Postal Service to cut Saturday mail to trim costs

[Ms.PacMan]

Postal Service to Cut Saturday Mail to Trim Costs - ABC News

They want to cut mail to 5 days and will continue to deliver packages on Saturday. Congress hasn't approved this yet.

 

[Anonymous 10]

Great out sure post service can't look even worse than it already does.

 

[moreluck]

I seem to get nothing but junk mail on Sat. so it's OK by me.

 

[menotyou]

I seem to get nothing but junk mail on Sat. so it's OK by me.

I use to get the store flyers and junk on Sat. Now, they come on Fri., and the really bad junk comes on Sat.
That's to the box out front. I get the same crap at the post office box I have in Belleville.

 

[cachsux]

I guess I'll just have to find something else to shred while watching cartoons.

 

[LongTimeComing]

I feel like they proposed this a year or so ago....along with the possibility of cutting out a day of the week or two if needed....

I can't pinpoint it, but I swear I heard this before....

 

[moreluck]

This has been talked about for years.....I guess they are finally getting 'a round tuit'.

 

[menotyou]

Henderson has a PO. Henderson Harbor has one, as well. 1 mile apart. Sackets Harbor has one, 7.7 miles away. The only reason Henderson Harbor has one, still, is because of the retired politicians who live there. Talk about waste.

	[COLOR=#878787 !important]US Post Office[/COLOR]
		[COLOR=#212121 !important]4 mins → US Post Office[/COLOR]

13190 County Route 123 Henderson Harbor, NY 13651

[COLOR=#878787 !important]1.0 mi[/COLOR]

US Post Office 8872 New York 178 Henderson, NY 13650

[COLOR=#878787 !important]0.0 mi[/COLOR]

US Post Office 107 W Main St Sackets Harbor, NY 13685

[COLOR=#878787 !important]7.7 mi[/COLOR]

 

[Babagounj]

Ending Sat. will eliminate the possibility of any OT , which many postal carriers need .

 

[PiedmontSteward]

Ending Sat. will eliminate the possibility of any OT , which many postal carriers need .

Exactly. The Postal Service is running in the red because of burdens Congress placed on it back in 2006; the so-called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act requires the USPS to pre-fund retirement health benefits 75 years in advance. Meaning the USPS is paying health care premiums for letter carriers/postal workers that haven't been born yet. No private employer is under such a stringent financial burden; take away those obligations and the USPS is running in the black again.

I hate SurePost as much as the next UPS'er, but don't be so quick to throw your post office union brothers under the bus before you know the whole story.

 

[Anonymous 10]

Ending Sat. will eliminate the possibility of any OT , which many postal carriers need .

Maybe not. Eliminating a day will increase the work load and the layoffs might make a more ups mentality where the business model could be less workers and their benifits and over time out the ass.

 

[TxRoadDawg]

Exactly. The Postal Service is running in the red because of burdens Congress placed on it back in 2006; the so-called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act requires the USPS to pre-fund retirement health benefits 75 years in advance. Meaning the USPS is paying health care premiums for letter carriers/postal workers that haven't been born yet. No private employer is under such a stringent financial burden; take away those obligations and the USPS is running in the black again.

I hate SurePost as much as the next UPS'er, but don't be so quick to throw your post office union brothers under the bus before you know the whole story.

Mind citing the clause that says that 75 years. Also since when is overtime a god given right to supplement income. Facts are simple, costs are going up while product demand goes down more every year. Between UPS and fedex on the parcel side and email on the first class side they will continue to shrink and HAVE to adapt more than just jacking rates every 18 months.

 

[The Other Side]

Mind citing the clause that says that 75 years. Also since when is overtime a god given right to supplement income. Facts are simple, costs are going up while product demand goes down more every year. Between UPS and fedex on the parcel side and email on the first class side they will continue to shrink and HAVE to adapt more than just jacking rates every 18 months.

The reality of the postal service is clear. We have talked about this subject before on this thread and the realities stated.

What is going to happen by cutting saturday service will be the elimination of 150K employees. All T6 positions will be eliminated by going to a 5 day workweek. There will be no need for "casual carriers" as regulars will be covering the mail in 5 days.

