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| US Post Office might have to shut down this winter | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 4 2011, 08:22 PM (745 Views) | |
| Baldo | Sep 4 2011, 08:22 PM Post #1 |
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Postal Service Struggles to Stay Solvent, and Relevant The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances. “Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.” In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts. The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs....snipped http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/business/in-internet-age-postal-service-struggles-to-stay-solvent-and-relevant.html?_r=1 Of course there is probably no bigger gold-bricking operation. I am not complaining about hard working USPS employees. I am talking about the thousands of Postal Workers who have nothing to do and are not layed off! The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a massive deficit caused by plummeting mail volume, spends more than a million dollars each week to pay thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing. It’s a practice called “standby time,” and it has existed for years — but postal employees say it was rarely used until this year. Now, postal officials say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of standby time every week — the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than $50 million per year. http://hotair.com/archives/2009/09/30/post-office-has-thousands-of-workers-paid-for-not-working/comment-page-1/?print=1 That was in 2009 So is this still going on? Postal Service Still Paying Thousands Of Workers To Do Nothing By David Schepp, Posted Aug 30th 2011 Plenty of Americans would like to get paid to do nothing while at work, and it seems that workers for the U.S. Postal Service already enjoy that perk, although fewer of them are doing so. The deliverer of the nation's mail paid $4.3 million for nearly 171,000 hours of standby time during the first six months of the year, The Washington Post reports, citing an audit released earlier this month by the Postal Service inspector general's office. The amount is down substantially from 2009, when Postal Service employees racked up 1.2 million hours of standby time at a cost of $31 million. What's more, the standby hours are a "mere fraction" of the millions of hours worked by postal workers each year, postal union officials tell the newspaper. Postal workers have long been eligible for standby-time payments under the terms of their union contracts, but supervisors rarely used them until 2009, when mail volume began to plummet, the Post notes....snipped http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2011/08/30/postal-service-still-paying-thousands-of-workers-to-do-nothing/ Edited by Baldo, Sep 4 2011, 08:24 PM.
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| cks | Sep 4 2011, 10:57 PM Post #2 |
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The postal service pays its employees either to do nothing or to do a lousy facsimile of a job. We were supposed to have our mail forwarded after our move (I filled out all the proper forms) and very little of it was forwarded - I am still in the process of trying to track down documents that I need to file my income taxes. Furthermore, at least once a week I either get mail of my neighbors or they are delivering mine that the mail man has deposited in their slot. When I (rather nicely) said something to the mail man about his tendency to deliver the mail to the wrong address his comment to me was "my bad, some days I get it right and then there are other days when I get it wrong". Wish I had the freedom to be so cavalier in my profession!
Edited by cks, Sep 5 2011, 08:19 AM.
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| Deleted User | Sep 5 2011, 07:45 AM Post #3 |
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cks, this is the attitude of most of their employees. They have a lifetime job and practically have to commit treason to lose it. I would report that comment to the Postmaster in your city. Perhaps he should know the attitude of people he is sending into the field given their financial situation. After standing in line at the PO Friday to mail a package, it does not surprise me. I have never seen so much moving around, looking busy, throwing boxes and yet not waiting on the long line of customers. Then when you get to the counter, the agents wants to sell you all kinds of additional services you don't need in order to mail your package. Most of these people can't find their ass with both hands. |
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| cks | Sep 5 2011, 08:24 AM Post #4 |
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TD - Talking to the supervisor at the Post Office is like talking to a two year old in the midst of having a melt down - an exercise in frustration. What gets me when I go to the Post Office is that there will be a huge line and only one clerk.......not that others aren't there, they are milling around walking in and out seeing the huge line, making comments about it but not opening a postal bay to help out the beleagered clerk. The other thing that annoys me are the old men and women who are looking for their social hour of the day by tying up the line to converse with the postal clerk meanwhile the line of customers expands exponentially. I know that I am being unkind (hopefully I will not descend to such a situation as depending upon chats with my postal clerk as my human contact for the day) but the Post Office is too inefficient for that sort of thing to be part of the postal employee's job. |
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| Deleted User | Sep 5 2011, 09:29 AM Post #5 |
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I bought stamps Friday which had Ronald Reagan's image on them. The clerk begins to tell me he was one of our Presidents. Are you serious??? Yes the social hour is quite evident at the PO and they do work hard at not working hard.
