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Nope, big changes are needed and needed right now.
My pie-in-the-sky ideas are these:
-Cut from 6 days of delivery to 3. Monday, Wednesday, Friday and adjust according for holidays that fall on those days.
-Eliminate the APWU.
-Sub-contract as much work as possible. Expand the Highway Contractor Route system to get as many USPS-owned vehicles off the road as possible.
-Expand flat-rate shipping options. It has been one of the few good ideas the USPS have had.
-Get out of the Passport business. The USPS spends a good deal of time and energy being the public face of this process.
-Close as many Post Offices as they can get away with and still function. Realistically they could get by without 75% of the brink-and-mortar locations that are open today.
Good luck getting the union on board. They have a "no layoff", "guaranteed raise" contract. They also cannot close offices.
All of that is in the article I posted. The studies have been done and presented to the USPS honchos who said "No thanks, we'll just continue BAU".
Good luck getting the union on board. They have a "no layoff", "guaranteed raise" contract.
The union is a total disaster. People think that the UAW was/is bad...they've got nothing on the APWU.
The Postal Reorganization Act has turned out to be a disaster. The idea that a supposed Republican would abolish a cabinet-level government agency in favor of a quasi-governmental corporation that granted collective bargaining rights to all of it's employees overnight seems crazy to me. At least then the Postal Service was accountable to someone!
Richard Nixon created a monster, all because of one strike.
The need for paper mail is shrinking. The junk mailers may have to explore other ways to advertise. But, even store customers are shrinking in number and the replacement will be package delivery growth. USPS will need to continue adapting to compete with UPS and FedEx.
But I bet FedEx and UPS would lobby mightily against privitizing the Post Office leading to a mighty new competitor. For instance, as it stands now, the Post Office isn't allowed to own its own fleet of jet planes.
We need to privatize the postal service in the future. Maybe not right now, but down the road about 10 years it might be a viable option.
Why stop there? Why not privatize everything in the US? Roads, bridges, parks, parking lots. If you believe so much in privitization why not??????? huh? Come on bud! Let's do it! We can nickel and dime ourselves to travel down the street! Sounds like a great idea!
But I bet FedEx and UPS would lobby mightily against privitizing the Post Office leading to a mighty new competitor. For instance, as it stands now, the Post Office isn't allowed to own its own fleet of jet planes.
That's a good point. Neither FedEx or UPS could step in, so a new competitor would have to fill the void left by the USPS. And I promise you, that new competitor would get advantages from the government that UPS and FedEx could only dream of.
FedEx moves almost all of the USPS's mail that travels via airplanes. The value of that contract is insane...FedEx would be in serious trouble if that revenue stream disappeared.
Why stop there? Why not privatize everything in the US? Roads, bridges, parks, parking lots. If you believe so much in privitization why not??????? huh? Come on bud! Let's do it! We can nickel and dime ourselves to travel down the street! Sounds like a great idea!
Privatization of the entire thing will be nearly impossible as it will require an amendment to the US Constitution. Good luck with that!
But there are many parts and pieces of the USPS that are privatized and, in my opinion, even more should be privatized.
I can tell you that the APWU is feeling the heat. Just in the last six months they have really began to go after some of the contractors to try and take back some of the work for union employees.
Not the case in small towns all over this state, I can assure you. How about I grab a picture of the piles of UPS parcels for home delivery sitting at the small town Post Office I'll be visiting in a few hours. The UPS truck backs up to their loading dock, drops off about three APC's of UPS parcels for the USPS carriers to deliver door to door.
That typically happens on the docks of post offices in towns big and small.
You will have to obtain that photograph, and then have it notorized, before I belive anything you have to say on the subject. The UPS and FedEx do not use any of the USPS facilities, in any state, and they never have. Despite your delusions to the contrary.
Surely, someone can produce a picture of a UPS truck backed up to the dock of their local post office. Also in the front of post offices, Fed Ex has drop off boxes. Do you need proof of that, too?
Europe saw the writing on the wall in the late 80's.
20+ years of declining revenue and our USPS is no further along with change.
They borrowed $12 billion and are capped at loans.
They owe $5.5 billion to fund retiree benefits on 9/30 which they don't have and will not have.
The USPS has been operating in the red since 2007. This is now 2011 and their only plan so far is to borrow ?
To change with the world the Post Office should have been allowed to offer Internet service, but surely congress would have stopped that from happening, obeying cries from private Internet service providers.
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