March 22, 2018 — The Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service (C21), an organization of the private sector mailing industry, announced support for the Postal Reform Act of 2018, introduced today.
C21 has very strongly supported the similar Postal Reform Act of 2017, HR 756, and its bipartisan sponsors in the House, and plans to do everything it can to secure passage of the Senate bill before a very urgent financial problem for USPS becomes dire later this year.
The Postal Service is bleeding red ink profusely through no fault of its own; most of the red ink comes from a requirement to pre-fund 75 years’ worth of retiree health liabilities, costing $10s of billions. This bill addresses that problem without resort to taxpayer dollars, responding to a key concern in the House about H.R. 756. If legislation does not pass, the Postal Regulatory Commission is poised to permit the Postal Service to recover those $10s of billions through higher postage, including letting the price of a stamp rise to 64 cents over five years, with similar or higher increases for the businesses that contribute more than 90% of the revenues the self-sustaining (no taxpayer dollars) system generates.
The bill also addresses concerns about mail service, which is vital to rural areas throughout the country, and important everywhere else.
“Absent this or a similar fix, mailers will be driven to avoid the mail or even, in some cases, close down,” added Sackler. “For a postal system that has 30% less business than just a decade ago, further big losses would either mean a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer bailout or a radical shrinking of the system. Neither is good for America.”
C21 consists of business mailing associations and companies – newspapers, advertisers, catalogers, e-commerce, parcels, greeting cards, financial services, telecommunications, insurance, small businesses of every kind, paper, printing, technology, envelope manufacturing, mail services, who understand the essential role of USPS and want it sustained for the future.
SOURCE Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service (C21)
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I firmly believe that the Postal Service should increase postage rates. Any other businesses would increase their fee’s to cover their cost of doing business. C21 would rather hurt retiree’s than pay their fair share. I am sure businesses that are part of C21 have been regularly passing on to their increased costs to customers at a higher rate than actual cost. The Postal Service and especially Congress need to accept the fact they are trying to run or ruin a business. Give the Post Office the authority to take care of business! I retired from the Postal Service over 15 years ago and while I read that all the “stakeholders” are in agreement on this or that. Yet not once has any union or postal representative contacted me. I’m a stakeholder and I don’t hesitate to contact my elected officials. Again I will be asking for their no vote on this Postal reform legislation.
Of course they love it when they get cut rate delivery price…Charge them triple and give the workers a raise!!!
Amen! $30/hr just isn’t enough for repetitive manual labor!