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Postal News from August 2011:
August 31, 2011
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: Canada Post switched to
2-day local delivery over 25 years ago. That change was made as part
of a massive restructuring of Canada Post's operations to deal with
losses that equaled nearly 1/3 of revenue. The service standards at
Canada Post are relatively simple and are explicitly included in the
Canada Post Corporation's charter.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The Postal Service's
network restructuring will add an extra day to most First Class Mail
delivery standards. While it is theoretically possible for bulk
First Class mailers to avoid that delay by drop shipping, the
viability of drop shipping depends on the Postal Service having
clerks and mail handlers working in the evening to accept the mail
and route the mail to the appropriate machine for the correct
destination sort. Early discussions with the Postal Service suggests
that they want bulk First Class mailers to tender their mail before
noon. This would allow bulk mail to be sorted or dispatched to the
facility doing destination sortation during the daytime shift. This
would suggest that the Postal Service plans to have critical
dispatch times at or just after rush hour. With these dispatch
times, receiving facilities will have skeletal staffs in the evening
to handle mail transported to the facility and not much else. These
entry times and dispatch times would appear to force bulk mailers to
accept service that is a day slower than it is now and preclude drop
shipping of First Class bulk mail even with a drop ship discount.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led
by Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Ranking Member Susan
Collins, R-Me., will hold a hearing, "U.S. Postal Service in Crisis:
Proposals to Prevent a Postal Shutdown," on Tuesday, September 6, at
2:00 p.m. This hearing will look at the current state of the Postal
Service and recent proposals to improve its financial condition.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal
Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and
International Security, which oversees the Postal Service, will
participate in the hearing. For more information or to watch a live
webcast of the hearing, please
click here. WHAT: U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs hearing, "U.S. Postal Service in Crisis:
Proposals to Prevent a Postal Shutdown" WHEN: Tuesday, September 6,
2011 2:00 p.m. WHERE: 342 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington,
D.C.
WITNESSES:
Panel 1 (Government):
• Pat Donahoe, USPS Postmaster General
• John Barry, Director, Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
• Phil Herr, Director, Government Accountability Office (GAO)
Panel 2 (Unions and Mailers):
• Cliff Guffey, President, American Postal Workers Union (APWU)
• Louis Atkins, President, National Association of Postal
Supervisors (NAPS)
• Ellen Levine, Editorial Director, Hearst Magazines
• Tonda Rush, Chief Executive Officer, National Newspapers
Association (NNA)
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: As the Postal Service
begins to restructure its operating network, stand-by time will
likely increase. Managing a transition to a smaller processing
network, or fewer Postal Service owned retail outlets will likely
result in delays that put employees in a stand-by mode as they are
waiting to retire, be RIF'ed, or transferred to another job or
facility. During the transition period, studies like the Inspector
General may need to find other ways to measure management's
effective use of its workforce than following standby time.
Fedex Office:
FedEx Office®, an operating company of FedEx Corp. has enhanced its
FedEx Office® Print Online solution with access to Google Docs™.
This new, first-to-market feature allows users to retrieve files
from their Google account for convenient printing using the FedEx
Office application. Whether a mobile professional or small business
owner, FedEx Office Print Online users can upload files from their
Google Docs account and then select from a variety of printing
options to assist with layout for presentations, signs, posters,
postcards, and more. Users can also choose to pick up their
completed order at FedEx Office locations nationwide or have it
delivered right to their door.
CEP News
(Courier-Express-Postal), published by the MRU Consultancy, has reported that:
Greek’s debt crisis had a considerable impact on French La Poste’s result. On Friday La Poste reported a 21.2% drop in net profit in the first half year 2011. The reason for this are provisions of 158m euro at Banque Postale for Greek bonds.
PostNord, the merger of Post Danmark and Posten AB, faced a decline in turnover and shrinking profits in the first half year.
The reform of the Brazilian post cleared a decisive hurdle. On Thursday last week the Camara dos Deputados - the lower house of Brazil’s parliament - approved the amendments to the postal law. Now the changes have yet to be ratified by the senate and the president has to sign the new law to come into effect.
Posten Norge faces a slump in profits on increasing revenues in the first half year 2011. The Logistics business has become Posten Norge’s most important revenue driver. The Mail division suffered from the ongoing decline in volumes.
Earthquakes and write-offs ruined New Zealand Post’s 2010/2011 result.
Swiss Post delivers domestic newspapers abroad using a hybrid solution for the first time. The daily newspapers »Neue Zürcher Zeitung« and »Blick« as well as »Sonntagsblick « will be electronically sent to printing plants in Cyprus and Malta. The printing plant then prints the current edition every day. Finally the newspapers will be distributed to selling points.
The Indian government plans to invest over 2.8bn euro to enable the country’s post offices to offer financial services.
The MRU, founded in 1992, is the only consultancy in Europe, which has specialised in the market of courier-, express- and parcel services. For large-scale shippers and CEP-services in particular, the MRU provides interdisciplinary advice for all major questions of the market, as there are for example market entry, product design, organisation, and EDP.To learn more about the stories reported above, contact CEP News. (We appreciate the courtesy extended by CEP News to help whet your appetite for more of what CEP offers.)
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The Postal Service has
published its first quarterly report on the use of its newest
product, Every Door Direct Mail. Most customers are new to the
Postal Service with only 8.6% using other Postal Service products.
It is also clear that many customers used Every Day Direct Mail more
than once as the average customer used the product 2.25 times in the
quarter. Every Day Direct Mail appears to have spawned marketing
efforts among a number of printers who are promoting the product to
sell printing and mail preparation services. Some even are offering
to handle the entire transaction process for a fee rather than have
the advertiser deal directly with the Postal Service.
eCommerce Bytes: The U.S. Postal Service entered into a deal
with eBay and China Post last year to help Chinese sellers send
small packages to the U.S. in a much shorter period of time than
regular international delivery services. eBay revealed that the
agreement has led to 30,000 parcels a day sent from its sellers in
China, with package-tracking included. Nearly 40% of eBay sellers in
China are using the ePacket service to ship to the U.S., with over
80% of items delivered in five to 10 days. Upon arrival in the U.S.,
these shipments are processed as domestic First-Class Mail, with a
one to three-day delivery standard.
Sioux City Journal: We think U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, is
right on the mark when he accuses the U.S. Postal Service of
engaging in "stall tactics" in order to leave Sioux City officials
with little time to contest the planned Oct. 1 closing of the local
Mail Distribution & Processing Center. He calls the strategy
"attempting to run out the clock." After months of secrecy and
stonewalling by USPS, a trio of Postal Service representatives
finally held a (closed-door) meeting with local leaders on Thursday.
While a face-to-face meeting between the two sides was on the
surface a welcome development, USPS officials demonstrated
disappointingly little interest in cooperation or accommodation and
offered more of the institutional arrogance to which our community
has become accustomed throughout this process.
The Journal: More than 150 postal employees and their families,
local officials and business owners filled the Martinsburg High
School auditorium Tuesday evening to protest a study by the U.S.
Postal Service that found it would be best to move the mail
processing operation from the Martinsburg Post Office to Baltimore.
No one who spoke during the public comment period liked the idea.
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory Commission
PROPOSED RULES
Appeals of Post Office Closings ,
54179–54185 [2011–22009]
[TEXT] [PDF]
NOTICES
Post Office Closings , 54264–54265 [2011–22271]
[TEXT] [PDF]
54265–54266 [2011–22273]
[TEXT] [PDF]
54266–54267 [2011–22283]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Postalnews Blog: With potential USPS insolvency in the news,
approximately 200 Southern California mailing industry leaders
gathered in Anaheim to hear DPMG Ron Stroman discuss the state of
the Postal Service. Stroman reiterated the need for Congress to
resolve the mandate to pre-fund Retiree Health Benefits by $5.5
billion annually, allow USPS to access its overpayment to the
Federal Employees Retirement System and give USPS authority to
determine delivery frequency. He also discussed proposals such as
reducing the workforce and accelerating consolidation of the
processing network.
Postalnews Blog: The San Diego and Imperial Counties Labor
Council (CLC) has unanimously voted to picket Congressman Darrel
Issa’s main district office in Vista, California (just north of San
Diego) on Thursday, Sept 1. NALC President Fredric Rolando has
decided to make this a much larger action, and he has sent out a
statewide E-Activist. The NALC will be joining several other unions
and the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council to personally
protest Issa’s failure to represent working families and his
continuing attacks to destroy the United States Postal Service.
Manchester Evening News: Postal operator Secured Mail Group
today delivered annual profits of just over £1m and outlined
ambitious plans to treble revenues over the next few years. Boss
Mark Bigley said underlying pre-tax earnings for the 12 months to
the end of July rocketed from £650,000 as turnover soared from
£32.5m to £49m. Secured Mail is now aiming to achieve revenues of
£75m over the next 12 months and £150m-£160m within five years. Mr
Bigley set up the business in 2006 soon after the postal market was
liberalised, and turned over just £600,000 in his first year of
trading. The company, a rival to firms including TNT, DHL, UK Mail
and City Link, employs 121 people across its HQ and distribution
centre in Warrington and a depot in Dartford. It handled 400 million
letters in its last financial year, from direct marketing literature
and utility statements to magazines and goods ordered from Amazon.
Customers include Center Parcs, Centrica, retailers such as Dixons
Stores and Domino’s Pizza, and American Express.
Yorkshire Evening Post: The number of people using post offices
could increase “significantly” if they could access their bank
accounts through the postal network, a leading consumer group
predicted today. Consumer Focus said the number of people using
their local post office could jump from four million to 18 million
if high street banks allowed their customers full access to personal
bank accounts in post branches. The 11,800-strong post office
network, hit by closures in recent years, would be given a valuable
“shot in the arm” if customers could make cash withdrawals, deposit
cash and cheques and access information on their bank account, said
the report. Some banks offer services through the post office, but
many do not provide the full range of transactions such as making a
cash or cheque deposit, said Consumer Focus. See also
The Scotsman.
Federal Times: What happens at the U.S. Postal Service doesn’t
necessarily stay at the Postal Service. The latest example: A
federal workers’ compensation fund could run out of money within
three months if the cash-strapped mail carrier skips a $1.2 billion
payment due in mid-October, according to the Labor Department.
August 30, 2011
Effects
of Compliance Rules on Mailers Audit Report Report Number
WHY THE OIG DID THE AUDIT
: Our objective was to evaluate mailer concerns with U.S. Postal Service compliance rules. Specifically, we evaluated concerns with Postal Service compliance rules governing Intelligence Mail™ barcodes (IMb), Move Update, and Plant-Verified Drop Shipments (PVDS). This report responds to a request from Senator Susan M. Collins. WHAT THE OIG FOUND: The Postal Service has not always fully considered how changes to mail compliance rules impact mailers. Specifically, the Postal Service did not always adequately estimate the cost to mailers of complying with proposed rules, collaborating with the mailing industry, and training and monitoring personnel to accept business mailings. The Postal Service is currently taking steps to improving collaboration with mailers when developing compliance rules.
Post & Parcel: Nordic mail and logistics operator PostNord is
making management changes ahead of a SEK 1bn ($156m USD)
cost-cutting program, as it faces up to accelerating mail volume
reductions. Two years on from its formation as a merger of Post
Danmark and Sweden’s Posten, the company CEO announced changes that
it hopes will boost its efficiency, competitiveness and
profitability. A new shared services unit is being set up to
co-ordinate a range of administrative and product development
activities, while a new corporate strategy group is to be set up as
the company looks to its future direction. PostNord executive vice
president Göran Sällqvist and CFO Bo Friberg are leaving their
positions at PostNord, said CEO Lars Idermark. “With an unstable
global economy and structural market changes that, essentially,
impact demand for our services, we need to make comprehensive
changes to further reduce costs,” said Idermark.
Post & Parcel: As the US Postal Service prepares a major
“optimisation” of its infrastructure, an audit by the Office of the
Inspector General has found that nearly a quarter of USPS interior
space is currently unused. USPS is currently shaping up plans to cut
its processing network by more than half, and its network of 32,000
post offices by 10%, but the audit completed this month suggested
that it could start by dealing with its 67m square feet of unused
interior space. The excess space represents 24% of the total 284m
square feet that USPS owns or leases, the OIG said, although USPS
management disputes the figures.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, led
by Chairman Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Ranking Member Susan
Collins, R-Me., will hold a hearing, "U.S. Postal Service in Crisis:
Proposals to Prevent a Postal Shutdown," on Tuesday, September 6, at
2:00 p.m. This hearing will look at the current state of the Postal
Service and recent proposals to improve its financial condition.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), Chairman of the Subcommittee on Federal
Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services, and
International Security, which oversees the Postal Service, will
participate in the hearing. For more information or to watch a live
webcast of the hearing, please
click here. WHAT: U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs hearing, "U.S. Postal Service in Crisis:
Proposals to Prevent a Postal Shutdown" WHEN: Tuesday, September 6,
2011 2:00 p.m. WHERE: 342 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington,
D.C.
Printing Impressions: Spending on direct mail is expected to
increase again in 2011, and retail is one of the vertical markets
expected to drive this growth. Direct mail continues to be a widely
used channel for customer acquisition in the retail industry.
According to Target Marketing’s annual “Media Usage Forecast,” more
69 percent of marketers plan to use direct mail for customer
acquisition in 2011. PODi’s recent report, “Traffic Generation
Solutions for the Retail Market,” reviews several successful
applications, highlighting ideas that work and the results achieved.
One highly productive strategy is to integrate print, online and
social media to enable viral sharing of a retail promotion.
The
following are copies of the slides and comments from the Mailers
Technical Advisory Committee members on the Postal Service's
proposed restructuring of it operations network:
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: Rural postal services is
likely to be the primary stumbling block to getting Postal Service
reform legislation through the House of Representatives. Some of the
most active opponents of changes that the Postal Service want to
make are influential members of the House Republican caucus and many
have been outspoken critics of federal spending. What these
Republicans have in common is that they represent some of the most
rural areas in the United States.
The US Postal Service would like to provide the following update, as
of Monday, August 29, 2011, at 2 PM. This follows from the earlier
announcement yesterday indicating that the New York JFK
International Service Center was effectively shut down after the JFK
Airport Authority closed the in and out ramps effective 12 noon
Saturday, August 27, 2011 because of Hurricane Irene. In its
official website, the New York John F. Kennedy International Airport
has announced that it is open to arriving flights from 6 a.m.
Monday, Aug. 29, 2011 and to departing flights from 12 noon Monday
Aug 29, 2011. Surface transportation - both inbound and outbound to
Montreal and Toronto, Canada - remains a challenge for Canada Post
and US Postal Service as Highway 87 is temporarily closed. Hurricane
Irene has effectively left the United States. Further updates will
be provided as more detailed information is received from the
affected areas. International mail operations at the New York JFK
ISC are expected to normalize by 12 noon tomorrow, August 30, 2011.
However, it should be noted that Hurricane Irene left a path of
destruction along the entire Eastern seaboard of the United States
in its wake. Widespread power outages and flooding are common,
restoration of electricity in several areas may take several days to
complete, and public transportation networks and links are severely
disrupted , in addition to the loss of lives and severe property
damage.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The Postal Service is
broke. It cannot pay its bills, even ones that no one disputes that
it owns. In the private sector, a firm in this position would shut
down unless creditors believed that putting it in receivership gave
them a better prospect of repayment then liquidation.
New York Times: Like any supposedly self-sustaining business,
the Postal Service deserves a chance to modernize. The most
controversial proposal would let it tap into a federal retirement
fund that managers claim is far overpaid because of a faulty
formula. That needs very careful review.
The News Journal: According to a new report from the
organization's inspector general, the Postal Service paid $4.3
million in the first six months of this year to postal workers to do
nothing. That's right. Nothing. It's called standby time and the
workers report to work and go to the cafeteria to do nothing.
According to The Washington Post, long-standing labor agreements
prevent the Postal Service from laying off or reassigning workers
when the mail volume is low or equipment is broken. Congressional
mandates and union contracts force it to keep people on the job even
when there is no work. That will change as the losses mount. This
new report will renew the push for changing the contract. Some hard
choices are coming (six-day delivery, for example) and old habits
will have to go. See also
Government Executive and the
Washington Post.
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory Commission
NOTICES
New Postal Product and Rate Adjustment ,
53982–53983 [2011–22057]
[TEXT] [PDF]
New Postal Products , 53981–53982 [2011–22023]
[TEXT] [PDF]
53983–53984 [2011–22131]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Post Office Closing , 53984–53986 [2011–22055]
[TEXT] [PDF]
53986–53987 [2011–22056]
[TEXT] [PDF]
August 29, 2011
Reuters: A fund that compensates federal employees for
work-related injuries will run out of cash in the last quarter of
2012 if the U.S. Postal Service defaults on an upcoming $1.2 billion
payment, according to the Labor Department. The mail carrier, which
has been losing billions of dollars each year, has more than 560,000
full-time employees and is the largest employer of workers covered
by the Federal Employees' Compensation Act. The Postal Service still
plans to make the payment, due in October, to the fund, USPS
spokesman David Partenheimer told Reuters. But in its third quarter
financial statement this month, the agency said that without relief
from Congress it could not guarantee it would have enough cash. The
Labor Department said in a letter to Congress dated August 1 that
without the Postal Service's usual hefty contribution, the fund
would be unable to pay any benefits in the last four months of
fiscal year 2012. The Labor Department said in its letter that there
is no penalty facing the Postal Service if it skips the workers
compensation payment.
