8/9/17 – WASHINGTON – Buffeted by threats from Amazon (AMZN) drones to deliveries by golf cart, the beleaguered U.S. Postal Service is counting on a different strategy to stay competitive: more freedom to raise prices on mailing letters.
After a 10-year review, the Postal Regulatory Commission appears likely to move to grant the Postal Service power to increase stamp costs beyond the rate of inflation, marking the biggest change in its pricing system in nearly a half-century. A decision is expected next month.
The commission, which oversees postal rates, might limit how high stamp prices could go. But the price of a first-class stamp, now 49 cents, could jump, though it’s not known how much.
The plan has received praise from financial analysts but raised the ire of the mail-order industry, which could pay millions more for sending items like prescription drugs and magazines and be forced to pass the costs onto consumers.
The Postal Service is trying to stay financially afloat as it seeks to invest billions in new delivery trucks to get packages more nimbly to American homes.
Still, growing competition is challenging postal dominance in the “last mile” portion of delivery, the final and usually most expensive stretch of a package’s journey from a retailer’s warehouse to a customer’s door. In a bid to control more of its deliveries, Amazon has been testing the use of drones and launched Amazon Flex, a network of contract drivers similar to courier services Uber offers. UPS has been trying deliveries via golf carts.
The post office also takes hits for perceived bad service, including Reddit threads devoted to consumer complaints about lackluster home delivery attempts. One thread on Amazon’s site has 1,000 posts under the title, “Amazon, Quit shipping via USPS and btw, you suck.”
“Price increases are long overdue,” said David G. Ross, a shipping analyst at Stifel Financial, noting that first-class stamp prices in countries like Germany cost the equivalent of 80 cents or more. He said the Postal Service needs “to make the investment and deliver the packages so that Amazon doesn’t have to do it themselves.”
source: CBS News
They can start doing daily what they are doing now with all the PM’s on vacation. They have a super cover 2 offices and let a 204b clerk close one of them. The super just follows us on the computer to make sure we are on time, they could get rid of 65000 bosses easily just by giving a clerk a 204b pay for 1.5 hours after there 8 hour bid is done. They could really even have 1 super do 6 or 7 offices and excess the bosses back to thee craft. No training necessary since they already know how to do everything perfectly
Behind every complaint there are reasons which led to the failure. Bad service and miss-delivery can be attributed to route splitting and stress brought on by cost squeezing measures. Losses and wanning fiscal projections can be attributed to an archaic and careless corporate structures built around bonuses and patronage rather than customer service. Poor contracts, corporate nepotism and political patronage have all weighed heavily on the Postal Service, I hold little hope for its continued service if massive restructuring is not sought.
What needs to change is everything!
Corporate – Area management structures need to be completely eliminated, they serve no purpose other than to implement fascist policies intimidating local managers into unethical scenarios bent on driving performance with no care for customer service other than chasing scan numbers which are vastly and fraudulently manipulated. Districts should report directly to headquarters.
Unions – There are too many and their contracts are written for 1930’s era mail delivery. They need to be gutted, re-written and employee’s given the right to local negotiation and options toward pay structure. I.e. If employee’s had the option a massive proportion would opt for the rural pay structure offering far less cost per delivery, more efficient service and less need for management squeeze tactics.
Marketing and Sales – Stop giving away the store! Commercial mailers pay way too little for their ad mail and are held to virtually no standard on mail design. I.e. The marriage mail costs considerable overtime to deliver nullifying their postage of a nickel a piece… Amazon threatens every delivery service but logistically they can’t make good on those threats without playing one against the other, they need to pay for the service they expect, period! Revise mail design standards to better make use of automation and get some sales managers with balls to consolidate negotiations between carriers to develope a fair price standard for monopolistic mailers like Amazon. There are monopoly laws, use them.
Local Office – Look, it’s simple Math. If you live in the back water, you can’t have a Post Office that delivers one letter a month to you and your neighbor. Offices need to be consolidated and rural carriers given a stock sufficient to service the community they serve. Some offices are within walking distance, the Post Office needs the freedom to make sensible changes. On second thought, someone from the outside needs to have the authority to enforce sensible change upon the Post Office.
Privatize the post office get rid of the fake NALC and bring in a union like the teamsters to run things
In the 1990’s, we knew that the growth of email would curtail letter volume in the future, but what did management do? They bought more and more machines to sort mail that would not be there in the near future. To boost this loss of First Class letter volume, they began giving private mail presort companies discounts of up to 10 cents per piece to do postal sorting, even though it could be done in house. This presorted mail, of course, was dumped and mixed with non presorted mail when it arrived at the Post Office, just to create volume numbers…an illegal act that totally took away the purpose of presorting mail. The last several years, the Post Office is falsely boosting it’s growing parcel delivery numbers through the “last mile of delivery” program, letting non postal carriers drop parcels off at destination Post offices, and paying a pittance to have the USPS delivery them. Amazon uses this service, and the PO makes sure they get next day delivery, despite the amount of revenue actually lost on these parcels. Postal management, always a few years behind actual events, is not prepared for the eventual time when Amazon finds it’s own delivery force, then the PO will suffer a massive volume loss. Postal management, of course will do the wrong things….they will increase postal rates, they will cut the workers again and again, all the while increasing the number of managers. The Post Office has a 1:4 manager to worker ratio, unheard of in any real business that wants to stay in business. If they would eliminate the many District and Area offices, which merely house micromanagers making over $100,000 a year on average in salaries alone, and allow local managers to communicate directly with Headquarters and actually run their own offices without someone threatening them with useless discipline, then we may have an accountable management system, and a better manager to worker ratio.
