Showing posts with label US Post Office. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US Post Office. Show all posts
Thursday, April 26, 2012
Got To Love Bernie Sanders: Senate Passes Postal Reform
Some people pass things that destroy things and others that perserve things for the American workers. It
s all whether you walk the walk.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Thursday, February 23, 2012
U.S. Postal Service to Cut 35,000 Jobs as Plants Are Shut - Bloomberg
U.S. Postal Service to Cut 35,000 Jobs as Plants Are Shut - Bloomberg
The U.S. Postal Service, which predicts an annual loss of $18.2 billion by 2015, plans to eliminate 5.4 percent of its workforce by closing almost half its mail-processing facilities to decrease costs.
The service plans to shut 223 of its 461 mail-processing plants by February 2013, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a telephone interview today. The closings will cut about 35,000 jobs, said David Partenheimer, a spokesman.
The service is shutting post offices and seeking congressional approval to end Saturday mail delivery as more people use the Internet to correspond and pay bills. Mail volume fell 6 percent in the quarter ended Dec. 31 and may drop 14 percent by 2016, led by declines in first-class mail, the most profitable, the Washington-based service said this month.
LP - Daryll Issa deserves at least some credit for killing the post office.
The U.S. Postal Service, which predicts an annual loss of $18.2 billion by 2015, plans to eliminate 5.4 percent of its workforce by closing almost half its mail-processing facilities to decrease costs.
The service plans to shut 223 of its 461 mail-processing plants by February 2013, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a telephone interview today. The closings will cut about 35,000 jobs, said David Partenheimer, a spokesman.
The service is shutting post offices and seeking congressional approval to end Saturday mail delivery as more people use the Internet to correspond and pay bills. Mail volume fell 6 percent in the quarter ended Dec. 31 and may drop 14 percent by 2016, led by declines in first-class mail, the most profitable, the Washington-based service said this month.
LP - Daryll Issa deserves at least some credit for killing the post office.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
U.S Postal Service loses $3.3B; could run out of money by October | Digg Mynews
U.S Postal Service loses $3.3B; could run out of money by October Digg Mynews
The U.S. Postal Service said it lost $3.3 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 31 -- typically its strongest -- and that it expects to run out of cash in October unless Congress agrees to cuts in facilities and employees.
“If the Postal Service is unable to reduce its operating costs by $20 billion a year by 2015, we may not be able to return to profitability,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said at a board meeting in Washington today. “We may become a long-term burden to the taxpayers if we are not able to make these reductions quickly.”
The ninth consecutive quarter of losses may increase pressure on Congress from the Postal Service and customers to approve legislation intended to return it to solvency.
“We have a Postal Service that essentially is living from paycheck to paycheck, which is a very risky proposition for the American economy and the 8 million private-sector workers whose jobs rely on the mail,” Art Sackler, coordinator of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, said in an e-mail.“Each day Congress fails to enact postal reform, this problem grows more difficult and perhaps more expensive to resolve.”
LP - Get rid of the pension scheme problem solved
The U.S. Postal Service said it lost $3.3 billion in the quarter ended Dec. 31 -- typically its strongest -- and that it expects to run out of cash in October unless Congress agrees to cuts in facilities and employees.
“If the Postal Service is unable to reduce its operating costs by $20 billion a year by 2015, we may not be able to return to profitability,” Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said at a board meeting in Washington today. “We may become a long-term burden to the taxpayers if we are not able to make these reductions quickly.”
The ninth consecutive quarter of losses may increase pressure on Congress from the Postal Service and customers to approve legislation intended to return it to solvency.
“We have a Postal Service that essentially is living from paycheck to paycheck, which is a very risky proposition for the American economy and the 8 million private-sector workers whose jobs rely on the mail,” Art Sackler, coordinator of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, said in an e-mail.“Each day Congress fails to enact postal reform, this problem grows more difficult and perhaps more expensive to resolve.”
LP - Get rid of the pension scheme problem solved
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Thursday, September 8, 2011
A good story from Truth Out: The US Continues To Eat Its Own Destroying Any Institution That Provides Services For Its Own People
Postal Workers: The Last Union
by: Allison Kilkenny, Truthout | News Analysis
The recent attacks against the United States Postal Service (USPS) are more than signs of desperate times - a natural sunset moment for a service rendered archaic by FedEx and UPS. Rather, the Postal Service has been under constant, vicious assault for years from the right, who views this as an epic battle with the goal of finally taking down the strongest union in the country, the second largest employer in the United States (second only to Wal-Mart,) and a means to roll the country ever closer toward the abyss of privatization.
The Postal Service, which is older than the Constitution itself, stands at a precipice. If this great institution, which provides one of the oldest, most reliable services in the country, is permitted to fall and Congress kills its great union, then truly no collective bargaining rights, no worker contract, no union will be safe within the United States.