Save the Post Office: There's nothing new about the financial
"crisis" facing the postal service, there's nothing new about the
belief that closing post offices will help solve it, and there's
nothing new about the plain fact that post offices are not the
problem -- and closing them is not the solution. The more things
change, the more they stay the same. Except this time around, the
Postal Service means business.
DMM Advisory:
Withdrawal of "Changes to Move Update Standards" Federal Register. At a recent Mailers Technical Advisory Council meeting, we announced that the revised proposed rule, Changes to Move Update Standards, published in the Federal Register on July 12, 2011, will be withdrawn (the last day for comments was scheduled for August 31, 2011). The content of this proposed rule Federal Register will be significantly revised and, based on mailing industry feedback, the Moved Left No Address and PO Box Closed, No Forwarding Order (MLNA/BCNO) portions will be removed. An entirely new proposed rule will be issued in the future.
The U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General invites
you to comment on this week's "Pushing the Envelope" blog
topic:
What Should the Postal Service Retail Network Look Like in 2020 and Beyond? There are currently over 30,000 brick and mortar postal-operated retail facilities. However, about 35 percent of retail revenue is generated through other channels such as grocery stores and self-service kiosks. As the Postal Service seeks ways to modernize its retail network, what should it consider to meet consumer needs? We invite you to share your thoughts on our blog.
New Audit Projects: This week we opened the following new projects:
Improper Payments -- 11BG017FF000. Congress enacted the Improper Payments Information Act (IPIA) of 2002 (Public Law 107-300), as amended by the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010. The act requires that federal agencies estimate improper payments and report on actions taken to reduce them. An improper payment is any payment (overpayment or underpayment) an agency should not have made or that was made in an incorrect amount under statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirement. Although IPIA does not apply to the U. S. Postal Service it could benefit by identifying and reducing significant improper payments within its programs and activities. We plan to determine if the Postal Service has procedures in place to review its programs and activities annually; and thereby identify those programs that may be at risk for significant improper payments.
Postal Service Suspension and Debarment Program -- 11YG046CA000. Government-wide suspensions and debarments are administrative remedies that federal agencies may take in order to protect taxpayer dollars from fraud, waste, abuse, poor performance and noncompliance with contract provisions or applicable law. Debarment ensures that for a defined period of time, the entire federal government will not do additional business with individuals and organizations that have engaged in criminal or other improper conduct of such a compelling and serious nature that it would lead one to question their honesty, ethics, or competence. Suspension is a preliminary action taken to protect the integrity of a federal procurement or nonprocurement process before there is enough information to support a debarment proceeding. For this project, we plan to obtain background information and evaluate current practices regarding the Postal Service's Suspension and Debarment program.
Financial Controls Over Automated Postal Centers -- 11BG018FF000. The Automated Postal Center (APC) is one of the access points designed to increase alternate access revenue. The APC is a self-service kiosk placed in retail lobbies to enable customers to ship packages, mail letters, buy stamps, and pay for post office box rentals. The goal of the APC program is to provide customers with a convenient self-service alternative to the full-service counter. The machines only accept payment by credit, debit, or an Electronic Bank Transaction cards. In (FY) 2009, the Postal Service processed over 333 million credit and debit card transactions totaling over $11 billion. We plan to determine if internal controls for the APC are sufficient to detect and prevent credit and debit card fraud and or irregularities. In addition, we plan to determine if internal controls over APC stamp stock and revenue are effective.
Reuters: South Africa will apply for a full banking licence for
its postal bank by year-end, the communications minister said on
Monday, a move that will increase competition in the banking sector.
Post & Parcel: An Post has blamed a reconfiguration of delivery
systems and changeover to new mail processing technology for a
decline in its service levels.
BusinessWire: The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) awarded CSC CSC
+2.57% two contracts to provide management, operational and
logistical support for its Mail Transport Equipment Service Centers
(MTESCs) located in Lakeville, Minn., and Barrington, N.J. The
contracts, which have a three-year base and two two-year options,
have an estimated combined seven-year value of $83 million. This
contract was awarded to CSC during the first quarter of the
company's fiscal year 2012. CSC will now operate nine of the 15
MTESCs in the United States. Under the terms of the contracts, CSC
will provide program management, information systems support and
logistical services. CSC employees will receive, examine, route,
repair or recycle/dispose of mail transport equipment and will work
to continuously improve equipment processing, repair and
distribution functions.
eCommerceBytes: Tensions are running high as the US Postal
Service considers drastic measures to deal with its financial
problems, including closing thousands of offices and breaking union
agreements so it can lay off workers. The St. Joseph News-Press
covered a meeting of 40 postmasters from throughout Northwest
Missouri, who had some interesting suggestions for the agency -
including new ways to generate revenue. Rather than closing rural
post offices, which they claimed would be an ineffective cost-saving
measure, some postmasters suggested the USPS introduce revenue
generation services like online payment services and banking
services. They said such services would have people swamping the
offices.
Washington Post: Three weeks before he announced his resignation
from the board that oversees the U.S. Postal Service, Alan Kessler
was accused of misconduct for pressuring postal officials to scuttle
a real estate dispute involving a long-time friend. Kessler stepped
down from the Board of Governors on July 31 after 10 years of
service that included a term as chairman. His departure followed a
five-month investigation by the Postal Service Inspector General
that found his interference with a real estate deal the agency was
negotiating in Sarasota, Fla., gave the appearance of a conflict of
interest. Inspector General David C .Williams also said the Postal
Service's general counsel, Mary Anne Gibbons, failed to act swiftly
enough to make sure Kessler removed himself from the case and report
the conflict to investigators.
Wall Street Journal: When was the last time you received a
hand-written note? Not a Post-It on your desk from your boss
reading: "Fix this" but an actual piece of stationery, in a matching
envelope, sent through the U.S. Postal Service, with a message in it
just for you? And when was the last time you wrote someone a note?
Not too long ago, whenever I went on a job interview it was of the
utmost importance to send a thank-you note through the mail the next
day. Now an email seems to suffice.
Radio New Zealand: New Zealand Post is optimistic it will return
to profit this year and is focussing on improving efficiencies as
mail volumes continue to fall. New Zealand Post shut some of its
post shops during the year, to try to reduce costs.
News-Press: Alleging the Postal Service was intimidating
employees and closing offices on Saturday to skew future numbers to
pass on to Congress to allow offices to move to a five-day work
week, Kelly McCartney, vice president of the National League of
Postmasters, stated what other postmasters were already saying --
closing rural offices would be an ineffective cost-saving measure.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: All the details are not
known about what the Postal Service will propose when it makes its
presentation to the Postal Regulatory Commission about changing
First Class service standards. Given that Priority Mail has nearly
the same service standard as First Class mail, it is possible that
Priority Mail service standards could be affected. The Postal
Service cannot afford to reduce Priority Mail service standards if
it wants Priority Mail to remain service competitive for zone 2, 3
and a significant portion of zone 4 parcels.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: In a major effort to
reduce costs to match projected revenue, the Postal Service has
proposed eliminating overnight delivery of single-piece mail. The
Postal Service projects substantial cost savings that would come
from eliminating full time positions and reducing its use of clerks
and mailhandlers during periods when they would be paid a premium
for nighttime work. Support for the Postal Service's cost savings
assertion comes from "Cost of Service Standards," a recent report of
the Office of Inspector General - United States Postal Service
(USPS-OIG).
August 28, 2011
Financial Times: The equity exposure of the �27.7bn ($45.3bn)
Royal Mail Pension Plan is significantly higher than it appears from
the group's report and accounts. These show an equity holding of
�4.2bn, representing about 15 per cent of total plan assets. But the
pension plan has an additional �6.6bn exposure to equities held via
futures, a position that is clear in the pension fund's accounts but
is not disclosed in the group accounts.John Ralfe, a pensions
consultant, asked: "How can Royal Mail's accounts give a "true and
fair" picture if they fail to mention such a major risk to the
business?"
The China Post: The government-run Chunghwa Post Co.
announced price discounts for certain postal and remittance
services in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Republic
of China and the forthcoming Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as
Chinese Moon Festival falling on Sept. 12 this year.
Houston Chronicle: Rep. Nick Rahall is asking residents to
join him at a public meeting on the future of mail-processing
operations in Bluefield. The Postal Service is considering
consolidating the Bluefield operations into facilities in
Charleston and Johnson City, Tenn.
Daily Indpendent: 9,433 retirees of the Nigerian Postal
Services (NIPOST) on Monday shut down post offices nationwide to
drive home their demand for the immediate payment of 73 months'
pension arrears of N4,071,398,252.47. As early as 7 a.m. in
Agege and Ikeja in Lagos, the angry retirees, aged men and
women, laid siege at the entrances of post offices and turned
back customers.
|
|
August 27, 2011
Federal Times: The U.S. Postal Service last year reduced by
nearly a third the number of hours it pays some employees to do
nothing, a report by the agency's inspector general shows. From
almost 1.25 million hours in fiscal 2009, the amount of "stand-by
time" tumbled to about 875,400 hours last year and is on track to
fall even more in fiscal 2011, which ends next month, the report
found. The cost of that time fell accordingly from $30.8 million in
2009 to $22 million last year. The cost for the first six months of
fiscal 2011 dropped to $4.3 million.
The Portland Press Herald: The U.S. Postal Service has recently
seen a surge of media coverage. Some is based upon false assumptions
and a lack of understanding about the challenges facing the nation's
postal system. Here are the facts.
NorthWest Indiana: The U.S. Postal Inspection Service warns
consumers to beware of bogus change--of--address websites. According
to the agency, postal inspectors are discovering that people have
been paying for a change of address on websites with domain names
that appear to be associated with the Postal Service but are not.
Some people have been charged up to $30 for a change and at times
the change never gets made. If you want to submit a change of
address online, ensure that you are using the U.S. Postal Services'
official website at www.usps.com. The Postal Service charges a $1
verification fee for online change of address requests and for those
requesting a change by calling the service at (800) ASK--USPS
(275--8777).
Irish Times: The quality of An Posts delivery service was below
target for the first six months of this year, according to a new
report from the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg).
Overall, 84 per cent of mail was delivered within one working day
throughout the State, a 1 per cent drop on the same period in 2010
and well below An Post's 94 per cent target for next-day delivery.
Spice Islander:
Minister of Works and Public Utilities, Hon. Joseph Gilbert, has
commended the management of the Grenada Postal Corporation (GPC) for
its leadership of the company, including the introduction of new
initiatives to keep the corporation viable.
From the Federal Register:
The Postal Service has released to all MTAC members copies of the
presentations and proceedings associated with a recent workshop on
postal costing:
ries
of
postal webinars led by top officials in the USPS exclusively for
MFSA members.
Paul Vogel, Chief
Marketing and Sales Officer for the USPS will discuss a variety of
current sales initiatives that the Postal Service is developing to
increase mail volume. Title: Postal Sales Initiatives to
Increase Mail Volume Date: Friday, September 9, 2011
Time: 10:30 - 11:30 AM EDT. Reserve your Webinar seat now at:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/602208432
KCAU: Congressman Steve King (R-IA), Senator Chuck Grassley
(R-IA) and Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA) announce that they have
formally requested that the United States Postal Service delay the
implementation of its plan to consolidate mail processing operations
in Sioux City with a mail processing center in Sioux Falls, South
Dakota. The request was made in a letter sent by the three Members
of Congress to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe this afternoon.
The letter notes that a delay in the final implementation of the
consolidation proposal is warranted and necessary because the USPS
has spent weeks stalling the release of information sought by Sioux
City officials attempting to prepare a counter proposal in advance
of the September 16 deadline.
American Postal Workers Union: The USPS has instructed Area
Labor Relations Managers that employees may not be excessed because
they fail to bid on Non-Traditional Full-Time (NTFT) duty
assignments. The notice [PDF] was sent in response to union
allegations that management is trying to force senior employees to
resign or retire by threatening to reassign them outside of their
bid office if they don't bid on non-traditional jobs. In an e-mail
message to the field, the Area Manager for Labor Relations wrote,
"APWU President Cliff Guffey has informed us that he has received
reports from union representatives in the field that some managers
have told employees that they will be excessed if they fail to bid
on NTFT duty assignments." "So don't be intimidated to quit, and
don't be coerced into bidding on a non-traditional assignment unless
you want it," Guffey advised.
August 26, 2011
The USPS announces the
withdrawal of the Proposed Rule, Revised: Changes to Move Update
Standards, published in the Federal Register July 12, 2011. This
Federal Register notice proposed the revision to the Move Update
standards to require mailers to update their address lists with
changes-of-address filed by postal employees, commonly known as
Moved-Left-No-Address and PO-Box-Closed,-No-Forwarding-Order
(MLNA/BCNO) orders. A current analysis of the annual volume of
MLNA/BCNO orders filed shows a significant decline since the date of
the proposed inclusion of MLNA/BCNO as part of the Move Update
standard. By removing the MLNA/BCNO requirement the USPS is hopeful
the mailing industry will instead focus their efforts on the
implementation of the Full Service Intelligent Mail barcode program.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The Postal Service's
insolvency at the end of fiscal year 2011 will be the difference
between in undisputed obligations and its ability to pay. Based on
recent estimates, the Postal Service will have to default on $3.292
billion of its bills and interest payments. As the Postal Service
pays most of its bills within 30 days and payroll more frequently,
it is clear that the Postal Service will not pay the following bills
over the next 90 days: (1) PAEA retiree health benefit premium (2)
Workers compensation liability premium (3) Interest on debt.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: Purolator International
has announced that it will open 10 new branch offices during 2011,
more than doubling its presence in the U.S. Srven of these offices
have already opened, with the remainder due to open by the end ofd
the year. Purolator's expansion in the United States heats up both
cross-border US-Canada competition as well as competition in the
United States domestic parcel market. Upon completion of its
expansion, Purolator will have 20 offices including 18 in the top US
markets. Purolator's regional office expansions illustrates the
impact of the surge in demand transporting goods between the United
States and Canada.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The cost savings of using
a consolidator and Parcel Select have been obvious for some time.
Retailers, even those who can negotiate large discounts off of the
commercial tariffs including discounts off of minimum charges and
home delivery charges are able to meet their customer's delivery
requirements at a combined consolidator-USPS price that can be
between half and 80% of what UPS or FedEx ground delivery would be.
However, it is the service quality, and in particular service
quality driven by drop-shipping parcels close to the recipient that
makes Parcel Select delivery work. Without service quality that
meets a retailer's service quality requirements, no price
differential would be sufficient.
PostalReporter News Blog: In the second segment of his video
series on the "State of Our Business," PMG Pat Donahoe offers
additional details on the Postal Service's serious financial issues.
He also discusses operational changes and other steps the Postal
Service and Congress must take to address these issues. Donahoe has
recorded a message in video and audio formats so every facility can
access it. It's available on the Postmaster General's page on Blue,
and he's asking all employees to view or listen to the message by
Sept. 7. Managers and Postmasters will facilitate employee access
where necessary. In his message, Donahoe reminds viewers USPS must
overcome the consequences of declining First-Class Mail volume. He
says the Postal Service -- on its own and with Congress -- can act now
to restore stability. He calls on Congress to relieve USPS of its
burdensome retiree health insurance payment schedule, to refund
overpayments to FERS and to allow USPS to move from a 6- to 5-day
delivery week.
The 3rd UNI Post & Logistics Global Union World Conference, will
take place from Wednesday, 7 September to Friday, 9 September 2011,
in Washington DC, United States. Global postal union leaders are
meeting to discuss challenges facing the postal sector as the United
States Postal Service (USPS) faces insolvency. Issues such as postal
innovations, organising multinational post & logistics companies and
responding to privatization and liberalisation will be discussed at
the 3rd UNI Post & Logistics Global Union World Conference being
held September 7-9 at the Hilton hotel in Washington D.C.
The Independent: Royal Mail narrowly missed its delivery targets
in the spring, but more than nine out of 10 first and second-class
letters were delivered on time in recent weeks, the postal group
reported today
NALC Activist: The American public's approval of Congress is at
an all-time low--13 percent, according to a new Gallup poll. Yet
Congress is taking extraordinary steps to avoid hearing the
inevitable bad news from their constituents: that they are not doing
enough to create jobs. No Labels, a non-partisan think tank called
every congressional office to inquire about town hall meetings. The
group found that 60 percent had no plans at all to host an event to
hear from the constituents they represent. Further, a few members of
Congress among the remaining 40 percent have even decided to charge
for admission to their town halls--between $10 and $35--which will
inevitably eliminate the bulk of the constituents who are feeling
the brunt of Congress' failure to take action on job creation.
