The National Academy of Public Administration, an organization chartered by Congress to provide advice to government leaders, recently evaluated a proposal to privatize all postal operations except delivery and concluded the idea “merits serious consideration. The original privatization proposal, which I wrote about in the March-April issue of The American Postal Worker, was written by a group of self-described “postal industry thought leaders.”
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Although the review by the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) doesn’t quite endorse the proposal to privatize everything but delivery, it gives a sense of legitimacy to the concept, which up to now has been dismissed as extreme.
While the NAPA report is supposed to provide an independent review of the privatization proposal, it was financed in part by a contribution from Pitney-Bowes, one of the largest pre-sort companies in the country. Pitney-Bowes owns more than 40 mail processing centers and stands to be a major beneficiary if mail processing operations are contracted out to the private sector.
It’s worth noting that NAPA conducted a similar study in 1982 and came to a very different conclusion: Breaking up the Postal Service “is not in the national interest,” NAPA wrote at the time.
The recent NAPA review acknowledges that there are a number of important factors that the proposal failed to address, such as the retiree health benefit pre-funding obligation, and stresses that “a number of issues need to be further explored before any implementation of the concept can, or should, be attempted.”
On the other hand, the NAPA paper points out that the Postal Service is already privatizing many operations through the use of “work-sharing” discounts.
The study notes that the value of mail processing and transportation completed by private companies is estimated at $17 billion annually. While some portray this astounding figure as operating costs avoided by the Postal Service, in many cases the discounts are so big that the Postal Service loses money on the deal. In 2008 the Postal Regulatory Commission concluded that many discounts exceeded the costs avoided. And while the Postal Service has lost revenue, private mail sorters have made healthy profits.
The NAPA review notes that if privatization of all operations other than delivery was fully implemented, several “bargaining units would be negatively impacted.” NAPA acknowledges that several people interviewed for the review concluded that “cost savings will be realized mainly from replacing union labor with non-union labor.”
Driving a Wedge Between Unions
The proposal to privatize everything but delivery also puts a wedge between the postal unions — it invokes a divide-and-conquer strategy that seeks to reduce opposition to the plan by seeming to protect the work of one group of employees, Letter Carriers, while targeting employees engaged in mail processing, transportation and other activities.
We’ve seen similar divide-and-conquer strategies used in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and elsewhere in an attempt to cause division between public- and private-sector unions. The Postal Service frequently uses this strategy to divide postal unions.
In an ironic twist, however, the NAPA study recommends “evaluating the merits of the contention that the delivery function should remain a role for the Postal Service.” In other words, why not contract out the whole kit-and-caboodle, including delivery?
The union principle that An Injury to One is an Injury to All is as true today as it ever was.
(This article will appear in the May/June 2013 edition of The American Postal Worker.)
Yes people do go on line and order merchandise which the P.O. delivers to your door.
Congress robs from the P.O to pay for the war debt and American gets stuck with poor service and delayed mail.We are doing our job,to bad Congress and our PMG don’t.
Nowaday people don’t read mail, people go online, it’s total different.
Hey Pitney-Bowes…..Remember years ago, Emery had a contract to work domestic prority mail. They FAILED!
Hey Pitney-Bowes…..Remember Hurricane Andrew and Katrina, USPS delivered the mail the next day and FED-X and UPS didn’t!
Hey Pitney-Bowes….Remember 9-11 terrorist attack, USPS delivered the mail nationwide the day after and FED-X and UPS could not!
Hey Pitney-Bowes….stick your independent review where the sun don’t shine!
Mr. Bell argues another point the APWU always loses on…rational common sense. He argues all these profits will go to the private sector and this will not benefit the people of the U.S. because the price will go up.
The opposite is in fact true and it would benefit the American public…but he would lose his job. It’s called the flight from public to private trust and investment.
I left the APWU and went to the NALC. They tried to screw me and they don’t deserve to be trusted. The APWU will go the way of the doh-doh bird.
The APWU argues they win the battles in the trenches but lose the war and all the soldiers in the process.
Privatizers all know you can get anyone to man a window taking care of customers, or pushing an APC to and from a mail processing machine or running one. Learning schemes is a thing of the past when you can barcode anything like Fed-X and UPS does. You can also privatize Management at the Post Office because you don’t need them and hopefully they do. When I worked at UPS there was only three Supervisors and one manager in the ENTIRE HUB I worked at on each shift!!
We lose with the APWU. We win with privatization…not 5 day delivery.
You can wake up now or later when it’s too late. I am blessed I was forced to wake up because of the APWU.
They told me I was WRONG doing what I did leaving the APWU and they were (still are) all wet.
Talk talk talk…no ACTION! Kick the can move along nothing gets done. Congress doesn’t act. We all just go another day closer to…??? Who knows!
It seems that this kind of talk about privatization is finally catching up to the rest of the crafts Congress must take action or we are all doomed!
^^^Mikey (the Moron) Murray says nothing worthwhile
Just add a few blocks on to the route of every paperboy and pay $0.50 per house per week!
Well , if this squirrely Congress is not going to step to the plate and square their business away, then may as well sell it and kiss mail sanctity ‘Good bye !’