Full Story Here: http://www.truth-out.org/last-union/1315492298
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Who Going To Deliver My Mail? I Know let's Use Our Drones. The plus: they don't need benefits. The downside: they only make delivery in Pakistan, Yemen, and any other country with stan in the name
Why can't we even deliver are own mail? It's probably a good thing because the Americans would start thinking that they deserve to be treated better. The good news is that these drones don't need benefits. The bad news is they really can't lift the latch to access the yard. While, if worse comes to worse, they can always flatten the house.
Over 30 K
Average letter carrier paid 44,000
In 2008 there were 343300 letter carriers
We're going to need a massive building program
http://www.americablog.com/2011/09/post-office-is-almost-brokeon-purpose.html
The Post Office is almost dead on purpose after a very misleading article from the New York Times. My question for the New York Times is have they found the weapons of mass destruction that they so voraciously supported before. Another case of excellence in journalism. I wonder if I can send out Christmas cards or maybe I can't because this country is far enough along technologically speaking to deliver my mail from one part of the country to another. When is congress going back on vacation?
http://www.americablog.com/2011/09/post-office-is-almost-brokeon-purpose.html#.Tmc6W-jT2zc.blogger
http://www.americablog.com/2011/09/post-office-is-almost-brokeon-purpose.html#.Tmc6W-jT2zc.blogger
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
From Crooks and Liars: A rollback Of the post office but this is not class warfare just lots of isolated incidents that amount to a war
August 16, 2011 04:00 PM
NALC President Fredric Rolando testifies before Congress (beginning at minute 40).
Highlights are LPs.
Recently, a number of proposals have been floated about cutting back on the offerings of the United States Postal Service. Among the suggestions are eliminating Saturday service and closing numerous post offices across the country. These ideas are said to be necessary, according to Postal Service officials, because the Service is losing large sums of money in delivering the mail.
Current proposals include eliminating 220,000 postal jobs through cuts and attrition by 2015. This is in a climate where the USPS has already eliminated 212,000 jobs in the last ten years. Also proposed is a plan to withdraw postal employees and retirees from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and the creation of a new program that would almost certainly have weaker benefits.
United States Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is on record as also proposing cuts to postal employees' health and pension benefits. National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando sees clear signs that Donahoe is intent on attacking the collective bargaining rights of postal workers and that he wants to "override lay-off protection provisions in the postal unions’ contracts." In a recent white paper titled "Workforce Optimization," the Postal Service directly asked Congress to void lay-off protection provisions. The USPS developed its proposals without any input from NALC or any other unions.
Rolando lays out the real root of the problem: "The problem lies elsewhere: the 2006 congressional mandate that the USPS pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade, an obligation no other public agency or private firm faces. The roughly $5.5 billion annual payments since 2007 — $21 billion total — are the difference between a positive and negative ledger."
Postal Service management recently claimed: “If we were a private company, we would have already filed for bankruptcy and gone through restructuring—much like major automakers did two years ago.” NALC responded by calling this claim the "Big Lie." If the USPS were a private company, NALC argued, it wouldn't have been subjected to the pre-funding requirement and it would've been profitable, since the pre-funding requirement is responsible for 100 percent of the Service's losses in recent years.
NALC suggests that the problem has an easy fix. Instead of eliminating the requirement for pre-funding future benefits, Rolando says that the Postal Service should be allowed to transfer funds from pension surpluses instead of operating funds. That would continue to fund both pensions and retiree health benefits funded well into the future while putting the operations budget back into a surplus without cutting back on services or laying off workers.
Ending Saturday service would create more problems that it would solve. More than 80,000 jobs would be lost and millions of Americans would face disruptions to their business and personal lives, as financial transactions are delayed, prescription drugs don't get to patients as quick as they otherwise would and other disruptions are created. The Postal Regulatory Commission found that ending Saturday service would disproportionately hurt elderly and rural Americans. The Commission also determined that as much as 25 percent of First Class and Priority mail could be delayed two days or more.
The Commission found that going to five-day service would not save as much money as Postal Service leaders project. Saturday delivery, which amounts to only two percent of postal costs, accounts for 17 percent of service.
The suggestion that the Postal Service faces a major crisis -- similar to attacks across the country that have preceeded assaults on other unions -- is an overstatement, of course. The Postal Service hasn't used any taxpayer funding for more than twenty-five years. It pays for it's operations through the sale of it's services and products. In the past four years, operational revenues at the USPS have exceeded costs by $611 million. Customer satisfaction and delivery of the mail on time are at record highs.
According to Rolando, fixing the real problem -- the pre-funding of future benefits at such an exaggerated standard -- isn't even on the table. Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Dennis Ross (R-FL) introduced a bill the reform the postal service, but it doesn't actually address the primary problem the USPS faces. It would allow for some of the more extreme proposals to be implemented, including the elimination of Saturday service and the nullification of collective bargaining agreements already in existence.