DMM Advisory: International Mailings of Lithium Batteries. Yesterday the Federal Register published our International Mail Manual (IMM�) final rule that incorporates new maximum limits on the mailing of lithium batteries to international addresses and to and from APO/FPO/DPO destination addresses. This final rule invites customers to comment on or before September 26, 2011. The complete final rule Federal Register can be found on the Postal Explorer� website at pe.usps.com.
The latest issue of PostCom's
PostOps Update
has been posted on this site. In this issue:
The latest issue of
the PostCom Bulletin is available online. In this issue:
Washington Post: What the U.S. Postal Service can't win at the
bargaining table, it hopes to get in the halls of Congress. If it is
successful, it would set a new stage in labor relations that would
send shivers through labor organizations far removed from the post
office. Even as the USPS is negotiating with its unions, it has
unveiled a proposal to have Congress eliminate no-layoff provisions
in postal union contracts. Postal negotiators raised that provision
during talks that concluded this spring with the American Postal
Workers Union, but APWU President Cliff Guffey said the union
compromised in other areas to keep the no-layoff provision intact.
Now, postal officials "want to walk away from things they gave up,"
he said.
U.S. Department of State:
In October 2010,
the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton approved
the nomination of Mr. Dennis Delehanty, Direct
or
for Postal Affairs in the IO Bureau, as candidate for Deputy
Director General of the Universal Postal Union (UPU).
The UPU is a UN specialized agency responsible for coordinating a
universal postal network among its 191 member countries. The
election for Deputy Director General will be held in Doha at the
next UPU Congress in October 2012 by a majority of the members
present and eligible to vote. Mr. Delehanty has a long track record
of effective work within the UPU. From his role in the creation of
the EMS (Express Mail Service) Cooperative -- one of the UPU's great
success stories -- to his six years of service on the Board of
Trustees of the Quality of Service Fund (a type of development
resource for the posts of developing countries), to his leadership
on UPU results-based management and, more recently, his work on UPU
financial and human resources policies, Mr. Delehanty has repeatedly
demonstrated his ability to serve as Deputy Director General.
Besides his seven years in Bern at the UPU's International Bureau,
Mr. Delehanty has served in key positions at the U.S. Postal Service
and the Department of State. On April 13, 2011
U.S. Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe addressed letters to
countries around the world expressing his support for the candidacy
of Dennis Delehanty for Deputy Director General at the Universal
Postal Union (UPU) and encouraging them to vote for the U.S.
candidate.
American Postal Workers Union: Thousands of Part-Time Flexibles
and Part-Time Regulars in the Clerk and Motor Vehicle Crafts will be
converted to regular Aug. 27 under the terms of the 2010-2015
Collective Bargaining Agreement. The newly converted regulars should
be assigned to residual full-time assignments -- with either
traditional schedules or non-traditional schedules. However, there
are no residual Non-Traditional Full-Time (NTFT) vacancies, because
management failed to allow proper opportunities for union input, and
failed to post NTFT positions for bid by regulars. Rumors have been
swirling, however, that management plans to assign the newly
converted regulars non-traditional schedules. Controversy over the
conversions deepened when the union learned that postal officials at
the national level had notified managers in the field that the new
regulars could be designated as unencumbered and/or unassigned
employees with non-traditional schedules -- even though the duty
assignments had not been posted for bid.
Press Release: UPS has announced the purchase of 100
all-electric delivery vehicles for deployment in California,
bolstering UPS's continuing effort to reduce the emissions of its
truck fleet and improve its energy security. The 100 vehicles will
be acquired from Electric Vehicles International (EVI) of Stockton,
Calif., and will replace older generation diesel trucks in the
largest single deployment of zero tailpipe emission delivery
vehicles in the state. These electric vehicles will have a 90-mile
range and displace an estimated 126,000 gallons of fuel a year that
would have been burned running diesel trucks.
The New American: In his report to a Senate subcommittee
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe (left) spelled out clearly why
the U.S. Postal Service can't make any money: too many cooks in the
kitchen. Hamstrung and limited by rules and "stakeholders" with
differing and often competing agendas, what's remarkable is that the
postal service isn't deeper in the hole. Heaven knows, he's trying.
Bluefield Daily Telegraph: U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., is
encouraging residents from around southern West Virginia and
Southwestern Virginia to come out to a public meeting concerning the
consolidation of local postal facilities. Rahall announced Thursday
that he will be in attendance at the public meeting organized by the
U.S. Postal Service regarding the Bluefield Customer Service Mail
Processing Center. The meeting will be held on Monday, Aug. 29. at 7
p.m. at the Bluefield Auditorium on Stadium Drive. The Bluefield
Distribution and Processing Center has been undergoing a study to
determine whether or not to consolidate it with another facility in
Johnson City, Tenn. and Charleston. The center not only serves West
Virginia residents but Virginia residents as well.
The National Business Review: New Zealand Post has made a loss
of $35.6 million over the last year. Earlier this year the postal
services group flagged it wasn't expecting to meet its targeted
$60.8 million net profit due to the earthquake and weak trading
conditions. Financial results released this morning reveal the
Canterbury earthquakes had cost the company $29.1 million in the
year to June 30. Last year the group was $1.3 million in profit. See
also the
New Zealand Herald.
DMM Advisory:Reply Rides Free Incentive Program -- URL Change. The August 11, 2011, Postal Bulletin Domestic Mail Manual (DMM�) article about the Reply Rides Free Incentive Program contains a URL for use by mail owners wishing to participate in the program. Since publication, the URL has been changed and can be found at: https://www.usps.com/business/promotions/reply-rides-free.htm. The URL will also be corrected in the October 2011 online DMM.
Dead Tree Edition: Is USPS Underestimating the Number of Layoffs
Its Downsizing Plan Would Require?
Post & Parcel: Canada Post has restructured its top-level
management to create two distinct business units -- one for physical
mail delivery and the other for digital mail delivery. The move sets
up the company to gun for growth in digital communications, but also
the booming e-commerce parcels market.
August 25, 2011
Federal Times: The U.S. Postal Service's proposal to pull out of
federal health care plans would shift the bulk of nearly a
half-million retirees' health care coverage onto Medicare. If
approved, several observers said, employees and retirees would
almost certainly end up with greatly reduced benefits, increased
employee costs or both. Walt Francis, an expert on federal health
care systems who writes the annual Checkbook guide to health plans,
blasted the Postal Service's plans as "nonsensical" and "absurd." He
suspects the Postal Service's threat to pull out of FEHBP is a ploy
to force Congress to relieve its retiree pre-funding problem. OPM
would not comment on the Postal Service's plans, and what they might
mean for FEHBP and current retirement systems.
REMINDER: This Sunday, Aug 28, 2011 PostalOne! will be
unavailable due to system maintenance and deployment of a scheduled
patch release (27.0.2). Please, be advised that the outage window is
being expanded to begin at 3:00am but will conclude at 8:00am. The
full updated description of this event follows: The PostalOne!
System will undergo normal maintenance and deploy application patch
release 27.0.2 during an expanded scheduled maintenance window 3
a.m. to 8 a.m. [CDT] on Sunday, August 28, 2011. The PostalOne!
System [ including FAST OPS, Web Services and BIDS microstrategy
reporting environment ] will be unavailable to internal and external
users during this time for both PRODUCTION and TEM environments.
Statepress: "Snail mail" may just be on its way to the dustbin
of history. Now, little kids send emails to Santa, high-school
seniors often receive their college admission notices through the
Internet and we can instantly let our friends know what we are up to
with the click of a button. Skype, Facebook and the other social
media outlets are not making the post office's job any easier. These
means of communication offer features that the USPS would never be
able to provide. As social media expands and generations grow up
without a visible mail system, staying current will remain a
challenge for the USPS.
YLE: A planned walkout by postal employees may shut all post
offices at 2pm on Thursday. The action will not affect post points
that operate in conjunction with other businesses. Post service
provider Itella says that the potential walkout runs counter to the
industry agreement between the employer and the employees. The head
of the Finnish Post and Logistics Union PAU, Esa Vilkuna, admits
that the action is unlawful but calls it "understandable."
Ice News: Icelandic postmen and women are this week burdened
with bags which are twice as heavy even than in Christmas week.
Pressure on Iceland Post's telephone switchboards is also higher
than usual this week and early next week. The reason for all the
fuss? The new IKEA catalogue is being delivered to every home in the
country. The comprehensive (and chunky) IKEA catalogue is sent to
every house in Iceland once a year and the postal service is never
busier than this week. 118,000 homes in total.
Hellmail: Postcomm, the UK postal regulator, received three new
applications for postal licenses this month - ASA Distribution
Limited, Zone Marketing, and one sole trader. There are currently 57
licensed operators in the UK, including the Royal Mail. The licences
are issued on a rolling ten-year basis period, requiring licence
holders to comply with codes of practice on mail integrity (safety
and security of the mail) and common operational procedures
(designed to ensure the multi-operator market works well in
practice).
Hellmail: Latvian Post is to collect an international prize for
its implementation of new technology designed to improve quality of
service. The automation was realized by the Universal Postal Union
Quality of service fund - co-financing a single service system, and
significantly speeding up the customer service process. Among the
most important benefits of the project include the fact that the new
equipment provides tracking for both domestic and international
registered mail.
Gulf Daily News: Residents in some of Bahrain's most
high-profile housing projects will not receive any mail for up to
four months after the government cancelled postal deliveries.
Transportation Ministry officials confirmed luxury developments such
as Amwaj Islands, Riffa Views and Durrat Al Bahrain had been caught
up in a dispute about who should be responsible for providing the
service. Around 5,500 people are believed to have been affected by
the stalemate. A ministry statement said Bahrain Post had reached an
agreement with Amwaj Islands management to instal post boxes for
residents to solve the problem. "Unfortunately, up to date no action
has been made," it said. "In this regard, the delivery of mail is
the sole responsibility of all property developers," the statement
added.
AllAfrica.com: Kenya risks widening the digital divide among its
masses unless ICT infrastructure is evenly distributed across the
country. A new ICT access gaps study indicates that despite Kenya's
rapid ICT growth there is danger that some sections of the masses,
especially in rural areas, could be left behind. Broadband shall
provide the much needed interface between the telecommunication and
postal/courier industry. As the data infrastructure and services
continue to grow, the postal and courier industry shall provide the
last mile connectivity by undertaking home delivery of goods
transacted through e-commerce.
The Iowa State Daily: The Postal Service should try to
understand the modern world we live in. With newer, faster methods
of communicating -- first it was faxes and later email, then instant
messaging and text messages -- the Postal Service needs to adjust.
Offices and stations might not be necessary everywhere.
Comparatively, few rural communities have grocery stores and
shopping districts. Some don't even have a church. Why should they
have a post office?
From the Federal Register:
NOTICES
Post Office Closings ,
53159--53160 [2011--21691]
Postal Service Rate Adjustments ,
53160--53162 [2011--21690]
RULES
National Environmental Policy Act Procedures ,
53057 [2011--21698]
Outbound International Mailings of Lithium Batteries ,
53056--53057 [2011--21443]
Hellmail: P2P Mailing Limited, the mailing and distribution solutions
provider, has launched its new Reverse Logistics Solution for internet and
catalogue retailers wishing to offer their European customers a returns
option. As the e-commerce market becomes increasingly competitive, offering
an efficient returns solution has become an important differentiator between
companies.
The Institute of Direct and Digital Marketing: Nine in ten Brits
are willing to receive unaddressed mail through their front door
from retailers, according to new research.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
The Cherokeean Herald: The U.S. Postal Service headquarters is
telling its marketing and management team to back off comments
critical of newspapers as they promote the new Every Door Direct
Mail advertising option. A spate of complaints from newspapers about
postmasters and marketing reps who were "trashing" newspaper
advertising when they introduced local businesses to the new EDDM
saturation mail program led the National Newspaper Association to
urgently seek a correction from USPS. Postal Service headquarters
advised Max Heath, NNA Postal Committee chair, this week that a new
directive has now been issued. Postal employees are being directed
to position direct mail as an option to be used in addition to other
media, not as a replacement.
August 24, 2011
|
DMM Advisory: IMb™ Services Update. USPS Support of IDEAlliance Specifications — In November 2011 (Release 28) and January 2012 (Release 29), the Postal Service™ will release software for the PostalOne!® and Facility Access and Shipment Tracking (FAST®) systems that include IDEAlliance® Mail.dat® and Mail.XML® specification support. We have identified changes in the support of IDEAlliance versions for eDocs and postage statements, as well as for FAST, Data Distribution, and profile functionality. All mailers should review the updated guidelines for Mail.dat and Mail.XML version support in November 2011 and January 2012 on RIBBS®.
Post & Parcel: Swiss Post has begun distributing international
editions of national newspapers to locations in Cyprus and Malta
through a hybrid mail system. Since July, the company has been
transmitting copies of the Swiss German-language newspapers Neue
Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ), Blick and SonntagsBlick electronically to
local printers in the Mediterranean islands, where the papers are
then printed on newsprint to be sold physically. Swiss Post
International subsidiary Export Distribution Services AG is managing
the process, which aims to provide Swiss tourists with daily
newspapers with the right “look and feel” to which they are
accustomed. And, the hybrid mail process means newspapers are
available on the day of publication.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Azerbaijan
Business Center: Azerbaijan expects connection of 62,5% of
postal departments to system of observing of mailing pieces to the
country regions. Head of Postal Sector of Communication and
Information Technologies Ministry Novruz Mammadov has reported that
at present Azerbaijan numbers 1600 mail departments.
CEP News
(Courier-Express-Postal), published by the MRU Consultancy, has reported that:
Austrian Post further improved its result in the second quarter this year. Revenue grew 4.2% while the operating result (EBIT) rose by over 11% (32.5m euro) and net profit was up more than 19% (24.6m euro). The improved results are mainly attributable to austerity measures and a new pricing structure in the mail segment.
Japan Post’s reorganisation is still frozen. The postal reform bills aimed at splitting up the Japanese post into three independent entities has become impossible to pass during the current diet session which ends on August 31.
Portuguese CTT Correios faced a continued decline in turnover in the first half year 2011. The continued decline in letter mail volume is apparently the main reason for this development.
Russia Post increased its turnover by 16% to 1.37bn euro in the first half year of the current business year. According to the official statement this result was achieved due to changes made in social security service tariffs.
TNT Post started to put up its own letter boxes in Germany.
The Philippine post will be headed by a woman for the first time ever. Maria Josefina M. Dela Cruz already assumed office in the middle of July replacing Antonio De Guzman as postmaster general who just spent 8 months in office. At her handover ceremony she said that PhilPost would soon be ’reliable and efficient’.
UPS appointed a new president of UPS Europe. Jim Barber, who has been COO of the UPS Europe region, will succeed Wolfgang Flick who goes into retirement after 35 years of service.
The Chilean post has to look for a new CEO. Chile’s president Sebastián Piñerain has appointed Domingo Cruzat Amunátegui, CEO of Correos de Chile, as the new chairman of state holding SEP. In the previous week the former chairman of the state holding surprisingly stepped down. It is still unclear who will succeed Amunátegui.
The MRU, founded in 1992, is the only consultancy in Europe, which has specialised in the market of courier-, express- and parcel services. For large-scale shippers and CEP-services in particular, the MRU provides interdisciplinary advice for all major questions of the market, as there are for example market entry, product design, organisation, and EDP.To learn more about the stories reported above, contact CEP News. (We appreciate the courtesy extended by CEP News to help whet your appetite for more of what CEP offers.)
Printing Impressions: IWCO Direct, a leading national provider
of direct marketing solutions, announced that Joseph F. Morrison,
currently executive vice president and chief financial officer, will
take on an expanded role as president. Patrick Deck has been named
executive vice president, chief marketing officer (CMO). James N.
Andersen will continue as CEO and will devote additional energies to
IWCO Direct’s growth strategies. Tom Wicka, who has served as
executive vice president, chief marketing officer, will continue to
provide leadership as a member of the board of directors.
New York Times: After an earthquake rocked the Capitol on
Tuesday afternoon and caused the evacuation of the centuries-old
building, the Senate was forced to convene a few blocks away in a
remarkable off-site session that essentially served as a dry run for
procedures put in place after the Sept. 11 attacks. Because of an
ongoing political spat over Congressional recess appointments, the
Senate was scheduled to meet at 2:30 p.m. to comply with the
constitutional requirement that neither chamber adjourn for more
than three days without the consent of the other. [EdNote: But
did they DO anything? Nope. Just a pro forma. . . . There you go
again. Hoping for too much.]
Huffington Post: The August 15 New York Times front page boldly
featured a menacing headline, "A Businessman in Congress Helps His
District and Himself," whose accompanying article slams House
Government Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.).
