Philadelphia Post Office
Update on 5 Day Delivery–New Website
The U.S. Postal Service has launched a website on usps.com to provide information to all customers about its proposal to implement a five-day street delivery schedule. The Postal Service proposes to end regular Saturday mail delivery to street addresses as part of a comprehensive plan to ensure that it can continue to deliver affordable service to the American people. Post Offices will remain open on Saturdays.
The website, www.usps.com/communications/five-daydelivery has a planning guide for businesses and household customers, and answers to frequently asked questions.
USPS summer sale, look for your letter!!
Release No. 09-020 Summer Mail Sale Returns
Customer Loyalty to Be Rewarded Again in 2010
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Postal Service did something for the first time last year, and it was so successful, they’re planning to do it again: launch a summer sale.
The 2010 Summer Sale is scheduled to run July 1 through Sept. 30 and will provide a 30 percent rebate to eligible mailers on Standard Mail letters and flats volume above a predetermined threshold. The threshold will be five percent over each participating mailer’s volume for the same period in 2009. Invitations to participate in the sale will be sent to customers in early March.
“The 2010 Summer Sale is our way of rewarding our most loyal customers and demonstrates that we value their business,†said Robert F. Bernstock, president, Mailing and Shipping Services. “We expect the 2010 Summer Sale to provide as much excitement about direct mail as the sale did last year and to generate between 300 million and 1 billion new mailpieces.â€
Nearly half the 960 customers enrolled in the 2009 Summer Sale increased their mailing volumes. This resulted in approximately 1 billion incremental pieces during the sale period, producing a net revenue contribution of $24 million.
“Direct mail works, and our customers know that,†said Bernstock. “That’s why we will continue to invest in programs that promote the health of our customers’ businesses as well as our own. We very much appreciate our customers’ business, and we will compete aggressively for their advertising and promotion dollars in this highly competitive marketplace.â€
To be eligible to participate in the 2010 Summer Sale, a company must have mailed 350,000 or more Standard Mail letters and flats between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2009. Approximately 3,525 customers are expected to be eligible to participate in the sale, representing 67 percent of the Postal Service’s Standard Mail volume.
The 2010 Summer Sale is a component of a broader pricing strategy that creates incentives to grow and retain volume. It was one of many solutions discussed this week at a Washington, D.C.-stakeholder event in which Postmaster General and CEO John E. Potter addressed hundreds of customers, business partners, employees and the media during a presentation: Envisioning America’s Future Postal Service. At the event, Potter outlined an aggressive plan of cost cutting, increased productivity, and an array of legislative and regulatory changes necessary to maintain a viable Postal Service.
The 2010 Standard Mail Summer Sale is subject to approval by the Postal Regulatory
How Would You Make Over the U.S. Postal Service?
From Inc.com
With bankruptcy looming, the U.S. post office needs a major fix. We asked Inc. 500 CEOs how they would approach the problem
By Darren Dahl | Oct 1, 2009
Everyone agrees that the U.S. Postal Service could do better. With bankruptcy looming, there’s a consensus that big changes need to happen, most involving cutting staff and scaling back services. But what if we could unleash the creative ingenuity of entrepreneurs to improve the post office? We asked Inc. 500 CEOs how they would approach the problem. Here are some of their responses.
The USPS needs a digital mail system. Your physical address could become your username, with the post office allowing you to turn off physical delivery of mail, like banks have done with bank statements. Recipients could choose to have their physical mail delivered to their home mailboxes for archiving once a month. By creating and owning the digital postal service market, the USPS could greatly reduce costs and become profitable, useful, and relevant for the next 100 years.
Aaron Houghton
Chairman and co-founder, iContact
Durham, North Carolina
The mail carrier could do pickups and charge a monthly pickup fee, just like FedEx and UPS, while keeping the letterbox as a free service. Simply adding a $25 monthly fee for businesses that want a daily mail pickup would be something that many businesses would jump on. If you had even 20 percent of the small-business market, you could generate an extra $60 million a year. If the USPS also cut retiree benefits by 40 percent and operating costs by 10 percent, along with raising rates by 5 percent, it could turn a $7 billion loss into a $4 billion profit.