The 5 day workers will run longer hours and they will not be able to run short days ( less than 8 hours) like they can today. The 5 day carriers workload will increase as everything will have to make service before end of day friday.

HUGE LAYOFFS are coming to the postal service.

UPS sending packages to the postal service will no longer be a viable option.

Peace

TOS

 

[over9five]

A private company doing the same thing would have cut Saturday delivery years ago. No one needs mail on the weekend.
Sucks that there'll be job losses, but it's crazy providing jobs that just lose your company money.

 

[stink219]

Is having Saturday mail a necessity? most businesses do work Monday thru Friday. I'm in no rush to get my bills nor junk mail on Saturday. Hell, most of the time it sits in the box till Monday anyway. The US mail has 3 issues, 1 is cost. They don't charge enough. 2 is Saturday mail. It should be a day for express and special mail. 3 is over supervision. My cousin is a manager of the PO and he says it all the time. Way too many chiefs compared to Indians.

 

['Lord Brown's bidding']

Mind citing the clause that says that 75 years. Also since when is overtime a god given right to supplement income. Facts are simple, costs are going up while product demand goes down more every year. Between UPS and fedex on the parcel side and email on the first class side they will continue to shrink and HAVE to adapt more than just jacking rates every 18 months.

Just got off the phone with my dad, a letter carrier. They are very excited about this, for they have been waiting for this for years! We are hoping congress does not get in the way like they did last time. And this proposal does not involve the massive layoffs that were proposed last time they were this close to getting weekends off (laying off everyone with less than 5 yrs seniority, like 600,000 at that time).

Their OT may be reduced, but those guys are working crazy hours, and the conditions are brutal (for all the complaining we do, I haven't heard any upser going off the deep end; they've been going "postal" for years, and my father's station has even had an incident or two).

 

['Lord Brown's bidding']

Times are tough for postal workers. My father just told me about how they are laying off several thousand workers (casuals, I think) making $22/hr, and are going to rehire them at $16/hr after they are "re-classified (given a new job title). Many left FT gigs paying $16/hr to join the PO so they can earn that higher rate. We-for all our troubles-have it good compared to postal workers.

 

['Lord Brown's bidding']

Businesses and people often cause an uproar and complain to their representatives whenever the proposal for a five day work week comes up. Many people view it as an American right, in a way. My family has been looking forward to this for at least ten years.

 

[PiedmontSteward]

Mind citing the clause that says that 75 years. Also since when is overtime a god given right to supplement income. Facts are simple, costs are going up while product demand goes down more every year. Between UPS and fedex on the parcel side and email on the first class side they will continue to shrink and HAVE to adapt more than just jacking rates every 18 months.

From: Davidson, Joe. The Washington Post, Sep. 26 2012. Postal Service to default on retiree health payment, again - Washington Post

“In reality, this is a default on the part of Congress, which in 2006 mandated that the Postal Service do something that no other agency or company in the country is required to do — pre-fund future retiree health benefits,” said National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando. “It is that unique burden that the Postal Service is ‘defaulting’ on — and what’s ironic is that the USPS already has $45 billion set aside for future retiree health benefits, enough to cover all such expenses for several decades, which no other institution can say.”

From: Sanburn, Josh. TIME Magazine, Aug. 01 2012. Post Office to Default on Preretiree Health Payments | TIME.com

"Six years ago Congress mandated that the U.S.P.S. start prefunding health benefits for current employees for the next 75 years, and it told the postal service that it had to set aside at least $5.5 billion or more a year to do so. At the time, the post office was doing fairly well. Mail volume was steady, and the recession was a couple years away."

 

[rod]

I would have no problem with them delivering only a couple of times a week. For me its nothing but junk mail anyway because we do everything via automatic deposit/payment. Why would they even screw around with jacking up the price of a stamp a penny? My god--a friggin penny! Who in their right mind increases anything a PENNY. Hell-- even gas goes up 5 or 10 cents at a time. The Post Office is a dying bread just like newspapers and magazines-------------and unfortunately Unions.