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| Concerned | Sep 5 2011, 09:42 AM Post #6 |
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Wasn't it Richard Nixon who said if you want to see an example of how the Government operates - just look at the US post office. |
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| Baldo | Sep 5 2011, 09:45 AM Post #7 |
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Does anyone think the US Postal Service(USPS) is a tight run ship? Compare them to Fed Ex & UPS. I understand the USPS has an encompassing mandate, but they have been dinosaurs in changing to modern times. Fed Ex has had exploded growth due to the inability of the USPS to react & lead the market. No doubt because the political nature of its ownership(basically the US Govt) it is a bureaucratic quagmire, but that isn't an excuse. Take for example wages (not including benefits) USPS - mean hourly wage ($24.16/hour) Fex Ex - Hourly wage ($11.11/hr) Now I am all for individuals making good wages as long as they earn the USPS $50,000 a year plus benefits for the average postal worker! I can't imagine what actually goes on behind those USPS walls and the feather-bedding work rules that includes sitting on your rear when their is no work to do. Layoffs? Bottom line we all understand the days of USPS are numbered if they continue to run in the same manner. Technology & Progress waits for no one. The package & document delivery business started with the reality the USPS wasn't streamlined & addressing the market, so a new free market was developed. It beat the pants off the Post Office, it still does. Faxes, e-mail, overnight guarantee delivery with signatures & electronic tracking over the internet, exchangeable PDF, certified electronic bill paying, buying postage on line, central servers for exchanging blue-prints has been the progression of communication transmissions. Where was the USPS? Mostly likely worrying about protecting their rears. Free Markets work. Govt control always seem to bring out the worse. The medical & pension benefits crisis is going to crush the USPS. That is what they are unable to make. The worse is yet to come and we all know who is going to pay that price, the USA Taxpayers.Layoffs? Edited by Baldo, Sep 5 2011, 11:29 AM.
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| chatham | Sep 5 2011, 12:38 PM Post #8 |
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I would love to see the PO close. It will be the ONLY way I will stop getting my neighbors mail in MY mailbox. |
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| cks | Sep 5 2011, 01:05 PM Post #9 |
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I will be honest, though I feel that having a post office is important - particularly in rural areas where access is a problem, whenever I have a document of importance, whenever I have a package to send, I rely on FedEx for the first and UPS for the second. I still pay my bills through the mail, I still write letters and send cards (I am an old-fashioned girl). I think that the handwriting (literally) is on the wall when it comes to the US Post Office. Their failure to be innovative and, once again, the intransigence of the workers union have all contributed to the state that the PO finds itself in today. |
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| Rusty Dog | Sep 5 2011, 01:07 PM Post #10 |
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What am I going to do with all my "forever" stamps? |
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| Baldo | Sep 5 2011, 01:18 PM Post #11 |
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In actuality how many true letters in the mail do we receive? So much of our knowledge has come through the mail going back hundreds of years. Now we have journals & the internet, that is progress. However I love receiving letters from family & friends. Yes I use e-mail frequently, but there is something personally knowing your loved one took the time to compose thoughts and write them out. Then seal the envelope and mailed it to you. If you are like me 95% of the mail received is junk. Edited by Baldo, Sep 5 2011, 02:26 PM.
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| cks | Sep 5 2011, 02:23 PM Post #12 |
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You can keep them forever as a remembrance of things past! |
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| Mason | Sep 5 2011, 02:34 PM Post #13 |
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Parts unknown
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. We knew the Post Office was in trouble when we rolled out the Huge New Entitlement called Obamacare - we knew of the situation of SS and Soc. Security disability. We knew the problems with Medicare and Medicaid. We knew all the problems with the debt and the fact Government workers were making 30% more than those that pay their salaries. Yet, none of that entered the conversation. Obama and the Dems, with the help of the media, left all that out there in the pasture while they paraded a borrowed horse as their contest entry. USPS, and all the government inefficiencies, should have been front and center in the Obamacare "debate". . |
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| Deleted User | Sep 5 2011, 08:33 PM Post #14 |
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I know USPS retired employees (age 55) who are working in the private sector, earning good money and working towards yet another retirement benefit. These people are much like the military who received the benefits of dual retirements. |
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| cks | Sep 5 2011, 09:04 PM Post #15 |
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I have no problem with the military doing that (perhaps it is because I have had family members who have served long careers in the military and then were in the position that they could go no further - not picked up for promotion as there were no openings - and then they retired. To say to them that they must be content to live on their military benefits does not take into account the service that they gave or the risk they took with their lives. While the postal employees serve the public, they do not put their lives at risk (ok, the dog bite or two). Plus, there is no mandatory rule regarding retirement when there is no longer an advancement available (I should make it clear I am talking about military officers). |
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Are you serious??? Yes the social hour is quite evident at the PO and they do work hard at not working hard.
1:59 PM Jul 11