However, key facts in the story are inaccurate and the headline
crumbles without these facts. Amazingly, the New York Times has as
of this writing failed to make any correction other than a
correcting a typo. First, reporter Eric Lichtblau even got the
description of Issa's building in downtown San Diego wrong. It gets
worse. Lichtblau's intent is clear: To defame Issa.
The Bulletin: The United States Postal Service study to
determine the feasibility of closing 3,600 locations and laying off
thousands of employees has caught the attention of the National
Association for Equal Justice in America, and the organization has
written President Barack Obama asking him to stop the process.
Sioux City Journal: Lack of U.S. Postal Service
cooperation with our local and congressional leaders over the
planned closing of Sioux City's Mail Distribution and Processing
Center continues to baffle us. The whole frustrating process sinks
to more ridiculous depths by the week. The most recent oddities were
reported by Lynn Zerschling in Saturday's Journal. In the story,
U.S. Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, expressed frustration at recent unmet
promises, lack of responses to inquiries and mixed messages with
respect to release of "unredacted data" in the feasibility study on
which the decision to close the local center was based and a
supposed meeting between local and USPS officials about the closing.
"It is clear," King said, "that the USPS is attempting to run out
the clock between now and the Oct. 1 deadline it has set for
completing the move of processing operations to Sioux Falls."
From the Federal Register:
PROPOSED RULES
Periodic Reporting ,
52915–52917 [2011–21581]
Congressional
Research Service: "The U.S. Postal Service: Common Questions
About Post Office Closures"
The Hindu: Faced with the challenge posed by the Information
Technology revolution, the Ministry of Communications plans to have
integrated postal services in two years.
Post & Parcel: The US Postal Service has encouraged thousands of
new businesses into using the mail for local advertising campaigns
over the summer, with its new simplified address service. Every Door
Direct Mail, as the service is called, was launched back in April,
offering businesses an easier way to mail items to every doorstep in
a given area, without having to get hold of specific addresses for
individual households.
BCLocalNews: Canada Post Corporation (CPC) has posted its best
year ever in profit, says its Annual Report. CPC’s net income was
$443 million, besting a previous record from 2009 of $281 million.
The record can be attributed largely to productivity increases:
while lettermail volume has declined 10.2 per cent since 2007, paid
hours of mail processing work have dropped 15.9 per cent. In all, in
spite of an overall volume decrease of 1.8 per cent from 2009,
higher productivity of postal workers has boosted Canada Post’s
performance to its second-best year ever in income from operations,
next to 2009. This resulted in a return on equity of 21.8 per cent,
a fantastic asset for citizens, who own the crown corporation.
SunNewsOnline: The 5th Universal Postal Union international
conference put together for designated post operators in the
Anglophone West Africa Countries to deliberate on issues that bind
the affected countries as one family in the Postal Service has ended
in Lagos. The four-day conference titled ‘Enhancing Quality Service
and Competence’, took place at the Welcome Centre Hotel, Ikeja , and
the Participating countries, Gambia, Liberia, Ghana, Nigeria and
Sierra Leone were fully represented. In an address, the Post
Master-General and Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Postal
Service (NIPOST), Mallam Ibrahim Mori Baba, said major assignment of
the conference was to articulate ideas, aimed at fostering,
evaluating the achievements the designated operators have made in
the project milestones and to ensure quality of service
certification and application.
August 23, 2011
The Economist:
FEW people under 30 make much use of “snail mail” anymore. But
Stephen Harper, Canada’s Conservative prime minister, is 52, and
judged that a labour dispute which had interrupted postal service
for three weeks was causing enough damage that the government should
pass a law on June 26th to order employees back to work. Although
Canada faces far greater economic threats than a work stoppage in a
shrinking industry, the postal strike offered Mr Harper an
irresistible opportunity to pick a favourable political fight. The
standoff’s main significance was political. The Conservatives, who
won a majority in May after five years of minority government, have
long been hostile to unions. In contrast, the New Democrats (NDP),
who came second in the vote, are a leftist party closely tied to
labour. A showdown benefited both of them. It let the NDP show
loyalty to its base and flex its muscles as the new official
opposition, while allowing the Conservatives to land a blow on a
favourite punching bag. [EdNote: Oh . . . right . . . . This is
about Canada. Heck, I thought it was about the U.S.]
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: For some reason, one of
the most frequent Google searches that lead people to this blog is
"UPS Surepost" I checked out that search and I found that while UPS
offers this product, it makes almost no effort to tell customers
looking for cheap delivery of parcels between 1 and 10 pounds that
it has a price competitive service.
Business First: United Parcel Service Inc. is one of three
companies that are eligible to provide delivery services under an
$853.3 million U.S. Defense Department contract. The contract,
awarded this month by The U.S. Transportation Command, also named
Federal Express and Polar Air Cargo as potential vendors for
“international commercial express package service (shipments up to
and including 300 pounds) for the federal government to include all
civilian agencies/organizations,” according to a Defense Department
news release. Services will be provided from Oct. 1, 2011, to Sept.
30, 2012. The contract also includes four one-year renewal options.
[EdNote: Yes sir. USPS needs revenue, but Fedex and UPS get the
business.]
Ever notice you hear a boatload about what Congress won't do about the postal system (or won't let get done) and not a darn thing about what it's actually willing to do?
The Rolla Daily News: Rep. Jo Ann Emerson -- The U.S.
Postal Service is a fundamental part of life in America – and
especially in rural America. Unlike our counterparts in urban areas,
Americans in rural places like Southern Missouri rely on the Postal
Service to deliver prescription drugs, retail shipments, business
mail and even bills to a greater extent than in the city. In fact,
the newspaper you read regularly is probably delivered by the mail
carrier. It is very concerning, then, that the USPS is attempting to
close thousands of Post Offices across the country, many of them in
rural areas. Citing a financial shortfall of $3.1 billion in the
second quarter of the year, the USPS says closing rural Post Offices
will save them money. But at a cost of hundreds of thousands of
customers, the last thing the Postal Service should do to save money
is reduce its services.
Multichannel Merchant: The U.S. Postal Service offered a 3%
promotional discount to catalogers who use two-dimensional mobile
barcodes inside or on their mailings this summer. The USPS hopes the
program, which ends Aug. 31, will promote integration of the direct
mail and mobile channels. The idea behind the promotion is an
excellent way to help drive emerging technology. Unfortunately, a
sampling of catalogs that have come across my desk show the use of
QR codes is poorly carried out.
 |
♪♫"Oh I heard it -- Heard It -- Yes, I heard it through
the grapevine. . . ."
♫♪
|
|
Office of Rep. Steve King: [EdNote: This isn't pretty.]
From: Graves, Bentley
Sent: Thursday, August 18, 2011 06:08 PM
To: Calos, Sandra - Washington, DC
Cc: 'Rice, James (Grassley)'; Goldberg, Dan (HELP Committee)
Subject: Re: Sioux City AMP"We are frustrated, Sandy. Very frustrated. I've tried Ms. Dominguez twice today, with no response. We're almost now another full week gone by with absolutely nothing to show for the time passed."
From: Graves, Bentley
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 02:41 PM
To: Calos, Sandra - Washington, DC
Cc: 'Rice, James (Grassley)'; Goldberg, Dan (HELP Committee)
Subject: Re: Sioux City AMP"We're now more than two weeks past the day on which the postmaster general promised this information to the folks in Sioux City. Every day that goes by gives them less opportunity to review the data and weigh in. Had I not followed up again today by phone, I don't know how I'd have known that Talaya was out...and I guess we'd still just be waiting. When can we expect the release of the information? I would hope that it will be no later than tomorrow. Would it be helpful for us to speak with Ms. Dominguez directly? We cannot afford any additional delay.
From: Graves, Bentley
Sent: Tuesday, August 16, 2011 2:49 PMTo: Goldberg, Dan (HELP Committee); Rice, James (Grassley)
Subject: RE: Follow Up
I got no response. I got an out of office from Sheila. I tried to call Talaya and Sandy yesterday afternoon,
left voicemails for each, and got no response from that either. I just tried both again and again got
voicemail. I called the main USPS govt affairs number and was told that Talaya is out on leave. The
person who answered the phone said that she’d have someone call me today, and then she transferred
me to Sandy’s voicemail again.
This is the most frustrating thing I’ve ever encountered.
Washington Post: Technology, with ever-increasing frequency, can
step in with the answer. Yet another option had its debut Thursday
in Maryland when the state’s 511 system became operational. The
federally funded 511 program has been spreading across the country.
Virginia expanded it statewide in 2005. The District and Delaware
have yet to get on board. The system offers real-time traffic
information collected by Inrix, a commercial data hub that uses a
system of transponders aboard fleet vehicles, such as UPS trucks.
The 511 system also provides weather, transit and tourism
information, and it can connect users to other services, such as
Metro and E-ZPass.
Washington Post: If the U.S. Postal Service is successful in its
plan to withdraw from the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program
(FEHBP), it would have ramifications for the entire federal
workforce. Pulling out of the program was one of the key points in a
new set of proposals the Postal Service is pushing to deal with
structural financial problems that have led to $20 billion in net
losses over four years, including an $8.5 billion loss for fiscal
year 2010.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
will be holding a full committee hearing on the Postal Service at 10
a.m. on September 6, 2011.
Hellmail: The Envelope Manufacturers and Suppliers Association
(EMSA) conducted a recent national poll that demonstrated a strong
preference on the part of the public to continue receiving important
bills and financial statements by mail, rather than solely online.
More than 73% of the public indicated that they prefer the mail as
their delivery vehicle for these important documents.
Washington Post: The U.S. Postal Service could save about $1.5
billion annually if it relaxed its one- to three-day guarantees for
First-Class and Priority Mail deliveries by a day, according to a
new study. Postal executives are seriously considering the idea and
are expected to announce new plans regarding delivery schedules
after Labor Day, according to USPS officials.
The
Mailers Technical Advisory Committee has formed a new work group
focusing on "Physical
Location Defaults and Redirections Review." Currently
maintaining and determining the correct drop ship location for mail
discounts is a complex process for both the USPS and the industry.
Each logical drop ship location (example, SCF 100) is assigned to a
single default physical USPS location. FAST then supports a set of
redirections that are used to direct mail in up to 58 different ways
to other USPS physical locations for that same discount level. The
variables that constitute these 58 ways include postal class,
processing category, palletization and specialty categories. This
complexity has been mentioned as a concern in two recent USPS
initiatives, Service Measurement and FSS Preparation. The task for
this workgroup is to examine the current data format and business
rules to determine their suitability for future postal directions.
If the current arrangement is not sufficient the WG should prepare
one or more changes that will accommodate the needs of the USPS and
the industry.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The prospects of stopping
the Postal Servie's new network in Congress appears limited, as
Congressman Dennis Ross has indicated support for the Postal
Service's actions in an interview with the Government Executive.
What is most tellingis how he wants the USPS transformation to
"serve as a model for other government agencies in how to adapt to
the 21st century." He looks at the Postal Service not as a
quasi-government, quasi-business entity, but just another govenment
entitiy. The APWU and other unions are facing a fight for their
existence, and more importantly a fight for the jobs of their
members.
TheLocal.de: Thousands of letters and packages are being stolen
each year within Deutsche Post’s delivery chain in what German
police say is a growing trend. It’s not clear why the problem seems
to be increasing now. But the German Association for Post,
Information Technology and Telecommunications (DVPT), which
represents the interests of postal workers, blamed outsourcing.
Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: In July, the United States Postal
Service targeted 36 offices in Alaska for possible closure. On
Monday, 25 of those offices were removed from the list. The offices
all have one thing in common: none of them are on the Alaska road
system. Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - USPS trims Alaska
closure list Facilities not on road system taken off shut down
roster
The Bemidji Pioneer: Mayor Dave Larson and the Bemidji City
Council took an official stance on the U.S. Postal Service’s
proposal to transfer its mail processing services from Bemidji to
the St. Cloud Mail Processing Center.
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory Commission
NOTICES
Complaints about Postal Services , 52718–52720 [2011–21415]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Post Office Closings , 52720–52721 [2011–21414]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Postal
Service
RULES
Procedures To Adjudicate Claims for Personal Injury or Property
Damage Arising Out of the Operation of the U.S. Postal Service ,
52580 [2011–21444]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Government Executive: Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said USPS has
other "common-sense solutions" to address its fiscal crisis without
putting the burden on its employees and retirees. He pointed to
legislative proposals already in play, several of which would refund
the agency's overpayment to its retirement systems accounts. Rep.
Dennis Ross, R-Fla., who chairs the House committee responsible for
postal oversight, said USPS leaders know they must dramatically
adapt and change to keep pace with a changing market. "The
rightsizing and pension changes suggested are dramatic and are
encouraging," he said. "I remain hopeful that any USPS
transformation will serve as a model for other government agencies
in how to adapt to the 21st century."
August 22, 2011
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Newspapers & Technology
Magazine: RR Donnelley & Sons Co. last week acquired
LibreDigital, the Austin, Texas-based developer of e-reading
software and digital content distribution and business intelligence
services. The purchase will extend RRD’s e-reader services into the
newspaper, magazine and book publishing segments, the firm said, and
“enable us to offer our publishing, retail, e-reader provider and
other customers an even broader selection of services,” according to
CEO Thomas J. Quinlan III. The acquisition of LibreDigital came only
two days after RRD bought Sequence Personal, a New York-based
company whose software permits users to select content that can then
be digitally produced as specialty publications.
Post & Parcel: Regulators in the United States have issued a
final rule effectively making permanent requirements for the
screening of air cargo intended for transport on passenger aircraft.
The Transportation Security Administration said the rule finalises
the interim measure that has been in place since September 2009,
which set up the Certified Cargo Screening Program (CCSP). The CCSP
established a multi-layer screening system for independent companies
to be certified to carry out security checks on cargo on behalf of
air carriers, with the checks taking place at offsite facilities
before transporting it securely to an airport. The TSA conducts
routine inspections to ensure certified screening companies are
complying with the CCSP requirements.
Financial Times: If the USPS does not cut thousands of jobs,
defer expenditures and reduce service, executives expect losses to
accelerate, raising the prospect that the US taxpayer could be
forced to bail out the second-largest civilian employer in the
country. Tad DeHaven, a budget analyst with the Cato Institute, a
free market think-tank, argues that the peculiar structure of the
USPS as a self-supporting federal entity has left it with the
constraints of a governmental agency and the competitive pressures
of a private company, but without the advantages of either.
Daily Yomiuri: The postal reform bills aimed at transforming
Japan Post Group into three entities are certain to be shelved until
the next ordinary Diet session as it has become impossible to pass
them during the current session, which ends on Aug. 31. How the
bills will be handled in the next Diet session under a new
administration after Prime Minister Naoto Kan resigns remains very
fluid. The delay is expected to further hinder the management of
Japan Post Group.
Post & Parcel: The lower house in Brazil’s National Congress is
expected to conclude its deliberation of new regulations to
restructure the country’s Post and Telegraph Company (ECT) this
week. The main text of new regulations, allowing for the
modernisation of ECT, was approved by Brazil’s Chamber of Deputies
last week, leaving a nominal vote to be taken tomorrow (August 23)
on amendments proposed by the opposition parties. Once the
regulation passes the Chamber of Deputies, it will need approval
from the Senate and presidential sign-off before it becomes law. The
new regulations, Provisional Measure 532/11, will allow ECT to
expand outside its current operational boundaries – including into
the provision of electronic postal services, more financial services
and logistics operations abroad. ECT will be allowed to establish
new subsidiaries, operate outside Brazil for the first time by
establishing foreign-based offices, and have powers to buy stakes or
overall control in other companies. The new law will also see ECT
given a new corporate status and management structure, under
president Wagner Pinheiro with decisions taken by a board under
overall chairmanship of Brazil’s communications minister, Paul
Bernardo.
Moving at the Right Speed. The Postal Service network is built to deliver First-Class Mail in 1 to 3 days. This level of service requires overnight processing and an extensive network. Could relaxing service standards be an option for the Postal Service to save costs? The new OIG white paper,
Cost of Service Standards, attempted to answer this question. We asked Christensen Associates to examine the opportunity for cost savings from relaxing service standards by 1 day. They found the Postal Service could save $1.5 billion in mail processing costs for First-Class Mail, Priority Mail, and Periodicals with additional opportunities from network consolidation. We invite you to share your thoughts on this topic on our blog.
Gaston Gazette: Because the bulk of operating costs are paid for
by customers buying stamps and other products and because sales are
declining, the Postal Service has decided to face up to reality and
would like to dramatically cut its costs. The good news is that
postal authorities are considering something almost unheard of in
Washington. We hope it catches on. But it will be an uphill battle,
even for the semi-independent federal agency. The Postal Service is
seeking congressional approval to establish its own, less-costly
health benefits program, administer its own retirement system and
substantially downsize its workforce by 120,000 from its current
563,000. Postal authorities also want flexibility to adjust mail
delivery, which would result in reducing or eliminating Saturday
deliveries. The major obstacle, unsurprisingly, is the union
representing hundreds of thousands of postal workers, vehemently
opposed to what seems to us to be reasonable and long-overdue
economies.