Sandeep Walia
CEO, Ignify
Cerritos, California
Raise the rates on first-class mail. It is the postal service’s core, and it has a monopoly to deliver it. This system actually works and is the most profitable part of the USPS. When the USPS’s first-class rates are compared with those in other industrialized countries, though, they are grossly underpriced. A similar-size letter mailed in the U.K. costs 65 cents versus 44 cents with the USPS; in Germany, it costs 78 cents. Using 2008 statistics, each one-penny increase in the first-class mail rate would add over $900 million in revenue. If you raise it by 5 cents, you add another $4.5 billion.
Harry Geller
CEO, SoDel Concepts
Bethany Beach, Delaware
When it comes to shipping small packages, the USPS is cheaper than its competitors and offers comparable and sometimes even faster delivery times. However, since it doesn’t offer reliable tracking, we pay a premium to ship most of our packages with UPS. If the USPS tracked packages as well as UPS, it could capture a lot of business.
Sean Harper
Co-founder, TSS-Radio
Chicago
The USPS is an out-of-date concept. I don’t think my 18-year-old son has ever written a letter. For him, the post office is about as relevant as cassette tapes, rotary phones, and broadcast television. The USPS doesn’t need to be fixed — it needs to be sold off.
Tony Paquin
CEO, Paquin Healthcare Companies
Celebration, Florida
Copyright © 2009 Mansueto Ventures LLC. All rights reserved.
Inc.com, 7 World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007-2195.
Junk mail delivers a sense of satisfaction
From The Chicago Tibune
By
Steve Johnson
Tribune reporter
September 22, 2009
E-mail Print Share Text Size There’s still time to improve my lawn. Public radio needs me to renew my membership. A “quality closet” can be mine for just $495.
And the Lyric Opera, of course, has another great season of songs in foreign tongues and “projected English translations above the stage for all operas,” information clearly worth sending in duplicate.
I’m supposed to hate this stuff. It kills trees, which contributes to global warming, and weakens the grip of the screws attaching my mailbox to my house wall, which leads to stucco failure.
I’m supposed to hate it for constantly nagging me: Buy this, sign up for that, donate to us. And above all, I’m supposed to hate it for having the temerity to try to make me change, in however small a way, the way I lead my life.
But the truth is, except for the rare, genuinely deceptive stuff — credit-card solicitations designed to look like bills — I don’t mind junk mail.
In a “Seinfeld” episode, Kramer once bricked up his mailbox to fend off a catalog onslaught. I open my box to all who care enough to write or, more accurately, stuff an envelope with printed material.
It’s sad psychological comfort, I know, but far better is the day with two credit card offers and a Jiffy Lube coupon than the one with no mail at all.
And in some ways, a Sierra Trading Post catalog is more satisfying than the latest Esquire.
Instead of hanging onto it for a month in hope of finding time to read the carefully written articles, you flip through it in five minutes while waiting for dinner, then toss it on the recycling pile, secure in the knowledge that companies continue to make more hiking shoes than can be sold at full price.
A two-week vacation recently allowed me to revel, upon return, in the full glory of my junk mail.
There, between the rubber bands, were 15 catalogs, four more than the number of magazines, everything from Athleta to West Elm.
There were 25 actual stuffed envelopes of solicitation and such, compared to just 12 pieces of what you would call meaningful mail: utility bills, a library overdue notice, a car registration sticker.
There were another seven pieces on postcards, including, of course, a Bed Bath & Beyond 20-percent-off coupon (I picture cashiers there fainting if someone actually pays full price). And a once-local, increasingly pan-suburban newspaper I no longer subscribe to decided to take a shot and send me a copy.
All told, it was 4 1/2 pounds of clutter. And thumbing through it, opening a piece here, recycling one there, was almost as enjoyable as going through the “real” mail. Sure the junk mailers are after your money, but they’re only asking for it. An actual bill makes demands.
You’d think that junk mail is dying. Beyond the environmental complaints, there’s the relative economic efficiency of spam e-mail.
And although it’s true that last year, for the first time, direct-mail spending actually declined, it’s also true that it continues as a huge business.
I know the statistics (because I looked them up): U.S. junk mail accounts for almost one-third of all mail delivered in the world, and each American household gets an average of 850 pieces of it a year.
