What’s wrong with Post Office
In the last several months, we have seen press accounts of lost political mailings, delayed mail, reduced window hours and attempts to close hundreds of postal stations nationwide.
Obviously the Great Recession that began in 2007 has taken its toll on postal revenues, but there is much more to the story.
The conventional wisdom that the Internet and e-mail, like the telegraph and telephone over a century ago, are the demise of the U.S. Postal Service, is simply untrue.
Mail sent from one household to another is less than 3 percent of our volume. We are part of the business economy doing business mail, advertising and shipping. The Internet and advertising mail generate shipping for UPS and FedEx as well as the Postal Service.
In 2006, well after Americans began using the Internet and e-mail on a mass scale, mail volume reached an all-time high of 213 billion pieces, and yet we needed a rate increase in the spring of 2007.
President George Bush’s appointed Postal Board of Governors and Postmaster General, John Potter, pushed for postal reform from 2001-06 when it was enacted. This required transferring an average of $5.5 billion a year for 10 years into the future retirees health benefits fund, to make government deficits appear smaller, as the Government Accounting Office says this account is currently overfunded by $13 billion.
The public and small businesses are also subsidizing large corporate and financial mailers with sorting discounts averaging over 10 cents per piece. Postal employees do this same sort on automation for two cents a piece. This giveaway of postal revenue at your expense costs the Postal Service $6 billion to $8 billion a year in revenue.
After downsizing 140,000 jobs in four years, the Postal Service has about 533,000 union-represented workers and 66,000 non-bargaining employees, mostly executives and management. This is one boss to eight employees.
When you hear labor costs are 80 percent of the postal dollar, remember close to 25 percent of the postal dollar goes to those who do not transport, sort or deliver the mail, and do not serve at public windows or maintain the buildings and equipment.
We should require Congress to perform its oversight function, starting with demanding the resignations of Potter and Bush-appointed members of the Postal Board of Governors before they destroy the greatest postal service with the lowest rates in the western world. Mailing services constitute 9 percent of our economy. The Postal Service belongs to every American.
Bertolone is president of American Postal Workers Union Local 215.
