Postal thoughts
The post office last week announced that Saturday mail delivery was being eliminated in some areas in a cost-saving measure.
The postal unions oppose this measure. When the auto industry faced bankruptcy a couple of years ago, it took some renegotiating and rewriting of union contracts along with loans from the government to save the industry. They also got rid of programs that were not making money and dragging down the industry.
The key words here in this success story are loans and renegotiating. Much of the loan money has already been paid back and the industry is having a profitable year. Hopefully, in the years ahead the employees will too, reap the benefits.
The post office will never get back on good ground without some draconian cuts in services, renegotiating union contracts and federal loans. Government loans need to be made only when there is evidence they will and can be paid back.
Unions that don’t want concessions in wages and benefits will kill the whole program. To be fair, Congress makes the rules for the post office and basically runs it but refuses to pay for it. Nice Huh? But that’s government.
Is the postal service an essential program? I would say so, but I would say it is far less essential then it used to be. With E-mail and electronic money transfers it has lost a lot of business. What do most companies do when they lose a lot of business? They reorganize. Is it worth saving? Yes, but not on the union or Congress’ terms.
This might help and it’s just a suggestion: Up the postage on junk mail. Its 90 percent of what I get and either way I’m a winner if they make more on the postage or I get less junk mail.
Mike Holst
Crosslake
Comments (3)
Add commentThey could bring my mail 2
They could bring my mail 2 days a week and that would be a great plenty. I would have to get a bigger mail box tho. Same problem-junk mail build up.
I agree-raise the junk mail high enough so that it quits coming.
That would also cut back on filling the land fill too.
Postal thoughts
They might want to consider that maybe they lost some of their business to electronic methods because of poor/unreliable service. I recently ordered check blanks and, after waiting almost two weeks, I contacted my bank who checked and said they had been mailed on the 11th. They finally arrived on the 22nd. In the mean time I had run out of check blanks and ended up paying a couple of late fees. No matter where they came from 11 days in the hands of the post office is ridiculious.
"The key words here in this
"The key words here in this success story are loans and renegotiating' . More accurately known as buying union votes