Postal Stakeholder Presentation

Patrick R. Donahoe, USPS Postmaster General and Chief Executive Office, held a recent customer webinar [PowerPoint] to dispel the numerous news stories on the demise of the Postal Service. Donahue outlined his strategy of putting the USPS back on good firm financial footing. Similar presentations have been given to the Obama Administration, members of Congress, postal unions, and other various mailing stakeholders.

5 Day Delivery FAQs

The prospect of the U.S. Postal Service moving to five-day delivery is looking more like a reality, now that President Obama has endorsed it and a House panel has approved legislation to lose one day of mail delivery. Mailers have plenty of questions about five-day postal delivery; here are some answers to just a few:

Q: How likely is it that the bill will be passed and the Postal Service will lose a delivery day? With its mail volume declining sharply and its finances in dire straits, the USPS needs to scale back its operations ASAP. Reducing delivery frequency is one of the few ways the Postal Service can lower fixed costs, so chances are excellent that five-day delivery is a done deal. “Support for five-day seems to be building in Washington, so the likelihood is increasing,” says Hamilton Davison, executive director for the American Catalog Mailers Association. “Congress is starting to realize that action to save the Postal Service is inevitable.”

Q: When will the move to five-day delivery most likely take place? Postal industry watchers believe 2012 at the earliest. But much depends on the 2012 presidential election—so 2013 might be more realistic. Assuming the five-day delivery bill becomes law, there would be a time period of at least six months between approval and implementation.

Source: Multi Channel Merchant

Postal Crisis 101: The Postal Bailout

The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released "Postal Crisis 101: The Postal Bailout," a new video explaining one of the dire consequences if Congress fails to confront the fiscal crisis facing the United States Postal Service. Since its peak in 2006, mail volume has declined by 46 billion pieces. The Postal Service has projected a $10 billion loss in Fiscal Year 2011. The Issa-McCain-Ross Postal Reform Act of 2011 claims to be the only plan that will remove road blocks that have prevented the Postal Service from reducing expenses in line with declining revenue, and implement cost-cutting structural reforms, ensuring the Postal Service meets its obligations without exposing taxpayers to a multi-billion taxpayer funded bailout. Congressman Issa feels the other solutions put forward seek to avoid real reform by giving the Postal Service a cash infusion masked by an accounting gimmick that creates a fictitious overpayment. Ultimately, those solutions fail to confront the outdated business model, which is at the root of the Postal Service's problems. Read more here.

Workers' Comp Costs Postal Service More

The U.S. Postal Service could save at least $335 million on its yearly workers' compensation tab if the federal government adopted some of the cost-cutting techniques used by private companies, the agency's inspector general concludes in a new report. As of June, some 16,200 disabled USPS employees — or about one-third of the total for the federal workforce — were on workers' comp. Of those, 928 were aged 80 or older. One was 99. Under legislation introduced in February by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, workers' comp recipients would have to drop off the rolls once they became eligible for retirement. The measure has not moved out of a Senate committee, according to a legislative database.

Source: Federal Times