News.az:
National postal operator Azerpoct has signed an agreement with
Ukraine and Belarus on urgent money transfers (UMTs) via Secured
Transfer of Electronic Financial Information (STEFI).
Transport Intelligence: Austrian Post announces 3% growth in
half-year results.
Business Standard: At a time when over 60 per cent of the
country's population do not have access to banking services and
credit facility remaining only a mirage for more than 90 per cent of
the population, the Entrepreneurs & Finance Customers' Association
of India (EFCAI) has urged the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to allow
post offices to start banking operations. Pointing out that India's
robust postal network can be leveraged to extend banking facilities
to the poorest of the poor in rural areas, EFCAI, a city-based
organization has sought the intervention of H R Khan, Deputy
Governor of RBI for giving approval to the post offices to function
as banks.
August 21, 2011
The latest issue of
the PostCom Bulletin is available online. In this issue:
Reuters: The Postal Service, which receives no taxpayer funds to
pay for operating costs and relies on sales of postage and other
products, has struggled with a precipitous decline in mail volumes
as consumers increasingly use e-mail and pay bills online. The
drop-off was exacerbated by the economic recession. The mail carrier
has asked Congress to approve major structural changes, including
the elimination of Saturday mail delivery, as well as relief from
its immediate cash crisis. It has proposed cutting 220,000 jobs, or
more than a third of its full-time staff, by 2015, and is studying
about 3,650 of its 32,000 offices for potential closure. But
Congress is in recess until September 6, and the Democratic-led
Senate and Republican-led House of Representatives have fought
bitterly on policy issues from health reform to raising the national
debt ceiling.
Federal Times (updated): U.S. Postal Service leaders are poised
to forgo legal obligations next month by skipping a $5.5 billion
payment for retiree health care, but even that unprecedented step
won't buy the flailing mail carrier much time, one of its top
officials said last week. Without that action and congressional
relief on other fronts, the Postal Service will at best stay solvent
only until next August, Deputy Postmaster General Ron Stroman said
in an interview with Federal Times. "We're really up against the
wall here," he said. That sudden sense of urgency — driven both by
frustration at congressional inaction and a cash crunch worsening
faster than expected — may help to explain a dramatic burst of
restructuring proposals.
Clovis News Journal: The USPS has fallen on hard times,
suffering through consecutive years of operating deficits. Unlike
other branches of the federal government, the USPS doesn’t have the
luxury of relying on congressional deficit spending to compensate
for the red ink. Consequently, because the bulk of operating costs
are paid for by customers buying stamps and other products and
because sales are declining, the Postal Service has decided to face
up to reality and would like to dramatically cut its costs.
Agenzia Giornalistica Italia: Italy's Poste Italiane SpA and
Poste Panama have underwritten innovation and development
agreements. The agreements have Poste Italiane act as advisors to
their Central American counterparts - who look to establish advanced
financial, telecoms and ICT services.
Jackson Citizen Patriot: Here’s a hypothetical question: What if
the U.S. Postal Service disappeared? The Postal Service isn’t
extinct, but it might be the dawn of a new ice age for this
dinosaur. It’s about time that postal officials, their employees and
communities that enjoy the neighborhood post office begin to face
that reality. The Postal Service will not go bankrupt, as General
Motors and Chrysler did, but it must make wholesale changes to the
way it does business. It faces private competitors that do some of
its functions better, and maybe should be allowed to compete to do
more. The country needs information to be delivered efficiently in
many forms, and “snail mail” is part of that. Still, the current
postal model is a relic that cannot endure.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: In this week's issue, the
Economist's coverage of the United States includes a story that lays
out how observers overseas view the Postal Service's problems. The
article indicates that there is an alternative to the path that
Postmaster General Donahoe was forced to choose. Privatization or
liberalization along with greater freedom to control costs and
prices. It is hard to imagine how privatization or liberalization
could be worse for Postal Service labor. Nor can one imagine how
privatization would result in more cutbacks in service that the
Postal Service envisions neccessary to prevent becoming a ward of
American taxpayers.
Boston Herald: We have long believed privatization of postal
services is the only worthwhile permanent course, but that cannot be
done until finances of the service are stable and predictable, which
they are not.
The National: Transportation authorities in the United States
say Emirates Post need not continue to bar US-bound packages
weighing more than 450g. The UAE and other countries imposed the
restriction on shipments in response to US security measures
introduced worldwide last November. The new rules came shortly after
two bombs hidden in printer cartridges mailed from Yemen to American
addresses were intercepted in Dubai and the UK. But size limit is
not one of those measures, said Kawika Riley, a spokesman for the US
Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which set the rules.
"There are no package size restrictions," he said in an e-mail. He
declined to explain the rules that were imposed after the thwarted
attacks, citing security precautions.
i880News: Canada post will be introducing some major changes to
the way mail is delivered in Canada, but unions are worried it may
not be worth it. The changes include having one postal worker
deliver parcels, letters, and empty street letter boxes, jobs
normally done by several people. This will mean fewer jobs for
workers, and some here are already seeing the effects.
Pakistan
Observer: Federal Minister for Postal Services Sardar Muhammad
Umar Gorgage has announced one month bonus for the employees of
Pakistan Post on the eve of Eid.
August 20, 2011
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: In the FY11 third
quarter, the Postal Service reported growth in nearly all parcel and
express products that equalled or exceeded industry growth rates.
The fastest growing products are the Parcel Select and Parcel Return
Service products that FedEx, UPS, Neugistcs and others are
convincing customers to use in order to reduce delivery and return
costs.
Post & Parcel: Austrian Post said today it’s “on the right
track”, after recording an 11% growth in earnings before tax and a
2.9% increase in overall revenues for the first half of this year.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The U.S. Census Bureau
retail sales data released last week showed that in June, the share
of seasonally adjusted retail sales that are sold on-line or via a
catalog rose to 20.5% of retail sales from merchants selling
products that are sold both in brick and mortar stores, on-line or
through a catalog. This means that 20.5% of all retail sales that
could be delivered by FedEx, United Parcel Service or the United
States Postal Service, are being delivered by these firms.
August 19, 2011
Times-Herald:
To save additional money, the Postal Service should be allowed to
move ahead with its plan to close low-volume post offices around the
country. It makes no sense to retain an expensive operations when
few people use them. Instead of cutting back on delivery and the
number of post offices, some in Congress prefer that the Postal
Service lower the amount of money it sets aside for pensions.
Pension reform may well be needed along with other cost-cutting
steps. But it would be fiscally irresponsible to undermine a pension
system that hundreds of thousands of former and current postal
employees rely on. As mail volume declines, the Postal Service will
need to substantially reduce its number of employees, mostly through
attrition.
KCAU: In an act of frustration U.S. Representative Steve King
released a chain of e–mails between congressional staff and postal
officials. The emails show the weeks of work between his offices,
Senator Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin to get the Postal Service to
release information about how it came to the decision to close Sioux
City's mail processing center. According to Congressman King the
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe promised to release that
information. But according to Congressman King this afternoon the
U.S.P.S released a heavily edited version of the study, instead of
the version promised. So now King is firing back. See also the
Sioux City Journal.
Anchorage Daily News: Rural Alaskans far from roads, stores,
medical and other services, who live in small villages spend more
money per capita in the post office system than most other Alaskans.
We have no alternatives to receiving medications, vehicle or
airplane parts, animal feed and other necessities. Most rural
Alaskans are familiar with the routine of shopping in a hub
community and mailing to the village from hub post offices. Families
spend several thousand dollars a year on postal service, far above
the national average. While we lack economy of scale, we are, per
capita, the best post office customers in the nation.
Staunton News Leader: The Postal Service, though, still muddles
along, bearing unnecessary and awkward burdens. It will have to make
quick changes or face total failure, which is unacceptable. Rural
areas outside the digital divide require a dependable service that
brings the mail to the door or driveway. Not six days a week,
though. We join the chorus of voices, including the service itself,
to end Saturday delivery.
Washington Post: Before you wax too poetic about the post office
and your crystal radio and the bowling you’re going to do later in
Mayberry, consider that right now, the nicest part of the community
post office you claim you so frequently visit is that you do not
have to pay for it with taxes. That could change this fall when the
Postal Service hits its borrowing limit. How much are you willing to
pay to keep looking back?
Washington Post: The Postal Regulatory Commission says it wants
to make it easier for communities to appeal potential post office
closings and has published proposed rule changes to streamline the
process. Last month, the U.S. Postal Service listed some 3,700 post
offices around the country that it wants to close because of its
severe financial problems. The proposed changes to the rules for
appeals were published Thursday on the commission’s Web site and
should appear next week in the Federal Register. “The new rules
simplify the procedures for person’s wishing to appeal a post office
closing or consolidation,” the commission said in its filing. The
changes to the current rules, which are more than 30 years old,
would get rid of cumbersome filing regulations and out-of-date
language and are intended to reduce delays, according to a
commission official.
August 18, 2011
Roll Call: The Library of Congress will lose nearly 10 percent
of its workforce by Nov. 3. In a sweeping cost-cutting move, the
Library will offer targeted buyouts to 349 employees through a
voluntary early retirement program, according to internal documents
obtained by Roll Call. The staff cuts come in response to the
legislative branch budget passed by the House on July 22.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The Postal Service has
recently made a proposal to allow take over its benefit plans. Well
are there Federal or quasi-federal entitities that have their own
benefit plans? Yes.
Street Level: While there's been a lot of bad news surrounding
the United States Postal Service lately, a heightened level of
innovation exists both within the postal service and externally in
an attempt to transform the organization, as well as the concept of
mail delivery itself.
Candian Labour Reporter: Canada Post employees will be receiving
retroactive salary increases and back pay that had been withheld
from them when the workers were legislated back to work in June
2011. Canada Post president Deepak Chopra has overturned the
decision made by the Canada Post labour relations department not to
implement the wage increases and retroactive payments until the
arbitration process is completed. As a result, postal workers should
receive the retroactive payments on Sept. 29, 2011. In a letter to
the Union, Chopra said that he hoped this will be “a modest step in
the right direction to quickly conclude the final arbitration
process.”
The National Association of Letter Carriers of the United States
(NALC) and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW)
will be holding a Special Meeting on Innovations in Postal Services,
to be held Tuesday, 6 September 2011 in Washington DC, United States
of America. This meeting is to be held the day before the 3rd UNI
Post & Logistics Global Union World Conference, which is programmed
for Wednesday, 7 September to Friday, 9 September 2011. The
Innovations in Postal Services Meeting will center around three main
themes. (1) Innovations in the core postal business (2) Innovative
new products. (3) Innovative new services.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
"The United States Postal Service hereby provides notice that it intends to terminate the Collaborative Logistics market test, effective September 19, 2011. The Postal Service has reevaluated its plans, based on changes in its organizational structure, its current financial condition, and operations concerns. Management has therefore determined that resources should be devoted to consideration of initiatives to consolidate facilities and transportation in order to reduce cost."
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: Deputy Postmaster General
Ronald Stroman told the Federal Times that the Postal Service would
be insolvent in August, 2012. So what happens in August 2012?
According to Postal Service CFO Joseph Corbett's statement at MTAC
on Wednesday, this does not mean the Postal Service will shut down.
USPS will not "shut down" in July or August, 2012 due to cash crunch
because they'll have about $2 billion in cash from not paying CSRS
or FERS, plus $2 billion from [cash carried over] from Quarter 3.
USPS has a total $10 billion in government payments per year which
will be paid after suppliers and employees, if at all, until
legislation intervenes. Any shut-down is only theoretic. Will. Not.
Happen. So how does the Postal Service keep from shutting down,
which would happen if it stopped paying contractors or stopped
making payroll? It stops paying the Federal Government.
Contra Costa Times: Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Vista, chairman of the
House committee that supervises postal operations, is understandably
concerned about a permanent decline in mail usage. He is on target
in saying that "the Postal Service must adapt its outdated
brick-and-mortar model to meet current customer needs." We agree
with him and the Postal Service that six-day delivery of mail cannot
continue without adding an unsustainable burden to the agency.
Limiting delivery to five days and eliminating Saturday home and
business delivery would save the Postal Service $3.1 billion a year.
Ending Saturday delivery would be the least disruptive day to
eliminate and would make it a lot easier for the Postal Service to
schedule workers.
CNN: The U.S. Postal Service is in a precarious financial
situation, telling Congress it faces the "equivalent of Chapter 11
bankruptcy." Losing billions of dollars a year, it is considering
whether to close more than 3,600 post offices and lay off tens of
thousands of workers. The service faces many problems, including a
drop in mail volume in recent years. But the service, which employs
nearly 572,000 people, says some of its difficulties are inflicted
by the federal government – through a law governing how the agency
funds workers' retirement health benefits.
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory Commission
NOTICES
Post Office Closings , 52024–52025 [2011–21211]
[TEXT] [PDF]
CBC: The union representing postal workers is planning a court
challenge over the federal government's choice of the arbitrator
mandated to settle the Canada Post labour dispute. Canada Post and
the Canadian Union of Postal Workers were advised by Labour Minister
Lisa Raitt on July 22 that Justice Coulter Arthur Anthony Osborne
had been appointed arbitrator, nearly a month after back-to-work
legislation was passed by Parliament. CUPW isn't satisfied with
Raitt's choice for arbitrator and this week is making preparations
to challenge it in Federal Court. The union's lawyers are working on
an affidavit and plan to file it before Monday.
Los Angeles Times: If you thought the debt ceiling was a
bruising brawl, buckle up: A battle is brewing as the U.S. Postal
Service considers closing hundreds if not thousands of postal
outlets nationwide. Lawmakers are already lining up to ask why the
cuts seem to target the poor, minorities and rural America. Rep.
Gene Green (D-Texas) blogged in "The Hill" today that he had noticed
a troubling pattern among the 222 postal outlets that are on the
chopping block in his state. "Every single facility mentioned is
located in a lower income and predominately minority neighborhood,"
he wrote. That trend also holds true for the rest of the post
offices, outlets and retail locations also targeted for possible
closure. "Almost without exception, this pattern holds for our
nation’s other great cities as well," he added. But unlike the
budget battle, this fight unifies both sides of the aisle and pits
them against the financially ailing Postal Service. U.S. Sen. Jerry
Moran (R-Kan.) said in a news release on his website that he's
determined to save about 130 rural post offices in his state that
are on the "hit list." Such rural post offices make up less than 1%
of the budget, Moran said, and if the USPS wants to save money and
cut costs, "it should look someplace else." Moran said he intends to
make Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe justify such closures,
particularly in the face of federal law calling for the preservation
of such services.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Canada NewsWire: Canada Post Corporation (CPC) has posted its
best year ever in profit, says its Annual Report. CPC's net income
was $443 million, besting a previous record from 2009 of $281
million. The record can be attributed largely to productivity
increases: while lettermail volume has declined 10.2% since 2007,
paid hours of mail processing work have dropped 15.9%.
Federal Times: The U.S. Postal Service will be broke by next
summer even if it skips an upcoming $5.5 billion payment for retiree
health care, its No. 2 leader said Thursday. "We're really up
against the wall here in terms of stabilizing the finances of the
Postal Service," Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman said in an
interview with Federal Times.
DMM Advisory: Introducing First-Class Package Service. Today the Federal Register published our final rule, introducing a new competitive product called First-Class™ Package Service, which replaces and removes First-Class Mail® commercial base and commercial plus parcels from the market-dominant product offering. First-Class Mail retail single-piece parcels remain a market-dominant product offering. The complete final rule Federal Register can be found on the Federal Register website at http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-08-18/pdf/2011-21028.pdf and will be available Monday on the Postal Explorer® website at pe.usps.com.
The USPS is withdrawing the requirement for MLNA/BCNO update to
comply with Move Update. He said the USPS will put something out in
the FR to that affect.
Washington Post: One thing that doesn’t often get noticed about
the U.S. Postal Service is that it has vast — and extremely valuable
— real-estate holdings on its books. Many post offices, after all,
are in prime positions in the center of town. But no one knows how
much the buildings are actually worth. The Postal Service values its
properties at their purchase price, rather than their fair market
value. The total purchase price value comes to about $27 billion,
but since many of these buildings were bought decades ago, their
fair market value is presumably much, much higher.
Cision Wire: Itella is launching a retrenchment program with the
aim of cutting costs by over EUR 100 million over the next three
years. The aim is to adapt the Finnish postal system to current
customer behavior and needs. Traditional postal services have had to
relinquish their role as a means of communication for Finns, due to
the breakthrough of electronic communication channels. Consequently,
postal operations are undergoing the greatest changes ever.
Folio: It appears the United States Postal Service has had a
change of heart. After issuing a request to the Postal Regulatory
Commission in July to raise postal rates in January 2012 over 4
percent (considered an exigent increase) to combat revenue loss due
to economic conditions and the continual transition to digital, the
USPS is no longer seeking the rate increase.