The Plot to Kill the Post Office...And Its Union Contracts
NALC President Fredric Rolando testifies before Congress (beginning at minute 40).
Highlights are LPs.
Recently, a number of proposals have been floated about cutting back on the offerings of the United States Postal Service. Among the suggestions are eliminating Saturday service and closing numerous post offices across the country. These ideas are said to be necessary, according to Postal Service officials, because the Service is losing large sums of money in delivering the mail.
Current proposals include eliminating 220,000 postal jobs through cuts and attrition by 2015. This is in a climate where the USPS has already eliminated 212,000 jobs in the last ten years. Also proposed is a plan to withdraw postal employees and retirees from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program and the creation of a new program that would almost certainly have weaker benefits.
United States Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe is on record as also proposing cuts to postal employees' health and pension benefits. National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando sees clear signs that Donahoe is intent on attacking the collective bargaining rights of postal workers and that he wants to "override lay-off protection provisions in the postal unions’ contracts." In a recent white paper titled "Workforce Optimization," the Postal Service directly asked Congress to void lay-off protection provisions. The USPS developed its proposals without any input from NALC or any other unions.
Rolando lays out the real root of the problem: "The problem lies elsewhere: the 2006 congressional mandate that the USPS pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade, an obligation no other public agency or private firm faces. The roughly $5.5 billion annual payments since 2007 — $21 billion total — are the difference between a positive and negative ledger."
Postal Service management recently claimed: “If we were a private company, we would have already filed for bankruptcy and gone through restructuring—much like major automakers did two years ago.” NALC responded by calling this claim the "Big Lie." If the USPS were a private company, NALC argued, it wouldn't have been subjected to the pre-funding requirement and it would've been profitable, since the pre-funding requirement is responsible for 100 percent of the Service's losses in recent years.
NALC suggests that the problem has an easy fix. Instead of eliminating the requirement for pre-funding future benefits, Rolando says that the Postal Service should be allowed to transfer funds from pension surpluses instead of operating funds. That would continue to fund both pensions and retiree health benefits funded well into the future while putting the operations budget back into a surplus without cutting back on services or laying off workers.
Ending Saturday service would create more problems that it would solve. More than 80,000 jobs would be lost and millions of Americans would face disruptions to their business and personal lives, as financial transactions are delayed, prescription drugs don't get to patients as quick as they otherwise would and other disruptions are created. The Postal Regulatory Commission found that ending Saturday service would disproportionately hurt elderly and rural Americans. The Commission also determined that as much as 25 percent of First Class and Priority mail could be delayed two days or more.
The Commission found that going to five-day service would not save as much money as Postal Service leaders project. Saturday delivery, which amounts to only two percent of postal costs, accounts for 17 percent of service.
The suggestion that the Postal Service faces a major crisis -- similar to attacks across the country that have preceeded assaults on other unions -- is an overstatement, of course. The Postal Service hasn't used any taxpayer funding for more than twenty-five years. It pays for it's operations through the sale of it's services and products. In the past four years, operational revenues at the USPS have exceeded costs by $611 million. Customer satisfaction and delivery of the mail on time are at record highs.
According to Rolando, fixing the real problem -- the pre-funding of future benefits at such an exaggerated standard -- isn't even on the table. Representatives Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Dennis Ross (R-FL) introduced a bill the reform the postal service, but it doesn't actually address the primary problem the USPS faces. It would allow for some of the more extreme proposals to be implemented, including the elimination of Saturday service and the nullification of collective bargaining agreements already in existence.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
From Portland Press Herald on Strike
Postal workers won't go quietly
Unions react furiously to a proposal to lay off 120,000 employees by breaking labor contracts.
Tom Rizzo, spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service in northern New England, said it is still too early to know exactly what kind of impact the layoff of 120,000 Postal Service workers nationwide might have in Maine.
Rizzo said he thinks the cuts would likely affect northern New England proportionately to the rest of the country.
National and local unions reacted furiously Friday to a proposal by the Postal Service to lay off the workers by breaking labor contracts and shifting workers out of federal employee health and retirement plans into cheaper alternatives.
John Riley, former president of the American Postal Workers Union in Portland, called the proposal "the fight to end all fights."
"This is part of a right wing push to manufacture 'crises' that are not real to destroy unions and the middle class," Riley wrote in a mass email he sent Friday to postal employees in Maine. "Unfortunately, it is being enabled by weak Democrats and a President who barely seems to be aware there is a labor movement and working class."
The Postal Service has lost some $20 billion in the last four years amid a 20 percent drop in mail volume.
