn’t mean we should take the drastic step of depriving Americans of weekend mail delivery. I’m proud to be joined today by Long Island postal workers to oppose cutting of Saturday delivery.”
Walter Barton, president of the Long Island Merged Branch 6000 of the National Association of Letter Carriers added that postal workers have already suffered difficult job cuts.
“It’s becoming harder for us to continue to offer the service that Americans expect and deserve and further cuts will not only imperil our workers, but hurt seniors and others who rely on the Post Office for critical deliveries and communication,” said Barton.
Barton spoke proudly on how postal letter carriers are front line sales generators through a program called “Customer Connect” and how this program increased postal revenue by close to $900 million dollars. He added that letter carriers participate annually in a national food drive and have collected almost 1 billion pounds of food for the hungry. Postal carriers are men and women who are a trusted presence in the community and who have saved lives through their attentive concern for their customers.
Both Rep. Israel and Barton pointed out that the USPS had overpaid $75 billion into the Civil Service Retirement System. This is the third time an overpayment of billions of dollars has been made. This was reported by the US Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General in January of 2010.
Both Israel and Barton called for solutions to the current fiscal circumstance of the Postal Service that would disallow any cut in delivery services. Rep. Israel told Postal Management to “Cut the fat, cut the waste, not the mail.