Households average 18 pieces of it a week, one survey found, versus one piece of personal correspondence.
I know that not enough people recycle their junk mail, and that direct marketers send out 36 pieces to get one response. I won’t argue that it is all overkill, the sign of a culture with too much disposable income, even now, and too little concern for the ways it chases that income.
But at the same time, junk mail is largely responsible for keeping the U.S. Postal Service afloat; without it we’d have another institution to bail out.
And without all the impersonal stuff around it, the one birthday card in that whole two-week pile wouldn’t have seemed half as special.
Plus, I would have had no way of knowing that I could run an 8K to help abandoned pets, that Clipper Magazine is not about ships or that Trader Joe’s is featuring spicy peanut slaw. Information like that is, literally, priceless.
sajohnson@tribune.com
Reader’s Digest Plans Bankruptcy Filing
From the New York Times
August 17, 2009, 2:00 pm
By Stephanie Clifford
UPDATE Aug. 17, 3:52 p.m. With comments from the Reader’s Digest Association chief financial officer, Tom Williams, and on the banks’ involvement.
The Reader’s Digest Association announced on Monday that it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for its United States businesses within 30 days.
As part of the reorganization, Ripplewood Holdings, the private equity firm that owned Reader’s Digest and installed Mary Berner as its chief executive, will shed its shares and board seats, and existing debt holders will become the company’s owners. Ms. Berner will continue to run the company, and Tom Williams will remain as chief financial officer. The company does not expect to lay off any employees or close any of its publications, Mr. Williams said in an interview.
The value of the company will be much lower under the overhaul. Its debt of $2.2 billion will be reduced to $550 million, according to the agreement it has already struck with the majority of the banks. Ripplewood had bought Reader’s Digest for $2.8 billion in 2007 in a leveraged buyout.
“The bank lenders are taking a fairly significant haircut,†said John Puchalla, a senior analyst at Moody’s. While it was common for junior creditors to take a loss, for the senior creditors to take such a loss is “notable,†he said. “It’s certainly a lot less than the value the lenders viewed at the time of the L.B.O.,†he said.
Mr. Williams said a majority of its lenders had agreed to the terms of the restructuring, and the company expected to speed through bankruptcy, completing proceedings 45 to 90 days after it files, he said.
The filing does not cover its businesses outside the United States; it sells publications and products in 78 countries.
The company has lined up $150 million from lenders, through a debtor-in-possession loan, to help finance it through the restructuring, and will get $400 million more upon exiting bankruptcy, for the
total new debt of $550 million.
“Our banks are 100 percent aligned on the vendors that we choose and serve, so there’s no issue associated with paying any vendors,†Mr. Williams said.
That money comes from its new owners: J.P. Morgan, the company’s agent, G.E. Capital, Merrill Lynch, Eaton Vance, Regiment Capital Advisors, Ares Management, and Davidson Kempner. Although Ripplewood made an offer, “the offer from the lender group looks more compelling,†Mr. Williams said.
The company has an additional $100 million in cash on hand, Mr. Williams said.
The overhaul will save Reader’s Digest $65 million a year in cash-interest expense payments, reducing its annual payments from $145 million to $80 million, Mr. Williams said.
The company will continue to operate as usual once it comes out of bankruptcy, but with significantly less debt, Mr. Williams said. “No employees are going to be affected by this, there’s no-to-little
effect on our vendors, our operational performance remains very sound,†he said.
In the company’s most recent fiscal year, ended in June, its revenues, excluding the effects of foreign exchange, declined 1.4 percent, and gross margins and operating profit were flat with last year, Mr. Williams said. Additionally, ad revenue, which makes up about 9 percent of the company’s sales, were down only 3 percent from last year.
The magazine was founded in 1922, summarizing articles published elsewhere, and grew quickly. The company developed other titles, and, in 1990, went public.
The Reader’s Digest Association has been through a turbulent time in the last several years. In 2007, a consortium led by Ripplewood bought the company for $2.8 billion. Ms. Berner, a publishing executive, was installed as chief executive; her brother, Robert Berner, was then a managing director at Ripplewood.