PRNewswire: Delivering more than 40 percent of the world's mail
and reaching every business and residential address in America six
days a week requires the dependable, ubiquitous vehicle fleet of the
U.S. Postal Service. The world's largest civilian fleet delivers
more than 167 billion pieces of mail to more than 150 million
addresses, along 230,000 routes, logging 4 million miles a day, with
215,000 postal vehicles, of which more than 44,000 are alternative
fuel-capable. "The Postal Service's fleet of alternative
fuel-capable vehicles is the nation's largest green fleet, and uses
a variety of alternative fuels including electricity, ethanol,
compressed natural gas, liquid propane and bio-diesel," said Dean
Granholm, vice president, Delivery and Post Office Operations.
"These vehicles allow us to deliver mail in a more environmentally
responsible way."
Online PR Media: Harvey Software shared information explaining
the advantages of using a multi-carrier shipping system whenever a
company wants its shipping system and accounting or order management
“backend” systems to talk to each other quickly, easily and with
minimal errors. Often, the shipping system is created by a
completely different company than the backend system, but still must
easily communicate its shipping data directly with accounting
programs for the smoothest operation of the shipping department and
to make it easy to find shipping cost and tracking information.
PRNewswire: The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC)
today promised to vigorously represent the country's most trusted
federal employees and defend the long-term viability of America's
most trusted federal agency, the United States Postal Service, in
negotiations for a new labor contract that began today at Postal
Service headquarters. NALC President Fredric V. Rolando called on
the Postmaster General to bargain in good faith and to disavow the
regressive and destructive path unveiled last week when the Postal
Service unleashed a lobbying campaign to convince Congress to reduce
postal services to the nation, slash the postal workforce by 220,000
employees, and to attack the collective bargaining rights of
America's hard-working letter carriers.
Press Release: Facing a projected loss of more than $8 billion
for this fiscal year and a projected need to reduce its workforce by
220,000 employees by 2015, the Postal Service begins today contract
negotiations with the National Association of Letter Carriers,
AFL-CIO (NALC) and on Aug. 30 with the National Postal Mail Handlers
Union (NPMHU). The two unions represent 247,000 of the Postal
Service’s 560,000 career employees.
Slate: One thing is
for sure: The fiscal situation at the USPS is bad—really bad.
According to its most recent quarterly report, the USPS lost $3.1
billion between April 1 and June 30. Add that to billions of dollars
in losses racked up since the recession hit—the USPS has been in the
red for 18 of the last 20 fiscal quarters. It has also amassed tens
of billions in unfunded liabilities, mostly in pension and retiree
health-benefit obligations. The problem is not mismanagement. The
problem is that the USPS has an enormous, expensive physical and
human infrastructure. It operates more than twice as many U.S.
outlets as McDonald's. It runs the largest vehicle fleet on Earth.
It has a staff of nearly 600,000, despite considerable reductions in
the last decade. To pay for all those people, trucks, and buildings,
the USPS needs to handle a lot of mail.
Vancouver Sun: A decline in mail volume and a massive pension
burden has led Canada Post to suffer a pre-tax earnings drop of 27
per cent in 2010 from the previous year, according to its 2010
annual report. For the fourth consecutive year, Canadians sent fewer
letters, while the mail service had to service more homes, leaving
the company paying $18 million more than in 2009 to deliver less
mail. The pension problem at Canada Post may be its biggest concern.
In 2010, the Crown corporation was forced to inject an additional
$425 million — on top of the $321-million regular payment — into the
pension plan to cover a shortfall of more than $3 billion.
Calgary Herald: Canada Post is investing about $105 million to
modernize its Calgary facilities and equipment, the Herald has
learned. The investment includes $55 million to re-equip and re-tool
the existing main mail processing plant near the Calgary
International Airport and more than $10 million for the construction
of a new building at the Royal Vista Business Park in northwest
Calgary. “This is part of a national program. We’re investing a
couple of billion dollars. Our name for it here is postal
transformation,” said Bill Davidson, general manager of postal
transformation for Western Canada for Canada Post.
The Charleston Gazette: West Virginia leaders are huffing and
puffing over plans by the insolvent U.S. Postal Service to close 150
little-used Mountain State post offices. We assume they're mostly
posturing for rural voters. In reality, the desperate Postal Service
is losing billions upon billions, and has no choice but to curtail
operations, including dropping small mountain post offices that get
little traffic. Current times require "shared sacrifice" from all
Americans as federal spending is reduced. Losing some little post
offices is a minor hardship, compared to threats being aimed at
life-support systems such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,
etc. Rural folks will continue to get their mail, but by carriers
instead of fixed offices. West Virginia can endure this reduction.
Times Union: Turns out, of course, that the U.S. Postal
Service's list of 3,700 post offices targeted for possible closure
includes lots of little post offices heavy on nostalgia. And for the
Postal Service, that means a public relations problem.
Balkans.com Business News: Serbian Minister of Culture, Media
and Information Society Predrag Markovic and Director-General of
public postal company PTT Srbija Goran Ciric visited yesterday the
construction site of the Main postal centre “Belgrade“ in Zemun
which will span 28,000 square metres. Ciric announced improvement
and reconstruction works on the main postal centres in Novi Sad that
will start soon and where 2,200 square metres will be reconstructed
and new 2,300 will be built and in Nis, where almost 4,800 square
metres will be improved. He added that these three postal centres
will be completely finished by March 2012.
Inland Valley
Daily Bulletin: Rep. Grace Napolitano on Wednesday toured a
Postal Service processing center that is slated to have some of its
operations shut down in the spring. Napolitano, who was invited by
union leaders opposing the shutdown, said she is concerned about
jobs that will be taken out of the area. The center is the regional
distribution center for most of the Inland Valley. "To be able to
protect jobs, that's my job," said Napolitano, a Democrat who
represents the 38th District, which includes Pomona.
From the Federal Register:
Fox News: With the Postal Service looking to downsize, some of
America's favorite nonprofits that rely heavily on direct mail
fundraising could become a new kind of charity case. That’s because
legislation to restructure the money-losing agency includes a
provision that would eliminate reduced postage rates for nonprofit
mail.
Dead Tree Edition: The U.S. Postal Service will not seek an
"exigent" (higher-than-inflation) rate increase this year,
Postmaster General Pat Donahoe told the Mailers Technical Advisory
Committee today.
August 17, 2011
The MRU, founded in 1992, is the only
consultancy in Europe, which has specialised in the
market of courier-, express- and parcel services. For large-scale shippers and
CEP-services in particular, the MRU provides
interdisciplinary advice for all major questions of the market, as there are
for example market entry, product design,
organisation, and EDP.To
learn more about the stories reported
above, contact CEP News. (We appreciate the courtesy extended by CEP News
to help whet your
appetite for more of what CEP offers.)
Federal Times: The U.S. Postal Service intends to close more
than 60 percent of its mail processing plants by the end of next
year, potentially displacing many employees in a workforce of more
than 30,000. From the current inventory of 508 plants, the agency
wants to go to fewer than 200, Dave Williams, vice president of
network operations, told participants at a mailing industry
conference Wednesday at the Postal Service's headquarters in
downtown Washington.
Canadian Labour Reporter: The union representing Canada Post
employees says the postal company is withholding retroactive salary
increases and back pay awarded when postal workers were legislated
back to work in June 2011.
Network Operations Management Vice President David E. Williams:
Deputy Postmaster General Ron Stroman:
Postal Service chief financial officer Joe Corbett:
Postmaster General Pat Donahoe:
Federal Times: The U.S. Postal Service is walking back a
statement made earlier this week regarding their plans for the
Thrift Savings Plan. I asked the Postal Service last week whether
their proposal to pull out of federal retirement programs and create
their own system would also mean creating their own defined
contribution program. Spokesman David Partenheimer emailed me Sunday
to say, “Under our proposal, we would not participate in TSP.”
Partenheimer this morning emailed me again to say their earlier
statement was inaccurate. So a postal-only 401(k) plan is at least
still on the table.
Net
Security: The UPS name is once again being used to spread vast
amounts of email-attached malware. The last week has seen an
extraordinary increase – over 5.5 times the average level before the
outbreak.
National Association of Major Mail
Users: From CEO of Canada Post -- As we begin our journey
to build Canada Post for the next generation of Canadians, it is
clear that we must address two distinct priorities. First, we must
complete our transformation effort to become a highly competitive
mail and package delivery network that can directly and successfully
connect Canadians with eCommerce. Second, we must play a meaningful
role in the digital lives of Canadians. It is clear that Canadians
are rapidly adopting electronic means of receiving critical
communication such as Bills and Statements. If we choose not to play
that role, someone else will. In order to provide clear focus and
accountability for growth in each of the above priorities, I am
announcing the creation of two distinct business units, the Physical
Delivery Network, and the Digital Delivery Network.
Press
Information Bureau: Government has approved the ‘IT
Modernization Project’ of Department of Posts for computerization of
Post Offices, Mail Offices, Administrative Offices and other field
offices. This will involve establishment of required IT
infrastructure, development of required software applications with
an outlay of Rs.1877.2 crore.
Post & Parcel: The city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, has become the
latest in Canada to receive a new delivery system for letters and
parcels this week, with its letter carriers taking on a broader
role. As part of Canada Post’s $2bn modernisation programme,
revamping infrastructure and processes throughout its network, the
Corporation is consolidating delivery operations and making the work
of its mail carriers more diverse and efficient. In Halifax from
this week, as has already been seen in parts of Toronto, Montreal
this summer and Winnepeg from last fall, there will no longer be
separate carriers to deliver mail on foot, to deliver parcels in
vehicles and collect mail from on-street mailboxes. A single letter
carrier will be motorised to take on all these tasks on their given
route.
Press Release: Pitney Bowes Inc. today announced enhancements to
its SendSuite Live™ global logistics solution that add access to
shipping payments and logistics services which can save shippers up
to 20 percent of their shipping cost while greatly simplifying the
carrier payment process.
American Postal Workers Union: At a meeting between APWU
officers and USPS officials in Washington DC on Aug. 16, the Postal
Service acknowledged that local managers have no authority to post
more Non-Traditional Full-Time (NTFT) assignments in Customer
Service areas than the number needed to accommodate Part-Time
Flexibles and Part-Time Regulars when they are converted to full
time on Aug. 27, Director of Industrial Relations Mike Morris has
reported. A provision of the 2010-2015 Collective Bargaining
Agreement [PDF] requires the Postal Service to convert all PTFs in
Level 21-and-above offices and PTRs in the Clerk Craft and MVS Craft
on Aug. 27. The meeting was prompted by reports from the field that
some local managers have notified the union of plans to post more
NTFT duty assignments than are needed. Postal officials at USPS
headquarters agreed to inform field managers that they have no
authority to post NTFT in excess of the number of conversions slated
for Aug. 27.
Hellmail: At the beginning of autumn, Lithuania Post, in
cooperation with the passenger carrier Kautra, is to establish a
network of self-service parcel terminals enabling faster, cheaper
and easier sending of postal items. The modern Siuntos24 terminals
will be fully functional by October.
234Next: NIPOST is the only effective and reliable postal
service in the country says the Borno Territory Area Postal Manager,
Mr Bature Alex. Alex affirmed that any mail sent through NIPOST was
secure and safeguarded to the point of delivery. ``Private courier
companies cannot compete with NIPOST because of its effectiveness in
rendering service to the people at the grass-roots level,'' he
explained. The postal manager said Borno State had realised its 100
per cent revenue target for the year from postal services.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: While a Postal Service
shut down may have been ludicrous in the past, the state of politics
in Congress makes a Postal Service shutdown a real possibility. The
debt ceiling crisis and the shutdown of the Federal Aviation
Administration indicates that Congress is not adverse of allowing
gridlock to shutdown a Federal agency or bring the economy to the
brink. The FAA example also indicates that if a shutdown of the
Postal Service occurs, Congressional gridlock could cause a shutdown
of a month or more before legislation to provide financing to cover
the Postal Service's cash shortfall passes. CEP News
(Courier-Express-Postal), published by the MRU Consultancy, has reported that:
China’s government unveiled a new five-year plan with the goal
to build a ’modern postal industry’.
Deutsche Post and the union ver.di are negotiating a
trend-setting labour contract on partial retirement.
Swiss Post’s customers still rely on physical mail. Seven of ten
private customers would prefer to receive their business
correspondence like bills and pay slips as traditional letters.
Ceska Posta slightly increased its revenue despite a decline in
mail volumes in the first half year.
The Russian cartel authority FAS has made a proposal for the
liberalisation of Russia’s postal market - and promptly run into
trouble with the Russian post.
The Communications Commission of Kenya (CCK), the regulating
authority in Kenya, revoked the licences of one quarter of the
country’s privately run courier and express companies.
The strategic realignement of the joint ventures of Qantas and
Australia Post slowly takes shape. Star Track’s air-cargo depots
are being merged with Australian air Express’ (AaE) depots since
the beginning of August. The goal is to establish a common
door-to-door network on the Australian mainland.
German GTS Post is insolvent. News portal »posttip« (12.08)
reported this under reference to the liquidator. The franchise
company was launched in 2008 with the goal to establish up to
16,000 parcel collection points and 10 logistics centres within
the next 10 years.
The British regulatory authority Postcomm has re-defined the
scope of the universal service obligation. Last week the
authority disclosed that Royal Mail’s licence has been amended
and bulk mail was removed from the universal service obligation.
The Greenville News: The elimination of Saturday delivery by the
United States Postal Service would not be ideal, but the agency that
has been beset by financial losses — largely because of an onerous
requirement placed on it by Congress — needs to make changes if it’s
going to keep its head above water.
Warsaw Business Journal: High delivery costs are the main reason
behind weak growth in e-commerce markets, according to e-store
owners. Fees charged by courier services in Poland are 20 to 25
percent higher than in other EU countries. Transport of a 10 kg
parcel from Warsaw to London costs zł.538.38 if the order is placed
in Poland, while the same package ordered in London would cost
zł.359.81 to transport. According to Tomasz Karwatka, head of the
e-commerce work group at IAB Polska, an association of
internet-sector employers, the pricing policy of the Polish Postal
Service with its dominant position and high fees is definitely to
blame.
Federal News Radio: For many federal and postal workers fear
that Congress will change the retirement formula is the number one
retire-or-stay motivator. The U.S. Postal Service is looking to trim
38 percent of its workforce and is exploring the idea of getting out
of the FEHBP health program.
Post & Parcel: Deutsche Post has been told it cannot advertise
its digital postal mail service – E-Postbrief – as being as secure
as the sending of traditional paper letters. A district court in
Bonn made the order following a complaint made by Germany’s
Federation of Consumer Organisations. Deutsche Post said it will
seek to appeal the verdict, and that it had always stated that in
some circumstances a written letter is required. The advertising
campaign had suggested that the E-Postbrief offered “all the
benefits of the traditional letter via the internet”, including all
the confidentiality, authenticity and reliability of the physical
mail. However, the court decided that this was not always the case,
and that consumers could be given the impression that
legally-binding agreements could be sent through the electronic mail
service.
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory
Commission
NOTICES
Post Office Closings , 51066–51067 [2011–20868]
[TEXT] [PDF]
51067–51068 [2011–20875]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Post & Parcel: New Zealand Post has said that postal services
are now beginning to return to normal in most parts of the country
after two days of reduced services resulting from record snow
storms. Some of the heaviest snowfalls in decades have been seen in
New Zealand since the weekend, closing airports, making roads
impassable and causing power cuts. The storms have brought some of
the first snowfalls to New Zealand’s North Island for 40 years. See
also
Radio New Zealand.
The Boston Globe: The U.S. Postal Service has decided to transfer mail
processing and distribution operations from Portsmouth, N.H., to centers in
Manchester and in southern Maine.
The Republican: The U.S. Postal Service hasn’t been standing pat, but
its cost-cutting measures seem always to fall short. It closes posts
offices, finds ways to reduce the workforce, but the cuts are never enough.
The latest proposal is dramatic in the extreme. You can hate this plan to
your core. You can embrace it fully. You can have a reaction that is
somewhere in between. But what you cannot do is ignore it. No one wants to
imagine our nation without the mail – in some form. But no one can
reasonably argue that it ought to be just like it used to be back in the
good old days. It hasn’t been that way in a very long time. Facing the
facts, acknowledging the truth, is imperative. At least if we want the mail
to continue to go through, in some form, in some fashion.
CNJOnline: The postal service has problems, and proposed cutbacks are
evidence to that. But let’s look at the actual root of those problems, and
not lean on paternalistic arguments. To do otherwise would be, to put it
kindly, inefficient.
