Postal Letter

Why hasn't the U.S Post Office kept up?

We live in an era of amazing technology. Logistics has been revolutionized. Yet, the U.S. Postal Service employs approx the same number of people as it did in 1980. Now, I will point out that they have cut nearly 200K jobs since the peak in '99. But what else is standing in the way? They keep raising the postage cost, but the service gets no better. They sell our information (Privacy Act), but the service gets no better. http://www.usps.com/postalhistory/ratesandhistoricalstatistics.htm

Public Comments

1. Look at the facts, then decide, It is run by the same misfits that wish to handle your health care, and the union has much to say about how and how much workers do in any one hour, or day.
2. Assuming you are correct about the employment numbers being the same as in 1980 (I'd like to know where you got that information), what you are failing to see is that in 1980, the population, according to the US Census, was 226 million. In 2010, it was 308 million. In 2010, USPS delivered to 151 million delivery points (city/rural/PO box); in 1980 it was approximately 95 million. So over 30 years, population has increased 36% and the number of delivery points has increased by even more, 59% (makes sense, with smaller family size and an increasingly mobile population). And they have handled this far-heavier workload with the same number of people? I call that one HELL of an increase in productivity. I do not believe your figures, though. In 1980, the population of my county was 702,000. In 2010, it was 730,000. That's an increase of 4% in 30 years. I began as a letter carrier in 1979. At that time, the seniority list for city carriers, as published by the union, was nearly 800. Today, it is 545. http://www.nalc210.com/022011.pdf If you go to that page, you will see near the bottom a long list of vacant routes and some listed as residual. Those are routes that are still being delivered, by temp/transitional carriers. The reason there is so many that are not being put up for bid (the residual routes) or open, with no career employee to cover them (the vacant routes) is that they are all expected to disappear by sometime later this year when the next round of automation technology, the flat-sorters, are implemented. A reduction of close to 300 positions in just carriers alone (not accounting for the huge reduction in the clerk craft), with a slight increase in population, does not sound to me like 'Not keeping up.' Does it to you?