But the company has lost money every year since 2005. The high debt load of the company had led analysts including Mr. Puchalla to downgrade its debt at the beginning of this year. In June, the company announced it was cutting the guaranteed circulation of the flagship magazine to 5.5 million, from 8 million, and decreasing the frequency to 10 times a year, from 12, along with focusing the magazine on socially conservative values.
Plunge in Credit-Card Mailings Slows
Could this be some good news for a change!From Brandweek
Aug 14, 2009
- Mark Dolliver
When the credit crunch took hold last year, it stanched the usual flood of direct-mail credit-card mailings to U.S. consumers. The subsequent meltdown of the financial system had its own restraining effect on such offerings. But now, a report from Synovate says the research firm’s Mail Monitor operation has detected a bottoming out in the volume of such solicitations.
In the second quarter of this year, says the report, households received 349.1 million credit-car offers in the mail. That’s 67 percent lower than the level of mailings in the same quarter of 2008. But it’s down just 6 percent from the level of first-quarter 2009. Some of the big mailers even increased their volume during the second quarter. Bank of America’s mailings were up 77 percent from the first-quarter-2009 level, and Citibank’s were up 65 percent. Noting that credit-card issuers have been growing less risk-averse than they were earlier in the recession, Synovate goes so far as to predict an “uptick” in card offers next year.
An earlier report from Mintel Comperemedia noted a stabilization (after two years of declines) in the number of mailings sent to households promoting mortgages and home-equity loans. But the nature of the offers has shifted, given lessons consumers have learned the hard way in the past year. Notably, direct-mail offers of adjustable-rate mortgages have “fallen out of favor,” according to Mintel’s analysis.
Of course, the fact that companies are making offers of credit cards and loans doesn’t necessarily mean people are taking them up on it. Polls during the past year have consistently found consumers professing their aversion to taking on more debt of any sort. Typical of the genre was a Gallup poll released last month (based on fieldwork in June) in which 46 percent of respondents said it’s “a bad time to borrow money,” vs. 17 percent saying it’s a “good time” to do so.
It’s Time to Stay the Courier
From the New York Times Business Section
By JOE NOCERA
Published: August 7, 2009
Consider the plight of John E. Potter, the chief executive of the second-largest employer in America. On the one hand, he has a guaranteed monopoly for much of his business. On the other hand, monopoly or not, the combination of the Internet and the recession is absolutely crushing his company, just as it is for so many other companies across the country. His last quarter’s results, which were announced on Wednesday, revealed a loss of $2.4 billion. The business is on track to lose a staggering $7 billion in 2009, on around $68 billion in revenue. That’s practically General Motors territory.
What can he do to fix the situation? Surprisingly little. His employees have clauses in their union contracts that forbid layoffs. Nor can he renegotiate their gold-plated benefits, the way, say, the auto companies did when their backs were against the wall. Political pressure makes it nearly impossible to shut down any of his company’s 34,000 facilities, no matter how outmoded or little used. He can borrow money, but under the law, he can add only $3 billion in debt a year — an amount that isn’t going to come close to covering his losses.
Oh, and get this. Every year between now and 2016, he has to put aside over $5 billion to finance health benefits for future employees. You read that right: future employees. There isn’t another business in the country that finances benefits for employees it hasn’t even hired yet.
Welcome to John Potter’s world. He’s the nation’s postmaster general. Yes, that’s right: for the last nine years, he has run the United States Postal Service, which, since 1970, when it stopped being a government department and started becoming self-sufficient, has been the oddest of ducks. It is expected to operate as a business, turning a profit and so on, and yet it is still subject to Congressional oversight and all sorts of legal constraints, like that ridiculous health benefit prefinancing for future employees, which was part of a big 2006 postal reorganization bill. (Its main purpose, it would seem, is government accounting: those funds get counted against the federal deficit.)
Even so, until recently, Mr. Potter had had a pretty successful run. A smart, likable, lifelong Postal Service executive, he got it through the anthrax crisis early in his tenure. He saw it through 9/11 (in no small part by engaging Federal Express to fly long-distance mail during the day, when its planes were empty, something it still does). He has overseen productivity gains and, according to a poll conducted by Rasmussen Reports, a rise in customer satisfaction. Between 2001 and 2006, he even eliminated the Postal Service’s $11.3 billion debt. That year, 2006, was also when demand for mail service peaked, with 210 billion pieces delivered.
