The coming changes to the U.S. Postal Service will affect millions of citizens, not to mention thousands of federal employees. Now, regular Americans are weighing in on USPS reform.
Below are results from a new, University of Maryland national survey on this contentious topic. A representative sample of 2,256 registered voters across the country participated, deliberating over many policy options currently being consider by Congress: allowing USPS to raise postal rates to reflect inflation, lifting the prefunding requirement, ending Saturday letter delivery, reducing door delivery, addressing the looming closure of post offices, among others.
As a reminder: we are strictly nonpartisan; we are NOT an advocacy group and hold no stake in the results of any of our surveys.
Dr. Steven Kull directed the survey. He is a leading public opinion expert who regularly meets with congressional offices to brief members of Congress on our results.
Links to the report, questionnaire and survey instrument that was used by the representative sample, which anyone can try (though we don’t compile data from those responses) are below.
WASHINGTON, Nov. 17, 2015 — While Congress struggles to come to an agreement on the fiscal crisis of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), a new survey of a representative panel of registered voters finds large bipartisan majorities recommend letting USPS act more like a business in ways that would dramatically improve its financial position, according to the results of a Citizen Cabinet survey released today by Voice Of the People. Panelists made their recommendations after being briefed on the fiscal problems facing the USPS and hearing pro and con arguments on various options for the Postal Service proposed by the Postmaster General and under consideration in Congress.
Most significantly, eight in ten panelists recommended dramatically reducing the requirement imposed by Congress to fully prefund future retiree health benefits – a requirement that has put USPS in the red for some years now. Overwhelming majorities found convincing the argument that ordinary businesses do not achieve such a high prefunding level and USPS should not have this unique requirement. However, majorities did not favor eliminating the requirement entirely, but rather lowering it by 20 percent and greatly extending the time allotted to provide funding.
Even larger majorities – nine in ten – recommended allowing USPS to provide new non-postal products and services. Panelists were informed that USPS is presently prohibited from offering such products and services and also heard the argument in defense of this prohibition – that it would have an unfair advantage relative to private companies offering non-postal products and services. Large majorities endorsed allowing such services as photocopying, Internet access, money transfers and a highly secure email system.
“Both Republicans and Democrats seem comfortable with the idea of their neighborhood post office being more like a Kinko’s,” said VOP President and PPC Director Steven Kull.
The Citizen Cabinet panel consisted of 2,256 registered voters including samples of the nation as a whole and three states: Maryland,Oklahoma and Virginia. The survey was conducted by the Program for Public Consultation (PPC), School of Public Policy at theUniversity of Maryland and was fielded July 2 – August 12, 2015.
Unlike a standard poll, Citizen Cabinet surveys take respondents through an online process called a ‘policymaking simulation’ that gives respondents information and seeks to put them in the shoes of a policymaker. The simulation is vetted with Congressional staffers from both parties and other experts before it goes into the field.
Several other options for freeing up the postal service to act more like a business were considered:
- Allowing the Postal Service to lease its unused space in its warehouses, which it is not currently allowed to do – approved by 76 percent, including 77 percent of Republicans and 76 percent of Democrats.
- Closing as many as 5 percent of those post offices that are losing money in a given year – endorsed by two thirds (72 percent of Republicans, 63 percent of Democrats) – though only three in ten are ready to go as far as the Postal Service wants to go, which would be to close the 12 percent of all post offices that are not profitable.
- Ending Saturday letter delivery (while still delivering packages and Priority Mail) – supported by 67 percent, including 75 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats.
- Permitting postal rates to rise faster than inflation – supported by six in ten, including 56 percent of Republicans and 60 percent of Democrats.
“While Congress continues to have trouble finding common ground, a bipartisan majority of citizens is pointing the way to stability for the Postal Service,” Kull said.
However, some options were opposed:
- Converting most door-delivery mail boxes to curbside or cluster boxes – supported by only 41 percent, including 50 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats.
- Offering small-scale individual savings accounts – supported by only 32 percent, including 24 percent of Republicans and 37 percent of Democrats.
The Citizen Cabinet panel was recruited from a probability-based sample of registered voters. A total of 1,582 panelists were recruited from Nielson Scarborough’s larger national panel; an additional 674 panelists were recruited by PPC by mail and telephone, using a random sample of households with registered voters provided by Survey Sampling International. Telephone and mailing were conducted by the research firm Communications for Research and additionally for Virginia by the Center for Survey Research at theUniversity of Virginia and for Oklahoma by the Public Opinion Learning Laboratory at the University of Oklahoma.
The margin of error for the national panel was +/- 3.7 percent, while for the states it ranged from +/- 4.4 to 4.7 percent.
A report on the survey’s results, “How Americans Would Fix the U.S. Postal Service” can be found at: http://vop.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/USPS_Report.pdf
The survey’s questionnaire can be found at: http://vop.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/USPS_Quaire.pdf
All are invited to participate in the same survey completed by the panelists. It can be found here: http://vop.org/consultations/
THE USPS HAS A CONTRACT WITH AMAZON. WE ARE DELIVERING THEIR PACKAGES 7 DAYS A WEEK NOW. WHO ELSE IS GOING TO WANT THAT KIND OF CONTRACT FOR THEIR BUSINESS?
WHERE WILL THAT LEAVE THE 5 DAY DELIVERY IDEA? REMEMBER WE ARE NOT GETTING ANY TAX MONEY TO KEEP US GOING. I AM AMAZED AT THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT AWARE OF THAT. WE AS RURAL CARRIERS DO PROVIDE A NEEDED SERVICE. NOT EVERYONE LIVES IN TOWN AS WELL AS NOT EVERYONE WORKS WHERE THEY CAN GET TO THE PO TO PICKUP PACKAGES/SIGNATURE ITEMS BEFORE CLOSING TIME. SATURDAY MOST ARE HOME FOR THE REDELIVERY OF THAT ITEM.
