The Postal Service reported a net loss of $5.1 billion for its 2011 fiscal year and on Tuesday warned that could run out of cash by September of next year if Congress did not offer relief.
It is no hidden secret to any American that first-class mail has declined greatly because the American people are using e-mail and online bill pay and not first-class mail, and that decline in first-class mail has significantly impacted the revenue for the Postal Service. The other problem the Postal Service, every single year now, come up with $5.5 billion—every single year—for future health retiree benefits.
The post office is officially the nation’s second largest employer, after Wal-Mart. The United States Post Office has almost 40,000 local offices that employ almost 500,000 . While the post office doesn’t receive money directly from the taxpayers, it’s glut of employees and grotesque ineffiencies have required the post office to routinely borrow money from the treasury to pay it’s bills – most recently to the tune of $12,000,000,000.
The Postmaster General has proposed—cut 40 percent of the workforce, shut down 3,700 mostly rural post offices —end Saturday mail service, lay off or cut back on the workforce of the Postal Service by 40 percent—over 200,000 American workers, by some estimates. The Postmaster General also wants to the shutting down of about 252 mail processing facilities— about half of the mail processing facilities in this country. This will have the effect of slowing down mail service. The Post office does other strange things like lease and rent buildings which it could own. In LaCrosse, Kansas the Post office has been renting one small building since the 1960’s. By my estimates its rents could have purchased that building three time over and then some. Instead it continues to pay rent for a building in much need of repairs frankly speaking?
Why pay rent when you can own? Other government agencies own and operate their own buildings they don’t pay rents? It's wasteful and inefficent...
What we need is a new business model for the post office, much more entrepreneurial. in a rural State, if people would like to walk into a post office and get a letter notarized, they cannot do it today. If people walk into a post office and want to get 10 copies of their letter, they cannot do it today. The United States Congress has said they cannot do that. If somebody walks into a rural post office and wants to get a fishing license or a hunting license or fill out a driver’s license, they cannot do that right now.
You can’t send a fax, pay a bill online…You can’t print out stamps with your favorite picture on it? The list of what the post office doesn’t do is endless.
Look a lot of people are unemployed. A lot of people get unemployment checks, social security checks. Sometimes in order to cash those checks they have to go to a payday lender. Why can’t they walk into a postal service and cash that check at a minimal fee rather than paying 10, 15, or 20 percent to a payday lender?
We need to develop a new business model for the Postal Service, get them involved in the digital age, not run from it.
"The reason the Post office is failing is because it can’t adapt or compete. Its business model is out of date:, says Sandy Moorehouse of Charlotte, N.C.
Robert Tilford
Charlotte, N.C.
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