But the last few years have been brutal. The Postal Service lost more than $5 billion in 2007, and another $2.4 billion in 2008. And, of course, it is on track to lose that whopping $7 billion in the current fiscal year. (Its fiscal year ends in September.) The amount of mail being sent is dropping like a stone — it will be down to 175 billion pieces in 2009. Mr. Potter has reduced the Postal Service’s head count to 650,000, from 800,000, almost entirely through attrition. He has cut costs every way he can think of. And still the losses mount.
A few weeks ago, the Government Accountability Office added the Postal Service to its list of “high risk†federal agencies, meaning that it is in such dire straits that it needs “to restructure to address its current and long-term financial viability.†Indeed, if something doesn’t change by the fall, the Postal Service will have to renege on those health benefit prepayments — despite its legal obligation to pay them — or start missing payroll. “U.S.P.S. must align its costs with revenues, generate sufficient earnings to finance capital investments, and manage its debt,†the G.A.O. said. Just like any real business would.
“If you are asking me to run it like a business, give me the same tools that someone would have in the private sector,†Mr. Potter said when I spoke to him recently.
But as I discovered on Thursday, when I watched a Senate hearing on the current Postal Service crisis, that’s not likely to happen. For one thing, Mr. Potter isn’t really asking for the tools he needs to turn the Postal Service into a real business. He is asking Congress to relieve it from the health prepayments, which he is likely to get, at least temporarily. He is also asking that the Postal Service be allowed to reduce mail service to five days a week, and to eliminate some postal branches. These aren’t exactly revolutionary ideas — yet they are viewed as highly controversial in Congress, which frets that constituents might get angry if the local postal branch closes.
But even if Mr. Potter were to get his way on these two items, they would still be only stop-gap measures that fail to tackle the bigger question. As the Internet continues to erode the use of snail mail, does the Postal Service’s business model still make sense? Do we even still need the government to deliver the mail anymore?
To me, the answer is obvious: no.
Think for a minute about the mail that comes into your home. In the modern age, very little of it is personal mail. The vast majority is commercial mail of some sort — advertisements, bills, movies from Netflix or catalogs. Once upon a time, said Rick Geddes, an associate professor in the department of policy analysis and management at Cornell University, the postal service was viewed as “a way to bind together the nation. In subsidizing mail service to rural communities you were keeping them connected to the rest of the country.†But today, he added, “it is kind of silly to say we are binding together the nation through advertisements and catalogs.â€
These days, the main justification for keeping the postal service as a quasi-government entity is the belief that no private company would be willing to deliver the mail to sparsely populated rural areas of the country. People fear that it would be a little like airline deregulation: communities that weren’t large enough to justify flights in the newly deregulated environment lost their carriers.
But that mission of universal service has all but blinded just about everyone connected with the Postal Service. Congressmen — many of whom, after all, come from rural areas — are loath to give the Postal Service too much free rein for fear that Mr. Potter’s minions will start shutting down post offices. (Never mind that 2,000 of them serve fewer than 100 people each.) The postal unions, with their no-layoff clauses, have used universal service to justify benefits so generous the Postal Service would save $600 million just by bringing them in line with other federal employees.
As for Mr. Potter himself, while he may want more freedom to run the Postal Service like a real business, he, too, seemed surprisingly wedded to outmoded ideas about mail service in America. “This country needs to have and to protect universal service,†he said. “Our business is all about making sure every American can stay connected with every other American.â€
I failed to ask him the obvious follow-up question: Don’t e-mail messages now do that?
For most of us, of course, it does — and that will increasingly to be the case, as broadband makes it way into, yes, even those rural areas that everyone is so worried about. Michael A. Crew, a professor of regulatory economics at Rutgers told me that that while the Postal Service’s “short-term situation is bleak, its long-term situation is really bleak.†He is one of a number of experts who say they believe that even when the recession ends, the Postal Service’s woes won’t be over. As businesses look to save money in the recession, for instance, they are starting to do end-arounds the Postal Service. Online bill-paying is become ever more popular. Evite is starting to replace mailed invitations to parties. None of that business is ever coming back.