Google: For years, shoppers have enjoyed flipping through glossy print
catalogs to be inspired, discover new trends and find great products. Today,
mobile technologies can make catalog shopping more engaging, social and
creative. With that in mind, we’ve created Google Catalogs—a free app for
tablet devices that enables you to browse all of your favorite catalogs and
interact with new layers of rich-media content. The Google Catalogs app
features digital versions of catalogs across many popular categories,
including fashion and apparel, beauty, jewelry, home, kids and gifts. We’ve
partnered with a variety of top brands including Anthropologie, Bare
Escentuals, Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale's, Crate and Barrel, L.L. Bean,
Lands’ End, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Pottery Barn, Saks Fifth
Avenue, Sephora, Sundance Catalog, Tea Collection, Urban Outfitters and
Williams-Sonoma, just to name a few.
Save the Post Office: Rather than looking at the Postal Service simply
as a mailing company like FedEx and UPS, it would be better to see it as a
complex infrastructure — a network of physical nodes (post offices and
processing facilities) connected by a fleet of vehicles, with everything
kept in motion. A postal system for the 21st century will need to understand
its role as infrastructure. If the Postal Service is going to survive, it’s
. . . going to be because the American people demanded that their government
preserve an infrastructure that’s taken centuries to build, that has served
the country well, and that still has the capacity to bind the nation
together. Take that institution apart, and you’ll be doing irrevocable
damage to the nation.
August 16, 2011
Rasmussen Reports:
Americans would rather see the U.S. Postal Service dramatically
cut its workforce and reduce mail delivery to three or four days a
week than have the government pour more money into the financially
struggling agency.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that
50% of American Adults believe the federal government should allow
the Postal Service to lay off the estimated 120,000 workers it needs
to reduce its current losses rather than provide the agency with
additional subsidies to cover those losses. Thirty-three percent
(33%) think the government should provide subsidies to cover the
agency’s losses, estimated at $8 billion last year. Another 17% are
undecided what's best. Even more Americans (75%) would rather see
the USPS cut back mail delivery in some parts of the country to
three or four days a week rather than for the government to cover
those losses. Only 17% would rather see the government provide more
subsidies instead of cutting back delivery. At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
http://www.prc.gov/docs/74/74862/Order_No_806.doc
http://www.prc.gov/docs/74/74862/Order_No_806.pdf
http://www.prc.gov/docs/74/74867/CP2011-68%20China%20Public%20Workpapers.xls
http://www.prc.gov/docs/74/74870/Order807.doc
http://www.prc.gov/docs/74/74870/Order807.pdf
http://www.prc.gov/docs/74/74874/R2011-7 China Public
Workpapers.xls
Federal Times: The Government Accountability Office's staffing
cuts may not end with the limited buyouts and early retirements it
announced last week. A study is also underway at the agency that
could result in field office closures and layoffs. [EdNote:
Closures and layoffs ain't just about the Postal Service anymore.]
RedOrbit: CVS/pharmacy announced today that all 7,200 of its
locations now offer the Sharps Compliance Corp.'s Environmental
Return System, which provides customers with the ability to safely
dispose of their unused, expired or unwanted drugs using affordable
medication disposal envelopes. The postage-paid envelopes cost $3.99
and allow customers to mail their unwanted prescription and
over-the-counter medications through the U.S. Postal Service to a
licensed, secure facility for safe destruction. Controlled
substances are excluded from this program by law.
InsideARM: Recently the United States Postal Service announced
it will be seeking permission to increase postage by an average of
4% on most classes of mail in January 2012.
Post & Parcel: Russian Post has seen its net profits for the
first half of the year increase by more than 20 times, though the
figures are affected by “peculiarities” in this year’s financial
services results.
Save the Post Office: "Don't touch my junk: The bulk mail
industry says hands off our profits." [EdNote: Hey Dude! It's
mailers' postage revenues that pays the entire cost of operating the
postal system.]
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: Getting the Tea Party
movement actively behind Issa's bill is critical for its passage in
the House. The Tea Party is increasingly the center of the
Republican party base and therefore the political base of
Republicans in the House, including those members that are not
active supporters. [EdNote: Center?? Who are you kidding? The
only thing to the right of the Tea Party is the wall!]
Business Strata: Companies using B2B direct mail to drive their
lead generation may be able to benefit from a new service being
offered by Royal Mail in partnership with a top marketing research
agency. Operating out of the postal carrier's Mail Media Centre in
London, Eyetracker will recruit members of the public to view direct
mail material on a screen that can exactly trace their eye
movements. When the results are analysed, marketers using the paid
service will be able to identify any weaknesses in their mailout
design, helping to improve future campaigns and ensure maximum
impact.
Media Daily News: A weak print advertising environment and
broader economic woes contributed to an unexpectedly weak quarter
for the Reader's Digest Association, which saw total revenues slip
6.2% in the second quarter to $409.4 million.
PRNewswire: The U.S. Postal Service was recognized recently by
the Universal Postal Union (UPU) with a 2010 Silver Award for
outstanding international express mail service. The Postal Service
was rated in five categories, including on-time delivery and
customer service response time. In addition to demonstrating
outstanding customer service in international express mail, the U.S.
Postal Service also is demonstrating outstanding growth in revenue
from its international products, according to Giselle Valera, vice
president, Global Business. U.S. Postal Service revenue from
international mailing and shipping products has seen a 12.3 percent
year-on-year increase so far in the first three quarters of the 2011
fiscal year.
Forbes: Today’s air cargo shippers and ports are under more
pressure than ever to handle increasing cargo volumes, manage
congestion, address changing customer needs and thrive in the midst
of intense competition. Threats like the one in Yemen demonstrate
that being proactive is key. Shipping service providers face a
dynamic security landscape subject to government regulations and an
evolving risk environment. They need to proactively improve the
level of data they collect at origin and throughout the shipping
process. And they need to focus on identity verification as a key
first step. 100% screening of air cargo is not an achievable
milestone. More efforts should be put towards risk-based targeting
for air cargo. Industry bodies must play their role too. They should
expedite the creation and adoption of security data standards to
help out on this daunting task. And once that data can be made
actionable, governments should establish improved information
sharing practices to get intelligence to the front lines quickly.
ABC2News: Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke raised concerns about the
3,700 locations the government has slated to close next year due to
budget concerns. Eight of those locations are right here in
Baltimore. The 14th district Councilwoman says the closure would
have a major impact on the community. In Baltimore the post offices
that have been chosen for review for closure are entirely in low
income African American neighborhoods and in a city in which 36% of
the households don't own vehicles, automobiles.
Daily News-Miner: Packages filled with an unknown white powder
arrived the offices of Sen. Mark Begich, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and
Rep. Don Young on Tuesday, leading to the evacuation of the Federal
Building in Fairbanks and heightened security at congressional
offices in Anchorage. The packages, however, were determined by
Tuesday evening to be harmless. Eric Gonzalez, the Alaska spokesman
for the FBI, said that while they were “poorly packaged,” the
bundles weren’t meant to be threatening. Read more: Fairbanks Daily
News-Miner - Alaska Rep Young Suspicious packages sent to offices of
Alaska delegation contained concrete
ZDNet: The National Retail Association (NRA) has accused
Australia Post as playing a key role in supporting foreign online
retailers at the expense of local retailers.
ZDNet: Australia Post has charged into e-services through a new
streamlined postage deal with eBay as well as the launch of a new
mobile website and iPhone app. The joint Australia Post/eBay
offering — called "Click-to-Send" — is a postage service for
Australia's 8 million registered eBay users, removing the need to go
to a local post office to send an item. Instead, users print
pre-filled address labels, pay for postage online and order a
courier pick-up. According to PayPal Australia, the local e-commerce
market is set to explode with $9.8 billion growth projected over the
next two years.
Contra Costa Times: The U.S. Postal Service has been unraveling
for so long that we barely notice now when new loose threads appear.
The agency last week announced one of its biggest, boldest budget
cutbacks, and the public outcry was as deafening as a sewing needle
hitting the floor. The plan calls for 120,000 jobs and more than
3,600 offices to disappear by 2015. Employee benefits also are
likely to be decreased, and Saturday delivery will be a thing of
the past. Mail delivery has been vital to the world's most
successful country, linking friends and family, businesses and
clients, political candidates and voters. The Postal Service's
hallmark always has been perseverance. The Internet is nipping at
its ankles and FedEx is landing body blows, but it still limps along
236 years later.
Standard-Examiner: The Postal Service should be run like any
other well-operated private sector business. The market should
dictate what it can offer the public and how many employees it
should have. Change is hard at times, and it's no fun to see the
traditional version of the Postal Service undergo changes. But it's
time. Losing billions of dollars a year cannot be tolerated.
Hellmail: A one hour webinar launched by the Global
Address Data Association featured a report to members by the
Executive Director Charles Prescott on the activities of the
association during the first six months of its life. Emma Gooderham,
CEO of Allies Computing discussed the wisdom of address validation
and correction, including the capabilities of its World Addresses
and Postcoder products.
www.worldaddresses.com. The company now has offices in the UK
and the US. She was followed by Ellen Cohen of new company Loqate,
also with offices in the UK and the US, who provided an introduction
to the increasingly widespread use of geolocation data by
governments and businesses.
www.loqate.com. All three presentations are available for
download at
www.globaladdress.org.
Business Wire: UPS has announced it has significantly expanded
the number of locations in the United States that can receive
delivery of UPS Next Day Air(R) Early A.M.(R) packages. UPS has
recently added or improved coverage on approximately 1,300 ZIP
codes, which vaults UPS beyond all its competitors in offering
guaranteed early morning delivery services. In the critical arena of
delivering by 8 a.m., UPS now serves more ZIP codes and businesses
than any other carrier.
The latest issue of
the PostCom Bulletin is available online. In this issue:
August 15, 2011
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Daily Finance: The Postal Service's problems just make the
future look brighter for its private-sector rivals, UPS and FedEx .
With UPS even cheaper now, that yield is more than 3.2%, about what
a 20-year U.S. Treasury bond would produce. On top of that, UPS'
second-quarter profit rose almost 26% over the same quarter a year
ago. FedEx's profit was also up 33.2% over the same period.
Advertising Age: Four percent of magazine readers who noted ads
with 2-D barcodes in the first half of this year actually took out
their phones and snapped a picture at least once, according to GfK
MRI Starch Advertising Research.
DMM Advisory: Folded Self-Mailers and Unenveloped Mailpieces. Today the Federal Register published our proposed rule on creating folded self-mailers (FSM) and other unenveloped mailpieces such as forms, statements, and official notices that will improve processing of these pieces on automated Postal Service™ mail processing equipment. Customers are encouraged to comment on or before September 14, 2011.
Post & Parcel: Russian Post has said it is now retrofitting new
logistics systems to optimise its network in Kamchatka. The move
coincides with the start of negotiations that could lead to closer
working between Russian Post and the government administration of
the region in the very far east of Russia. Russian Post said the
conclusion of a cooperation agreement would be “mutually
beneficial”, allowing for government services to be operated through
the post office.
Orange County Register: James Gattuso, Heritage Foundation --
"Will the last one to leave the post office please turn out the
lights? Things are looking pretty grim at the Postal Service. In a
report made public today, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) proposed
cutting 220,000 positions, leaving its workforce – which once ranked
with Indian Railways and the People's Liberation Army as among the
world's largest – at 425,000. Some 120,000 of these cutbacks would
be through layoffs, which are barred under current union contracts.
The reason for the cutbacks is clear: The Postal Service is running
out of money. According to the USPS report, which was made public
Friday in The Washington Post, the Postal Service is on the
"precipice of insolvency."
Kansas City Star: Donald J. Hall Jr. is president and CEO of
Hallmark Cards Inc.: "Cuts in delivery service should be last on
the list of considerations. Projected short-term cost savings from
delivery cuts are minuscule in the context of the systemic change
required and would only accelerate the decline in mail volume and
revenue in the long term. It is difficult to find any business that
would choose to increase prices and reduce service as a path to
sustainability, yet this is precisely what the postal service is
recommending. A healthy postal service is vital to Americans who
depend on timely, affordable, reliable mail delivery. The dual
strategy of raising rates while cutting Saturday delivery is no way
to sustain customer loyalty or encourage use of mail. It also
overlooks the dependence many — including small businesses and rural
customers — have on six-day delivery."
Handy Shipping Guide: DHL Smart Truck is an "intelligent"
pick-up and delivery vehicle that combines a number of innovative
technologies including a route planner. Launched in Germany in 2010,
DHL Smart Truck reduced number of miles travelled by 15 per cent and
length of average route by 8 per cent during its pilot stage,
reducing both fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Using the system
the ‘intelligent’ pick-up and delivery vehicles compute delivery
deadlines to calculate the ideal sequence for freight shipments, and
use real-time GPS to avoid jams and optimise routings, thereby
enabling flexibility and last-minute pick-ups.
The Atlantic: Whatever the impact of information technology on
telephones, libraries, and banks, it's the post office that's had
the greatest challenge in adapting to the Web. (Gates seemed to
expect, at one point in the book, that post offices like libraries
could become public computing centers.) It's hard to be nostalgic
for mailing checks, or to bemoan the decline of junk mail. But even
the most die-hard electronic enthusiast must acknowledge that there
will always be some paper documents that must be delivered, and many
other products most economically delivered by postal services or
private organizations like them (usually at significantly higher
prices), even to and from Redmond, Washington and Palo Alto. So the
fixed costs of the system remain and must be paid for by a shrinking
base, leading to a reduction in service levels that can become a
self-reinforcing spiral.
WLS:
On the subject of the Post Office, which earlier this month
announced a $3.5 billion loss for the fiscal third quarter,
Rasmussen reported on his polling, which revealed that 75% of
Americans would rather cut mail service to 3 or 4 days a week than
have the federal government-- the taxpayers-- pay for the Postal
Service's losses. His poll also showed that that 50% would choose
laying off 120,000 USPS employees rather than have the government
subsidize the Post Office.
GlobeSt.: It is clear that the US Postal Service is getting set
to significantly downgrade its footprint. The most recent signs are
news reports that it plans to approach Congress to ask for
legislation that will allow it to lay off 20% of its workforce, or
120,000 workers. These news reports, based on internal documents
that have concluded that the service can only afford 425,000 workers
by 2015, follow plans the USPS revealed last month to dispose of at
least 3,700 retail offices. It also tapped CBRE last month to serve
as its exclusive service provider, presumably to help with this
process.
PoliticalNews: U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.)last week
reiterated to Postmaster General Patrick R. Donohoe the vital
economic role the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) plays across Kansas,
especially to those living in rural communities and to senior
citizens who depend on walking to the local post office to get their
mail.
The Slovak Spectator: The conversations of a board member of the
state-owned postal company Slovenská Pošta, Andrej Kramár, have
probably been eavesdropped, the Sme daily reported on Saturday,
August 13. On around August 8, Sme wrote, Kramár found a listening
device in his office at the main post office building in Bratislava.
Kramár is a political appointee who was nominated by one of the
current ruling coalition parties, the Christian Democratic Movement
(KDH).
The Republic: The U.S. Postal Service says it will close two
offices in Sioux City, leaving just one full-service location in the
community. One bill that Ross is likely to handle personally is for
his boss, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who has
his own plan. A key point in the Issa plan would appear to solve the
manner in which smaller post offices are closed. It would use a
committee, Ross said, a system similar to military base closing
committees, which investigate the feasibility of closing Army, Air
Force and Naval bases in the nation. Among scores of proposals in
Issa's Postal Service Reform bill are: Allowing the Postal Service
to move to five-day delivery of mail. Striking language that makes
Postal Service subject to the Davis-Bacon Act, the Service Contract
Act, and other prevailing wage rules. The Service Financial
Responsibility and Management Assistance Authority would be created
to cut costs, protect universal service, and return the USPS to
financial solvency. In collective bargaining, the authority would
have the power to require renegotiation of existing bargaining
agreements and the power to unilaterally modify those agreements if
renegotiation fails. To accomplish its mission, the authority may
use a supplemental borrowing authority of $10 billion, backed by
USPS property as collateral. Total wages and benefits must be taken
into consideration in determining total compensation comparability
with the entire private sector during arbitration. Also requires
arbitrators to take into account total compensation comparability
and the financial situation of the Postal Service in any decision.
Removes preferential pricing for national and state political
committees' mail. Authorizes USPS to sell advertising space on USPS
facilities and vehicles. All advertising must maintain at least 200
percent cost coverage and be consistent with USPS's integrity.
The Ledger: Dennis Ross, hometown boy, successful attorney and
state politician, probably could not have picked a more interesting
and trying time to get himself elected to Congress last November.
Not only was he in the thick of the budget and debt ceiling crises
with his fellow members of the House Tea Party Caucus, but now comes
the Postal Service crisis in which he will play an active role.
Advertising Age: The Index of Consumer Sentiment, measuring
consumer confidence about current and longer term prospects, in
August crashed to a preliminary reading of 54.9, the third-worst
score since the index began in 1952. The only lower scores came in
May 1980 (51.7) and April 1980 (52.7) during a recession. Low point
in 2008 was 55.3.
Rural Updates: The Postal Service is attempting to bypass and
ignore the collective bargaining process and more than four decades
of bargaining history.