Labor experts and other unions also sounded the alarm that any move by Congress to break postal contracts would further wound an already ailing labor movement, much as former President Ronald Reagan's firing of striking air traffic controllers did in 1981.
http://www.pressherald.com/news/postal-workers-wont-go-quietly_2011-08-14.html
For full story:
Friday, August 12, 2011
Why doesn't America deserve to have a mail service system regardless of cost?
Bold writing is mine
From the postal workers union:
Let me provide some facts about the USPS, so readers will have context when they hear such things.
Let me provide some facts about the USPS, so readers will have context when they hear such things.
For starters, the Postal Service doesn't use a dime of taxpayer money and hasn't for more than a quarter-century. Its revenue comes from selling its products and services, at the best rates in the industrialized world. Customer satisfaction and on-time delivery are at record highs. (Maybe the Postal Service should be taking public funds. Bill Gates being to keep more of his pocket change is not as important to me as a civilized society right to have a mail service. What kind of culture do we want to live in?)
Furthermore, USPS' financial problems have surprisingly little to do with delivering the mail. In the past four fiscal years, despite the worst recession in 80 years and despite Internet diversion, revenues from postal operations exceeded costs by $611 million.
The problem lies elsewhere: the 2006 congressional mandate that the USPS pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade, an obligation no other public agency or private firm faces. The roughly $5.5 billion annual payments since 2007 — $21 billion total — are the difference between a positive and negative ledger. (Who could have believed the anti-union George W. Bush and his anti-union Republican congress, taking a bundle of money from outside private delivery services would want to privatize the union)
That's the elephant in the room — not Saturday mail delivery, not post offices that serve urban or rural areas. Remove this onerous pre-funding obligation and the Postal Service would have been profitable even during this economic downturn, and periods with losses would be manageable. But we're not even asking that it be removed. (Who could also believe that the majority of the news would offer an analysis that looks like it was written for them).
What USPS management, unions and key Republican and Democratic legislators ask of Congress is simply this: Let the Postal Service stop depleting its operating funds to make these payments and instead allow an internal transfer of funds from its pension surpluses. This responsible business move, with zero taxpayer involvement, would leave pensions and retiree health benefits fully funded well into the future while putting the USPS budget back on sound financial footing.
Several bills filed by Senate and House legislators of both parties call for this. It addresses the actual financial drain, as opposed to the self-defeating attempts to decimate services as the agency tries to find $5.5 billion every Sept. 30 for the pre-funding payments.
Among the bad ideas this frenzy has produced is ending Saturday delivery — eliminating 17 percent of service to save 2 percent in costs. Moreover, it would inconvenience millions of residents who rely on Saturday delivery of medicines and small businesses that are open Saturday, while reducing USPS market share.
If Congress remedies the crushing burden it imposed, then the postal community can focus in a thoughtful manner on adapting, as it always has, to society's evolving needs. Faced with the telegraph, the telephone and other innovations, the Postal Service inevitably found new and better ways to serve residents and businesses.
Today, the Internet offers both challenges and opportunities. While more people now pay bills online, more people also order online — and those goods must be delivered. Already, last-mile Postal Service delivery of packages for FedEx and UPS is a profit-maker.
Moreover, the Postal Service is the central element in a $1.3 trillion U.S. mailing industry that supports 7 million to 8 million private-sector jobs. And its universal delivery network is invaluable in untold ways. When the Department of Homeland Security sought ways to distribute medicines to residents in the event of a biological attack, it turned to the Postal Service. The result: A Cities Readiness Initiative already in place in Minneapolis, with letter carriers volunteering, and a second pilot program underway in Louisville, Ky.
For full details: http://www.nalc.org/PostalFacts/index.html
One comment on Huff postmade wise comment, "The USPS is not allowed to set its' own rates, they are set by congress. The USPS is not allowed to compete in the market but is blamed for insolvency
A really fine article of the gradual privitization is here: http://triapwu.org/library/privatization.php
From Newser: The War On Working People shifts to the Postal Front. What Americans use the postal service as opposed to the .001 who there tax cuts would effect
By Neal Colgrass, Newser Staff
Posted Mar 20, 2009 7:17 PM CDT
- STORY
COMMENTS (0)
(Newser) – Citing severe losses, the US Postal Service is slashing 1,400 jobs and offering early retirement to 150,000 workers, NPR reports. The post office will also shut down six district offices, but says delivery will not be affected. Hobbled by a 5.2 billion drop in mail volume in the first quarter this year, the post office lost $384 million—adding to $2.8 billion in losses last year.
Voluntary retirement will get little support from the postal workers' union, it said, if offers don't include severance pay. The postal service offered retirement without pay parachutes last year and attracted few takers. Over the past year, the post office has already made cuts, trimming 50 million work hours, freezing executive salaries, and halting construction on new offices.
Maybe all those political contributions by Fedex is starting to pay off,
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