We’ve discussed the U.S. Postal Service’s financial troubles previously, but reality struck with even more force last week with the official announcement that the P.O. wants to stop delivering mail on Saturdays, starting this August.
That comes after the Postal Service raised the ire of many rural residents, along with postal employees and their unions, by proposing the closure of many small, rural post offices and more than half its mail processing centers, which prompted an attempt to intervene by Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley and others.
Along the way, the Postal Service stuck it to some of its most faithful customers, including many newspapers, by cutting a really sweet deal with the giant advertising firm Valassis, giving it a lower mailing rate than anyone else gets because of the bulk mail Valassis intends to provide. The problem is that everybody Valassis is swiping business from (which, we must state, in the spirit of full disclosure, includes newspapers and others in the printing industry) must pay higher rates because the Post Office hasn’t done a deal with them.
Post offices, including our own in Sweet Home, are more short-staffed than they were a few years ago, meaning that service is sometimes not what it once was as staffers do more multi-tasking. There’s been talk of cutting back on next-day mail delivery. In short, few are happy.
The Feb. 6 announcement noted that delivery of packages would continue six days a week, along with mail to post office box addresses, but that letters and magazines going to street addresses would wait till Monday.
Despite these financial woes, the U.S. Post Office is actually considered the finest, most efficient postal services in the world, according to a recent British study. Our Postal Service employees each deliver more mail than any of their contemporaries in other nations.
But the USPS simply faces serious, giant financial and managerial obstacles that would hinder any business organization.
Possibly the Post Office’s biggest problem is the massive financial obligation dumped upon it by Congress in 2006, requiring that it pay some $5.5 billion per year for health benefits for future employees – a mandate not imposed on any other government agency. Add to that a 37-percent decline in first class mail since 2007, largely thanks to e-mail and online payment systems now available to consumers, and it’s not hard to see why the USPS has problems.
The Post Office receives no taxpayer dollars, but nearly everything it does – including Saturday delivery – is done under Congressional oversight. As soon as Postal Service authorities made the announcement last week that they were going to reduce Saturday deliveries, cries of outrage started rising from Congress, questioning whether the Post Office could do that without a congressional thumbs-up.
One of the things keeping the the agency alive are monopolistic regulations that protect it against competition. The “mailbox monopoly,” for instance, a law that restricts access to your mailbox to the Post Office alone, is the biggest example – even though it’s your box.
That’s why, if we were to deliver The New Era or the Extra using some other method than the mail, we would either have to install tubes or deliver the publications (in bags) to residents’ and subscribers’ homes – on the porch, the walkway or driveway. We can’t put the paper in your mailbox.
Although a U.S. Federal Trade Commission report on the subject found that other countries that have discontinued their mailbox monopolies have experienced neither significant drops in mail or problems with theft from mailboxes – two justifications trotted forth by the Postal Service for the law, and a majority of the U.S. public opposes the monopoly, it persists.
We certainly don’t think the loss of the Post Office would benefit any of us, but this can’t go on. We believe Congress should withdraw and rethink that 2006 mandate, and we believe it’s time to think outside the box – literally.
If the Post Office can back off on Saturday delivery and give special deals to large players like Valassis – better rates than all the little guys who are bound by law to do business the old way, then Congress should remove the mailbox monopoly and allow qualified delivery companies to use mailboxes with the approval of the customer.
The other issue is the need for local post offices. We believe it is important that the USPS continue to keep access to post offices available to rural residents, and we realize that it may not be able to continue doing business the same way to make that happen.
OK, so what will it take? Should it charge different rates for different locations, like its for-profit (and profitable) competitors do? The U.S. is not France or Japan. Vast distances are involved in transporting mail within our borders. Such an approach might make sense.
Whatever the solutions, the U.S. Postal Service is a mess, from a business standpoint, and Congress needs to take this seriously.
Our mail service needs help. We hope it gets it soon.