Which is why, instead of trying to find short-term, piecemeal solutions to the current crisis, those involved in managing and overseeing the Postal Service ought to be thinking harder thoughts about blowing up its business model. Maybe the Postal Service should turn itself into a giant outsourcer, handling some tasks but handing out others, for a fee, to more efficient companies. Maybe the government should allow companies to bid on lucrative urban delivery — with the proviso that they also deliver to rural areas. Maybe some areas should get mail deliveries less frequently than others. Maybe there should be radically different pricing structures. Maybe it should even lose its monopoly on first-class mail. I mean, why not?
Mr. Geddes, the Cornell professor, says he believes that the only solution is for the Postal Service to become “just another company†— lose its monopoly, shed its bureaucratic mind-set, become able to negotiate freely with its unions, and answer to shareholders instead of Congress, which is always going to resist significant change that might upset a constituent. Only when that happens will it be able to bring its costs in line with its revenue.
“The post office is not broken,†Mr. Potter insisted. But surely it is. And its current crisis brings to mind Rahm Emanuel’s line that you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.
Alas, here in the middle of its worst financial crisis ever, the Postal Service and Congress seem utterly intent on wasting it.
‘Junk mail’ deliveries drop off: Recession has reduced amount of advertising
From: Business Matters
LAURA RUANE
lruane@news-press.com
• August 3, 2009
If your mailbox is empty more often these days, you’re not alone: Last year saw the biggest decline in U.S. mail since the Depression.
Leslie Alvarez has noticed. “There doesn’t seem to be quite as much junk mail,†said the 47-year-old North Fort Myers resident.
So has the U.S. Postal Service, which doesn’t call anything “junk†mail. Nationally, mail volume fell by 4.5 percent or about 9 billion pieces, year-over-year, in 2008.
The drop-off is steeper in Southwest Florida, said Anne Murray, postmaster for the cities of Fort Myers and Cape Coral. Year-to-date, volume is down about 18 percent. “Southwest Florida is hurting more than some other parts of the country. That’s impacted all of the businesses.â€
Lisa Hixson, a U.S. Postal Service letter carrier for 21 years, delivers mail to downtown Fort Myers’ River District.
On her route, mail volume “has been steadily dropping,†Hixson said. “On one of my streets, I used to have two white tubs (of mail) for two buildings. Now I have one tub for the whole street.â€
To be sure, mailings typically decline when tourists and snowbirds depart for the summer. This is more severe, Hixson and Murray said: It’s the economy cutting into direct mail advertising — fliers, postcards and catalogs.
There’s no single answer as to why. Some businesses — seeking to cut costs and try new media — are redirecting some of their advertising to Web sites, e-mail, and social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook.
Others make direct mailings but are more closely defining their target areas. Some businesses just hope to keep their doors open. Some have closed.
At Central Garage in downtown Fort Myers, “we’re still doing direct-mail advertising, but due to the economy, we’ve probably cut back,†said D.J. Hutton, general manager.
Over the past year, Hutton has supplemented print advertising with e-mailed sales pitches; however, he believes no form of advertising is very successful lately.
“Electronic media is cheap and trackable. You save postage, save paper, save a tree,†said Ludmilla Wells, associate professor of marketing at Florida Gulf Coast University. She noted Southwest Florida still has consumers, however, “who like to hold something in their hands to read, rather than peer into a computer.â€
Postal Service health is still a concern
By Juliana Gruenwald CongressDaily July 30, 2009 While there is little disagreement that the U.S. Postal Service is facing a severe financial crisis, lawmakers voiced concerns on Thursday over the proposed solutions, which include closing some branches and possibly reducing deliveries to five days a week.
GAO this week said it was adding the Postal Service to its list of “high-risk areas” needing attention by Congress.
It said the USPS is facing a “deteriorating financial situation” and is on track to end the year with a net loss of $7 billion. Its financial woes are due to the ailing economy and declining mail volumes as more people and businesses bypass snail mail for e-mail, text messaging and other forms of electronic communications.
