In written testimony to PRC regarding USPS’ request for five-day delivery, Michael Crew on behalf of NALC wrote:
Ending Saturday delivery will cause mail volume to drop, will likely produce unanticipated transition costs and could threaten the long-term viability of the Postal Service. Moreover, once Saturday delivery is eliminated, it will likely be irreversible. Rather than abandoning a valuable part of its enterprise, and cutting service to its customers, the Postal Service should seek other means to address its financial challenges, including by focusing on making its services more accessible and attractive to its customers.
I conclude that implementation of the proposal may cause a far more significant drop in mail volume than the Postal Service projects and that such a drop in volume could erase a substantial amount of the savings that the Postal Service hopes to realize by ending Saturday delivery. In addition, I conclude that implementation of the proposal may cause the Postal Service to incur larger than anticipated transition costs, further eroding the potential savings that its proposal is designed to produce.
More importantly, by ending Saturday delivery, the Postal Service would be abandoning a valuable part of its enterprise, giving existing or future private-sector competitors the opportunity to fill the gap in service. By allowing others to take part of its business, the Postal Service’s plan to implement five-day delivery could aggravate, rather than ameliorate, the Postal Service’s financial condition and in the long-run could threaten the Postal Service’s viability.
Rather than take a step in the wrong direction — a step which in practical terms would likely be irreversible — I believe the Postal Service should consider other means to address its financial challenges. In particular, it is my opinion that rather than cutting services, the Postal Service should make its services more accessible and attractive to its customers.
Read full document submitted to Postal Regulatory Commission
5-day delivery would not affect mail volume that already is primarily ready for the whole week on Mondays. We call it Blue Mail. The mail volume received on Saturday would simply be delivered Monday thru Friday. It’s false to say that there would be some influx on volume on Saturday that would not be recovered from; which is evidenced by the fact that this writer did not identify specific influxes of mail volume. The largest problem that the USPS has is an outdated union contract with its employees; one in which defies the Postal Service tradition as an admirable business. Employees that complain about efficiency efforts of their own workplace instead of trying to do a better job. Just look at how fast “some” of those letter carriers are moving out there to get a good view of why the Postal Service loses money; and then imagine how much money that carrier gets paid for doing no work when they file a union grievance against their manager because he is expecting efficiency. This employee is complaining about 5-day delivery, not to save the Postal Service; but because that will be one less day to extract as much money as possible out of it! 5-day delivery will help staffing issues because all the T-6 (substitute) carriers will fill empty positions that have been empty or frozen. The savings from not running Postal vehicles one day is enormous.
we should be pushing for seven day delivery!!!
We lost 764 million in July,
don’t change a thing.
Where did you get the stupid idea of 5 days? We are sick and tired of you DESTROYING the USPS….. Come on PRC Fire PMG POTTER already!!! What are you waiting for? take a poll of how many USPS Employees and the American Public, Who AGREE that we need a “NEW POSTMASTER GENERAL” One that will GROW the USPS not (CUT SERVICE)like PMG POTTER has been doing!!! FIRE HIM!!!!!! How do we get REVENUE?? when POTTER continues to CUT SERVICE??????