Working in USPS Human Resources, I can wholeheartedly agree with those above. I see new CCAs, PSEs and RCAs bi-weekly come through our new employee orientation program. 2-3 weeks later I see their ID badge given to me for disposal as that employee quits. The facility I work at is in total chaos with long time management people bailing out to go to outside branches. New employees come to work when they feel like it. I am told there is a deal where the pse,s that come in later than their assigned start time can make it up on the back-end…wtf???
I see top management getting bonuses and middle/lower getting nada. Who is actually moving the mail?? Crafts get excited to get a 1-1.5% annual raise. Couple more years I can leave this madness…sad to think after a long career with the USPS the crap is what I am going to remember.
Get rid of Management and put Seasoned Carriers in there and things would get done better and faster than the Monkeys in the circus we have right Now!!!!
If the postal service want to “stay afloat” all they have to do is cut management by 50% and concentrate on giving people the service they deserve. Hire full time career employees with decent benefits and wages with some security. You will see the service improve.
Nothing will happen until postal management is held accountable for their attempts to ruin postal service.
Only postal mgmt. would believe raising the price on a product no one uses anymore would solve their problems.
These bozos couldn’t run a lemonade stand.
If anyone viewed the included video? (See Video),you would realize that it has,absolutely NOTHING to do with the subject;of this article. It’s just another example, of how our nation(the U.S.A.); is growing collectively dumber and lazier,every day. It is as if,America (Trumpland) ,has declined to the intelligence levels;of the average USPS manager!!
It is what it is , where else can a untrained person make 50 k or more , just because the job sucks, if you have the balls to stick with it and play their game , you can work .” And work you will. I e hard the same
BS for 30 years My body just gave out! And my mind is not far behind ! Thank the Lord he has kept me to retirement ! Which is a illusion, because you can’t live in New York unless you continue to work part time
Can no management personnel figure out what’s going on? Maybe publicly they insist on lying and keeping their heads in the sand, but after scoring such a lucrative deal with Amazon that has infused tons of money the USPS needs, what happens? Thanks to the CCA and RCA programs that run half price carriers to death, resulting in piss poor service and falsifying delivery attempts and deliveries, not to mention throwing parcels and getting caught, the USPS finds itself trying to explain how the service has eroded so dramatically since the CCA/RCA programs started.
Don’t say craft didn’t warn you, management. In your usual obstinate and arrogant fashion, not to mention clueless, city carriers (I recently retired as a city carrier for my whole career – the best employees of the whole shooting match) tried to tell supervisors, postmasters and whomever else would listen that a half pay program like the City Carrier Assistant or CCA, would be a disaster with new hires getting poor pay, godawful working hours, abuse from managers who delighted in harassing them and threatening them at will as complacent NALC officers stood by unwilling to help the carrier (not in my office, thankfully, but in plenty of others). The prospect of career employment was a dim one, and many who knew they could get comparable pay with better hours, working conditions and time for personal stuff and family got the hell out. Others remaining are pressured into carrying huge loads of mail, get in big hurries, and get sloppy.
I have terrible service at home when my regular rural carrier is gone. My street’s mail gets scattered all over the place, it runs very late if the regular isn’t there, and neighbors have brought our mail to us on numerous occasions, some of it very important. I complain, have gone to the PO and talked to the rural supervisor, and nothing happens. All they give a shit about is how fast a CCA or RCA can blow through their routes and swings, accuracy and reliability be damned.
As is always the case, even when the USPS gets a windfall like the Amazon contract, the ineptitude of management, the vast majority of whom got where they are by nepotism, snitching and ass kissing, fucks everything up because they were never qualified to be where they are, and consider craft to be beneath contempt.
The terrible service is testimony to the failure of half price delivery employees. People by nature work as much as they think they’re being fairly paid to do. Some of us thankfully do the best we can because it’s just the way we are, but in younger generations, that commitment to personal excellence is in short supply. There are always exceptions, but exceptions are too few and far between to make this half ass program work. The NALC got CCA’s career jobs on the new contract, but it was a one time deal. They should have fought ferociously for the immediate permanent re-installment of the PTF program, but for whatever reason did not do. But nothing will happen – that would require management to actually be concerned about customer service and satisfaction beyond mere lip service.
It’s all about the Packages and Express Mail!!! Might want to treat that service as Royalilty!!!