At a House Oversight and Government Reform Federal Workforce and Postal Service Subcommittee hearing, lawmakers pressed the USPS for details on what criteria would be used in determining which of the proposed 3,200 suburban and urban branches under consideration would be closed.
USPS acting Vice President Jordan Small said fewer than 1,000 post offices out of the list of 3,200 are likely to be closed. The criteria USPS will use in determining whether to close a facility is a branch’s proximity to other branches and the consuming habits of postal customers in that area.
He declined to give an estimate of how much would be saved by the closures and by eliminating Saturday deliveries. Small said USPS would have a better sense of the estimated cost savings in October when a study on such moves is complete.
But some lawmakers voiced concern about the potential impacts on their communities. “While I admit, the finances here are very grave … there is a need to conduct ourselves with, I think, a thoughtful approach … and do it in a way that causes the least amount of disruption,” Federal Workforce and Postal Service Subcommittee Chairman Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said many of his constituents who have long commutes to work would be unable to visit a post office if they are not open in the evening.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., chastised the postal service for taking too long to implement the necessary reforms but then quizzed Small on whether any post offices in Washington are on the list of possible closures. For the most part, business groups dependent on the postal service said they support the proposed changes if they will help ensure USPS’s viability.
But they voiced strong opposition to raising postal rates. Noting that the bad economy has hurt their industry as well, “mailers cannot shoulder another rate increase,” the Direct Marketing Association’s Jerry Cerasale said. Federal Workforce and Postal Service Subcommittee ranking member Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said lawmakers should consider providing USPS with economic stimulus funds and urged USPS to do more to make itself more relevant, perhaps through assisting in conducting the 2010 census.
Quick Action Expected On Senate Bill to Ease USPS Financial Crisis
APWU Web News Article #083-09, July 27, 2009
Quick action is expected on a Senate bill that would provide the Postal Service emergency, short-term financial relief, and APWU President William Burrus is urging union members to ask their Senators to support the legislation.
The Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Funding Reform Act of 2009 (S. 1507), which was introduced by Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) on July 23, would restructure the USPS obligation to pay retiree healthcare benefits, and would generate savings of billions of dollars over the next several years. The USPS is projecting a loss of $7.1 billion in Fiscal Year 2009, despite predictions that it will cut costs by $6.1 billion this year.
A Senate panel could act on the legislation within a matter of days. The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is expected to “mark up†the bill at its next business session, on July 29. Amendments to the legislation could be offered and considered at that time, or by the full Senate at a later date.
Like its counterpart in the House of Representatives (H.R. 22), the Senate bill would help the Postal Service remain afloat for the next several years, although the methods for achieving that goal differ.
White House to Support Efforts
The Obama administration supports the restructuring plan, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina told postal union presidents at a meeting July 24. The Senate bill reflects the approach the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) favors to resolve the crisis, he said.
The presidents of the four major postal unions had asked the White House to address the deepening crisis facing the Postal Service. Attending the meeting were APWU President William Burrus, National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric V. Rolando, National Rural Letter Carriers Association President Don Cantriel and National Postal Mail Handlers Union President John F. Hegarty.
S. 1507 would reduce postal contributions to the Retiree Trust Fund for a five-year period, by:
$2.4 billion in FY 2009;
$2.5 billion in FY 2010;
$1 billion in FY 2011;
$300 million in FY 2012, and
$100 million in FY 2013.
However, in Fiscal Years 2015 through 2019 the agency would pay more than is scheduled under current law, with the increase intended to offset the reductions of FY 2009-2013. The Senate bill also would increase the Postal Service’s borrowing authority by $2 billion in Fiscal Year 2009 and Fiscal Year 2010.
In a statement, Sen. Carper said he hopes the bill will be enacted before Congress adjourns for its August recess.
Subscribe
Recent Comments
- Adam Hartung, Chicago, IL on Are You Disruptive?
- Tweets that mention Why Direct Mail Will Always Be In Style | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Why Direct Mail Will Always Be In Style
- Tweets that mention Less mail equals more opportunity | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Less mail equals more opportunity
- Tweets that mention Direct Mail Scare Tactics… | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Direct Mail Scare Tactics…
- Tweets that mention Post Office Bailout… Not So Fast | Going Postal -- Topsy.com on Post Office Bailout… Not So Fast