USPS ends Saturday delivery (as of August)

[Scout101]

Need to do SOMETHING though, don't you? If the usage has steered away from the standard letter-carrying, you have to adapt or die. If that means fewer people, that definitely sucks, but the job those people were doing no longer exists, so what do you propose those people DO?

PMG is right insofar as gearing more towards parcels, which is something actually increasing, and money to make there. People aren't getting letters as frequently anymore, so smiling while walking door to door no longer makes sense.

USPS is losing BILLIONS every year, and that's not counting the stupid benefit payment thing Congress forced on them. Time to modernize. Fighting that just means more likely to fold up shop, not saving jobs.

 

[Squiggy]

Take some of those letter carriers and make them parcel scanners. You REALLY want to make people flock to USPS Parcel over UPS or FedEx? GPS every single one of your trucks so people can feverishly stalk their incoming purchase instead of waiting at home all day only to have the damned thing show up at 7pm.

Badaboom badabing.

 

[Star Wolf]

Take some of those letter carriers and make them parcel scanners. You REALLY want to make people flock to USPS Parcel over UPS or FedEx? GPS every single one of your trucks so people can feverishly stalk their incoming purchase instead of waiting at home all day only to have the damned thing show up at 7pm.

Badaboom badabing.

Actually we are still short of carriers. As the service has tried to shed workers all but carriers have been given incentives to retire early. The new generation of scanner just coming online is GPS equipped with mobile uploading replacing the first two generations we carried which only updated at the end of the day when the scanner was placed in its modem dock.

Everybody, even within the postal service balks at paying what we do for the simple matter of finding the bar code on a piece and scanning it but the latest contracts have mandated a two tier workforce and the lower cost new hires are just coming into the service. The problem being since the loss of a service day and at a lower wage they will be starved out and there is no area cost of living adjustment like federal workers have you have the same set of circumstances which caused New York postal workers to go on their wildcat strike against the Post Office Department which lead to the modern USPS.

It is more a matter of equipment designed to speed letters and now standard magazines standing idle while machines needed to move parcels are overwhelmed and since like the nation as a whole the Postal Service has reached their borrowing limit so they can't make the capital investment on more parcel moving equipment, especially after just buying flat moving equipment which because it makes publishers discounted route sorted packing moot has been a waste

 

[Alidar Jarok]

No, they're a government agency pretty much all the way since they're governed directly by Congress. This entire weekend off proposal isn't going to happen unless Congress approves it.

Actually, while Congress normally mandates Saturday delivery, they forgot to mandate it in the continuing resolution/Fiscal Cliff deal. Because they forgot, the Postal Service is taking advantage of this. The whole thing is basically a political showdown with Congress. Daring them to affirmatively legislate something that will lose the Post Office money. The real target is the pension requirement, which will make them self-sufficient once again, but who knows with Congress.

 

[Star Wolf]

No, they're a government agency pretty much all the way since they're governed directly by Congress. This entire weekend off proposal isn't going to happen unless Congress approves it.

Actually, while Congress normally mandates Saturday delivery, they forgot to mandate it in the continuing resolution/Fiscal Cliff deal. Because they forgot, the Postal Service is taking advantage of this. The whole thing is basically a political showdown with Congress. Daring them to affirmatively legislate something that will lose the Post Office money. The real target is the pension requirement, which will make them self-sufficient once again, but who knows with Congress.

Possible I think we will still be $5 billion/year in the hole even without the 75 year pre-funding. For the record my union was the only postal union to support the law at first seeing a future where the service ran out of money. The future, like computer technology itself just came on faster then law makers and union leaders anticipated. And the present becomes do you want people on unemployment on my watch with elections coming up.