IN THESE DAYS BE THANKFUL YOU HAVE A JOB. IF YOU DON’T LIKE WHAT YOU ARE DOING START LOOKING AT OTHER OPPORTUNITIES. YOU WILL FIND OUT REAL FAST THERE AREN’T MANY. I LOVE MY JOB BUT THERE ARE DAYS THAT I BITCH AND MOAN. THE WORK IS HARD AND THE DAYS ARE LONG BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY THERE IS SATIFACTION IN THE KNOWLEDGE THAT ALL THE MAIL/PARCELS WERE DELIVERED AND THE CUSTOMERS ARE HAPPY.
BE THANKFUL NOT FULL OF ANGER .
while I agree that 5 day delivery would cause us a lot of mail during the week over 5 days instead of 6 days, there are ways to help that. Why doesn’t this union fight for PTF’s again, and use them as street help? Or what about shortening the routes? Both of these would force the PO to hire more bodies, so the union would still have them as potential members. However, this union would rather have the guaranteed bodies as is, rather than risk that the PO would hire people accordingly. You can thank Fred and Diamondstein for that, even though Diamondstein’s members are done by 10:00 on Saturdays.
end the insanity, the govt is not very good at running any kind of business. american people would be better served by selling it off to UPS and FDX. paying $100,000 dollars for a so called po mismanager without a college education is a crime. losing over 90 Billion since 2009 is criminal.
5 Day here we come….All you union lovers who say the public wants 6 day, wake up. Stop with the union talking points and lets get back into reality. The union has done nothing to help the USPS. Just saying stop the pre-funding will fix everything is not the answer. They don’t want the USPS to be successful because then they would have nothing to complain about and to justify their union jobs that by the way have SATURDAY off. They can get but not us…..wake up people
Is there anybody out here that understands you cannot change a 6 day work week to a five day work week without justifying the ramifications be it good or bad? The whole system is set up for five day right down to the route adjustments. If you reduce 6 to 5 you have to accommodate the average of the extra day into the new average of a five day week. That changes everything right down to the size of the individual cells on each carriers case across the whole nation. It means the same amount of mail packed into a shorter week. This includes all house to house mailings. How many of these are we to carry each day. What about the walking routes? They will be pounding like pack mules.
Six days a week equals 48 hours a week for each route with a T-6. Five days a week now makes each route across the whole nation roughly 9.50 hours a day. We roll mail to stay at 8 and that happens at least 2-3 times a week so now it will happen everyday? Where we work that is a FACT. That is nuts people.
Fine by me if you make it 5 days a week that would be just fantastic having Sat/Sun off believe me! Just think it through because I am staying on the 8 hour list. If you are an OT lover welcome to paradise! It means 10 PLUS hours everyday with all the bumps that will occur on EVERY route in the office across the whole country and weekends off! Manager’s better think this one through…hummmmm there is something to think about. Someone, somewhere in Management actually believes this will save money. The only savings is keeping vehicles off the street one day a week. That is a big savings in mileage, fuel and wear and tear BUT is it worth it when OT and payroll will spiral out of control?
does that mean we will get real managers with Master’s Degrees in Business running the place and get rid of all the nepotism slime?
I can understand how many customers would not miss Saturday delivery. After all, using last week and this one for example, we’ve been basically stuffing boxes with tons of (in my personal opinion) worthless Black Friday and catalogue shit. Every flea bitten business from car dealers to jewelry stores to those terrible rent-to-own gyp joints are all in on the flood of crap, and 99.99% of these mailings go straight into the trash.
I know it’s our livelihood, and I don’t really want the USPS to go under, but again, from the average Joe’s point of view, it’s a waste of trees. The Service, amongst its other screwups, should charge bulk mailers a lot more than they do. Marriage mail costs us billions every year because thanks to kickbacks, the USPS doesn’t charge enough to cover the overhead of getting it delivered.
That’s not stupid – that’s corruption and somebody should have looked into it a long time ago.
As far as Saturday delivery, we’re looking at the difference between generations. Younger citizens who do all their communication via smart phones and tablets, including when they’re sitting in a restaurant, which really bugs the shit out of me, especially those under 30 never really understood how the public used to rely on us for more than just SSI checks and refund checks from the states and IRS. We truly were a vital link between people and businesses, and we got respect from customers and management stressed accuracy, honesty and reliability because our mail content had so much more important stuff in it.
Now, it’s the elderly who are not interested in getting caught up in computer world, and who can blame them – at least they can still write letters – they need their medicines we deliver, And believe it or not, grandkids and sometimes more thoughtful adults send letters and real cards, not lazy e-cards. Will that phase out? Hard to say because as we age we may grow weary of computerized everything ourselves although most are so dependent on computers doing everything for them it would be a catastrophe if millions ever had to go back even as recently as the 1970’s and have to do horrible things like have face to face conversations and not be able to load an app for every damn media outlet in this part of the galaxy.
I retire in a little over a year, so I’m positive there will be no move toward five day delivery any time soon. I hope for the sake of my fellow employees who will be around a long time after I’ve left the PO that we stay strong so they can have nice retirements themselves.
Still waiting for the USPS to come into the 21 century and give the service that the American public should have.
The prefunding ends next year anyway so do we really think Congress is going to do anything about it now in addition to it being an election year? Nope. BTW Rolando you said that the public wants and demands 6 day delivery…. but according to this poll it appears that alot of them really don’t care. So is it possible you could have maybe not told us the truth and turned numbers in your favor?? Hmmmm I’m not really sure, so I better think about this one. Yep I think you did just that. Rolando and the unions are no better than the PO when it comes to spinning numbers