The United States Postal Service is implementing
cost cutting measures while on the verge of running out of money.
Due to budget cuts, the South Texas town of Cedar Lake,
population 683, could soon lose its post office. Every year, Cedar Lake
resident Bobbie Johnson estimates about 20,000 pieces of mail are routed
through the small towns mailing office. According to data presented by the U.S.
Postal Service, some 3,700 small town post offices made the list of those that
could potentially be closed as the U.S. Postal Service tightens its reigns. Johnson
says if the post office in her small town closes, the nearest branch would be
more than 35 miles away. According to a U.S. Postal Service spokesman, these
closures and other cost cutting measures could save the federal government
money.
The possibility of a collapse of the U.S. Postal
Service has put the longtime service on the verge of default. The lead
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe warned that without immediate assistance
from Congress, “the USPS could default on its payment and be out of money by
next year, forcing it to shut down all operations.”
The 238-year-old institution has recently been buckling
under the pressure of massive payments for future retiree benefits and
dwindling revenue as more Americans communicate by email. Last year,
the USPS reported $16 billion in revenue loss. The service is in need of rapid
and drastic restructuring to remain financially viable in the future.
The proposed USPS cuts
are big. Donahoe presented a number of measures that he argues would halt the USPS’s
rapid financial decline, including the elimination of the annual pre-fund
payment requirement, stopping Saturday mail delivery and terminating a
“no-layoff” clause in a contract with unionized postal workers.
According to Donahoe,
“cutting service down to five days a week instead of six, is a proposal that
has been kicked around for years, and would save about $3 billion a year.”
Donahoe has also urged Congress to
allow him to shut down standalone post offices, moving them into convenience
stores and supermarkets instead.
These proposals have
been met with resistance, not least by postal workers who stand to lose their
jobs but by USPS customers as well.
Johnson and other mail service customers are outraged at the
actions the USPS plan to take. “Congress
needs to leave Saturday delivery and the USPS alone,” Johnson said. “This is
just another way to force the post office to be doomed so that it can become
someone's private profit.”
Not all postal service
customers are in opposition to the proposed budget cuts.
Postal customer Brian
Fontenot said “the biggest problems the post office faces are obvious; they
refuse to adapt to the digital age which means less paper mail moving.”
Fontenot feels these
cost cutting measures and no mail delivery on Saturday would be great strides
towards modernization for the USPS.
Mail carrier Kiah
Williams is worried that the budget cuts will affect her employment.
“It is not about having
Saturday’s off,” Williams said, “but being able to make money; a change in the delivery
schedule could put me out of work.”
The USPS is not technically “broke” — yet.
The USPS brings in profits every year. The financial problem it faces now comes from a 2006 Congressional mandate that requires the agency to pre-pay into a fund that covers health care costs for future retired employees. Under the mandate, the USPS is required to make an annual $5.5 billion payment over ten years, through 2016.
The USPS brings in profits every year. The financial problem it faces now comes from a 2006 Congressional mandate that requires the agency to pre-pay into a fund that covers health care costs for future retired employees. Under the mandate, the USPS is required to make an annual $5.5 billion payment over ten years, through 2016.
Revenue
has also been declining for years, and the postal service does not rely on taxpayer
funds. Until 1971, mail delivery was handled by the Post Office
Department, a Cabinet department in the federal government. Postal worker
strikes prompted President Nixon to pass the Postal Reorganization Act in 1971,
transforming it into the semi-independent agency we now know as the United
States Postal Service. The USPS has not used taxpayer money since 1982, when
postage stamps became products instead of forms of taxation. Taxpayer money is
only used in some cases to pay for mailing voter materials to disabled and
overseas Americans.
USPS spokespersons have been adamant in emphasizing that
they are not requesting taxpayer funds from the federal government to make this
year’s payment. Rather, they say, the USPS is asking Congress to authorize
access to an estimated $7 billion that they overpaid into the future retiree
pension fund in previous years.
“The
Postal Service is advancing an important new approach to delivery that reflects
the strong growth of our package business and responds to the financial
realities resulting from America’s changing mailing habits,” Donahoe said
in a statement. “We developed this approach by working with our customers to
understand their delivery needs and by identifying creative ways to generate
significant cost savings.”
The
USPS has been the topic of much debate over the past couple of years as it
reviews its options now that the digital world has seemingly rendered mail
service near-obsolete. Though widespread
email use has all but eliminated the need to send letters and many
people are going paperless in an effort to be green, a lot of people still rely
on the post office to deliver bills–especially those who don’t want to give out
their banking information online–and package delivery is always a concern.
In
an attempt to make things easier for its customers, the Postal Service has even introduced a new
service for packages recently that includes giving the customer the ability to
pay for and print their own shipping labels at home, then schedule a pick-up
using one of the service’s flat-rate boxes. But the agency says it will continue
to make packages a priority even as it prepares to end Saturday mail service,
scheduled to begin this summer.
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