National Association of Postmasters of the U.S.: On August 11,
the Postal Regulatory Commission issued a ruling on the joint NAPUS/League
complaint that certain provisions in the USPS’ March 31 proposed
post office closing regulations violated current law.
August 14, 2011
Mobile Marketing Watch: According to the latest research from
comScore, Inc., in June 2011, 14 million mobile users in the U.S.
(6.2 percent of the total mobile audience) scanned a QR or bar code
on their mobile device.
Business Daily: Forty-two licences of postal and courier
operators have been cancelled in a move that could give a lifeline
to the besieged Postal Corporation of Kenya whose earnings have come
under pressure from competitors. The Communications Commission of
Kenya (CCK) attributed the cancellation to the failure by the
operators to comply with the terms of their licences or have been
placed in receivership —which has reduced the players to 120 from
the previous 160.
Federal Times: The U.S. Postal Service's announcement last week
that it intends to shed a third of its workforce by 2015, scrap its
pension plan for new employees, and pare down employees' health
benefits came as a bombshell. It shouldn't have. Postmaster General
Patrick Donahoe and his predecessor, John Potter, have been telling
anyone who will listen that the Postal Service is on an
unsustainable path: Mail volume is plummeting, yet the agency has
been prevented by labor contracts and Congress from shrinking its
overwhelming labor and infrastructure costs in a sizable way. no one
in Congress, or anywhere else, wants to hear the message. But
ignoring reality year after year has only worsened the Postal
Service's financial condition. This year, the Postal Service is
expecting $8 billion to $9 billion in financial losses — the latest
in a string of annual multibillion-dollar losses.
Huliq: At the moment, Congress faces one of several tough
choices in order to cut post office expenditures and help preserve
the system. Congress must do one or more of the following, enacting
measures that would incense many postal workers if passed: 1)
Excluding post office employees from federal health and retirement
plans. 2) Cutting postal service on Saturdays. 3) Voiding union
contracts in order to be able to lay off postal workers with more
than six years of service, who are otherwise protected from
arbitrary layoffs. 4) Utilizing pension surpluses to put money in
the retirement benefit fund. The problem in enacting these measures
lie in the time limit Congress faces, and in the general reluctance
Congress has shown so far to make critical and tough decisions
before the last possible minute.
Washington Post: Starting Friday the United States Postal
Service will be selling five new stamps featuring some of the most
beloved characters from movies made by Pixar Animation Studios and
Walt Disney.
Washington Post: There is a lot less mail these days, and job
security is crumbling. Proposed cost-cutting measures that became
public last week could eliminate 20 percent of the postal service
workforce. The proposed cuts are the latest knock against a set of
federal jobs that were once a trusted gateway to middle-class
stability for families. In cities and small towns, postal jobs have
long been respected jobs that could provide a stable income for a
family. The American Postal Workers Union puts the average salary at
$55,000. To get a job at the postal service meant an entrée into the
middle class.
Save the Post Office: Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe wants
to close half the country’s post offices, cut a third of all postal
jobs, and pull the Postal Service out of its federal health and
retirement programs. That’s 16,000 post offices, 220,000 jobs, and a
lot of lost benefits. He’s doing all this to save the Postal
Service, but there’s good reason to fear that he’s going to destroy
it. In white papers turned over to the Washington Post earlier this
week, the Postal Service states, “Today, despite unprecedented cost
and staffing reductions over the past decade, the Postal Service is
facing the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. While our business
remains vital to the U.S. economy, we are on the brink of
insolvency.”
August 13, 2011
From the Federal Register:
Postal Service
Washington Post: Unions reacted furiously Friday to a proposal
by the Postal Service to lay off 120,000 workers by breaking labor
contracts and to shift workers out of the federal employee health
and retirement plans into cheaper alternatives. Labor experts and
other unions also raised the alarm that any move by Congress to
break postal contracts would further wound an already ailing labor
movement, much as President Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic
controllers did in 1981.
August 12, 2011
Cato @ Liberty:If the U.S. Postal Service is to continue
operating like a business instead of becoming just another
taxpayer-funded bureaucracy, Congress is going to have to hand the
reins over to the private sector.
Post & Parcel: Czech Post has reported a “positive” first half
of 2011, achieving a small profit despite declining volumes in the
traditional letter segment.
Fox News: The U.S. Postal Service’s two largest unions blasted
the financially strapped agency’s proposal to cut as many as 120,000
jobs and pull its workers out of the retirement and health benefits
plans covering federal workers for a new benefit systems.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Sen. Thomas Carper: "I have been saying for some time now that
the Postal Service is in a dire fiscal crisis due to the challenging
economic environment and the rapid transition to electronic
communication. For this reason, I introduced my comprehensive reform
legislation, the Postal Operations Sustainment and Transformation
(POST) Act of 2011, which would address the financial challenges
facing the Postal Service and enable it to make the reforms
necessary to survive – and even thrive – in the long run. "These
latest proposals from the Postal Service again underscore the
seriousness of its financial predicament. I am open to considering
any idea that can prevent the Postal Service from going bankrupt,
and I am waiting to get the details on these two most recent
proposals before determining whether or not I will support them. I
am particularly interested in learning whether these proposals would
be fair to employees and effective in reducing the Postal Service's
costs. Simply put, the Postal Service is on the brink of total
financial collapse, and we need to do all that we can to keep that
from happening. I will continue to work with my colleagues,
stakeholders, and the Administration to save the Postal Service
before it's too late."
CNN: In Congress, several Democrats and Republicans have
proposed bills to address Postal Service budget deficits. But, so
far, none of those plans have gotten much traction. On Friday, most
lawmakers said through congressional aides that they needed time to
review the Postal Service's proposal before they commented on it.
The idea of breaking union contracts to lay off employees is pretty
controversial and will meet resistance especially from labor groups,
aides said.
Bloomberg: The U.S. Postal Service, which expects to run out of
money next month, would have a hard time carrying out a proposal to
cut 220,000 jobs by 2015, a labor professor said. The Postal
Service, which this week circulated a proposal to cut 39 percent of
its full-time employees, including through mass firings, would need
congressional permission and President Barack Obama’s signature on a
law to break a labor contract with its largest union. “It would be
tough,” Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of
California at Berkeley, said in a telephone interview. “It would
make the federal government the largest contract breaker in the
country.”
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The Office of Personnel
Management website lists the separation benefits of employees
laid-off as part of a RIF. It is clear that laying off employees is
not cheap especially as many of the employees will have more than 10
years of service and be over 40 years of age. Also, laying off
employees will increase the Postal Service's unemployment insurance
costs.
U.S. Postal Service on proposed workforce reductions:
Philadelphia Inquirer: For one dollar, you can send a birthday
card to your uncle in Alaska (3,370 miles from Philadelphia) and an
anniversary card to your aunt in Hawaii (4,910 miles away), and the
post office will give you back 12 cents change. Remember, we're
talking actual greeting cards, filled out at your kitchen table and
then physically moved many thousands of miles by real people, for 44
cents apiece. How on earth can the U.S. Postal Service make a profit
on this transaction? It can't. But profit is not the mission of the
post office. Its mission is to get your letter delivered in a timely
fashion. Although it may appear as if the U.S. Postal Service and
its private-sector competitors are providing the same service -
moving some physical object from point A to point B - the private
competitors do it to make money. If they can't make money doing it,
they don't do it. The Postal Service, on the other hand, does it out
of a commitment to universal delivery. If you have a letter with a
stamp and a valid address, it's going. So the critical difference
between the Postal Service and its private-sector competitors is not
what they do, but why they do it. Every year, the U.S. government
gives more than $30 billion in aid to foreign countries and $4
billion in subsidies to oil companies. Why shouldn't it give the
U.S. Postal Service a few bucks to keep the post offices open in
these American towns?
Delaware Online: The U.S. Postal Service is in serious trouble.
If Congress doesn't allow it to make needed changes soon, the Postal
Service may need a taxpayer bailout soon.
TechEye: While Google has been given a good kicking by the
patent troll Apple, it seems that the "do no evil" outfit has been
doing some dodgy patenting of its own. If Google gets to keep Patent
7,996,328 it will effectively own the postal service.
Wall Street Journal: Postal officials have sought congressional
assistance repeatedly over the last few years, including requests to
be allowed to end Saturday mail delivery, and several bills have
been proposed, but none has been acted on.
CBCNews: Postal workers warn that a new system for delivering
mail will mean some people will have to wait for their letters and
packages. Canada Post is phasing out its system of using three
separate trucks to drop mail off at collection boxes, deliver
parcels and pick up outgoing mail.
Hellmail: During the first half of the current year, Lithuania
Post’s income from sales increased by almost LTL 4m (the exchange
rate is LTL 3.4528 / EUR 1). Losses, if compared to the same period
of 2010, have decreased by 48% down to LTL 3.7m. Lithuania Post’s
EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and
amortization) for the first half of the year was positive - 836
thousand litas, and the results of the first half of 2010 showed
EBITDA of minus LTL 2m.
National Association of Letter Carriers: NALC President Fredric
V. Rolando has issued a statement to denounce Postmaster General
Patrick Donahoe's latest "radical" legislative proposals: Today,
city letter carriers across the country received a mandatory
stand-up talk from supervisors as part of a concerted campaign by
top postal management to convince Congress to slash postal
employees’ health and pension benefits and override lay-off
protection provisions in the postal unions’ contracts. Just days
before we formally open collective bargaining negotiations, the
Postal Service has sent a clear message: It intends to use the
financial crisis caused by the deep recession and the crushing
congressional pre-funding mandates to strip postal employees of our
bargaining rights. Although we are prepared to seriously bargain
over any proposal, we will resist this blatant attempt to subvert
and circumvent collective bargaining.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The legislative changes
that the Washington Post reports that Postal Service is now
proposing represents the Postal Service's reaction to political
reality. There are no legislative options that can pass Congress
that prevent default with changes in the current payment of retiree
obligations or an increase in the Postal Service's debt ceiling
without significant cuts in labor costs. The changes that the Postal
Service proposed are not unlike changes in union contracts of
private sector firms facing bankruptcy and possible liquidation.
Philadelphia Inquirer: A prominent Democratic lawyer and former
member of the board of governors of the U.S. Postal Service has been
accused of misconduct for pressing postal officials to settle a real
estate dispute involving a friend and political ally. Alan Kessler,
a partner at the Center City firm of Duane Morris L.L.P., repeatedly
urged Postal Service lawyers to consider settlement proposals and
helped principals of a Sarasota, Fla., real estate firm to craft
their position even as they were battling his own agency, said a
report from the Postal Service inspector general. Read more: http://www.philly.com/philly/business/127564623.html#ixzz1UoiXW2cS
Watch sports videos you won't find anywhere else
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: The Postal Service
proposal cuts nearly 228,000 career jobs between now and 2015, not
the 120,000 included in many headlines. This figure is even larger
than what the Postal Service has included in its discussion paper as
it reflects employment levels at the end of June. The following
table shows the actual changes from employment levels at the end of
June with the 2015 employment levels based on the relevant
paragraphs in the Postal Service's discussion paper. The total
number of jobs lost will nearly 185,000 the Postal Service wants to
increase the number of non-career employees by over 50%.
Corporations announcing restructurings would have used the 185,000
figure in press releases and may have also included the 228,000
figure regarding career employees as well. The Postal Service most
likely used the smallest number in its press release to minimize the
political blowback that the job cuts will create.
American Postal Workers Union: APWU President Cliff Guffey has
condemned USPS legislative proposals that would destroy the
collective bargaining rights of postal workers and interfere with
the union’s contract, which Postal Service and the APWU agreed to in
March. Guffey made the statement in response to
USPS announcements [PDF]
that it would seek congressional support for legislation to
eliminate protection against layoff from collective bargaining
agreements; remove postal workers from the Federal Employees Health
Benefits Program (FEHBP), and separate USPS employees from federal
retirement programs.
Washington Post: In an attempt to stem its financial
hemorrhaging,
August 11, 2011
Post & Parcel: China’s State Post Bureau launched a new “Five
Year Plan” this week, seeking to upgrade the country’s postal
infrastructure and transform service levels.
PostalReporter News Blog: Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and
U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) this week urged U.S.
Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe to maintain and continue full
mail sorting operations at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) facility
in Newburgh, New York. The lawmakers sent a letter yesterday to
Donahoe in response to a current study that the U.S. Postal Service
is conducting to potentially consolidate mail sorting operations at
the Mid Hudson General Mail Facility (GMF) in Newburgh with the USPS
processing and distribution center in White Plains. Hinchey and
Gillibrand oppose consolidation, arguing that it would reduce the
quality of mail services for the region’s residents and businesses,
result in the loss of local jobs in the area, and fail to deliver
significant, if any, cost savings for the USPS.
Business Insider: Fast Company blogger Roberta Matuson recently
wrote about an experience at a US post office that exemplifies bad
customer service.
Business Report: A promised
Post & Parcel: The UK’s postal regulator, the
Logistics
Manager: DHL Global Forwarding has launched three road freight
services, and consolidated its network connecting Singapore,
Malaysia and Thailand. DHL Asiaconnect is a less than truck load
scheduled service, DHL Asialine is a full load service, and DHL
Asianet is a bespoke service freighting option. DHL Asiaconnect
comprises a complete, dedicated DHL service with scheduled stops
along DHL Global Forwarding’s dedicated network in Singapore, Johor
Bahru, Kuala Lumpur, Penang and Bangkok.
The River Reporter: The United States Postal Service (USPS) can
no longer service the current 32,000 retail offices, so some are
going to go.
Reuters: Imtech N.V. (technical services provider in Europe)
announces that France Post (La Poste), the French postal services
provider, commissioned Imtech (Imtech ICT) with the entire ICT
activities, including all ICT systems and IT solutions, of its
subsidiary Exapaq. Exapaq is France's most successful B2B parcel
services provider and handles more than 47 million parcels annually.
The contract represents a value of 60 million euro.
Post & Parcel: A major row has erupted over the last week
between Russian Post and Russia’s antitrust regulator, the Federal
Antimonopoly Service (FAS), after new proposals were put forward to
liberalise the postal market.
Economic Times: 'Private' post offices in some areas seem to be
doing good business but these franchisee outlets of the postal
department need to be finetuned to provide better service, officials
here said. With a network of 1.55 lakh post offices (P.O), said to
be the largest in the world, the Indian postal department hit up on
the novel scheme of opening franchisee outlets or 'private post
offices,' as it is popularly called, to reach out to more customers
and in areas where P.Os could not be opened. [EdNote: You know .
. . like the Village Post Office concept that the Postal Service is
trying to advance in the U.S.]
234Next: Retirees of the Nigeria Postal Service (NIPOST) in Osun
State Wednesday staged a peaceful protest to demand for the payment
of their six years outstanding pension arrears totalling over ₦4
billion from the federal government. The retirees, who were mostly
aged people, decried the treatment meted out to them by the
management of NIPOST and the federal government, saying many of them
have died as a result of poor standard of living occasioned by the
non-payment of their pension.
Viet Nam News: The Prime Minister has assigned the Viet Nam Post
Corporation (VN Post) to control the public postal network. Under
the PM's decision, VN Post will be responsible for providing postal
services both domestically and internationally. VN Post will also
participate in organising the Universal Postal Union (UPU) and the
Asia-Pacific Postal Union (APP).
New York Daily News: "With the U.S. Postal Service ready to
contract, African-American job opportunities will suffer."
From the Federal Register:
The latest issue of
the PostCom Bulletin is available online. In this issue:
Save the Post Office: It looks like there are some guys over in L’Enfant
Plaza having a goof making graphs and charts to show why they need to close
thousands of post offices. If the stakes weren’t so high and the damage to
communities so great, it might be amusing watching these pranksters at work.
Daily Finance: As economies around the globe fall flat off the face of
the earth, commerce withers, and oil prices plummet, FedEx and UPS
have taken a curious course: They're raising prices. UPS says it is raising
shipping rates at its North American freight division this month, by 6.9%.
On Monday, FedEx decided to follow suit, cheekily announcing a
six-point-eight percent (what a bargain!) increase in the amount it charges
at FedEx Freight. On one hand, this is probably good news for folks who
invest in companies that compete with FedEx and UPS --
less-than-truckload-weight shippers such as YRC Wolrdwide , Con-way, and Old
Dominion Freight Line . These shippers now have the option of grabbing
market share by undercutting their rivals' just-increased prices, or
grabbing extra profit margin by falling in line with the higher prices. It
seems a battle could be in the works. On the other hand, though, it does
seem a bit strange that FedEx and UPS think the moment the global economy
implodes is the precise best time to raise their own prices ... the more so
when you consider that both companies are already going gangbusters, in
terms of profits.
Herald Sun: The boom in online retailing has seen postal outlets run off
their feet dealing with an increase in parcels. Some outlets, which are
licensed to deliver Australia Post packages, say they are running out of
places to store the items that can't be delivered first time around because
recipients aren't home when posties call. The boom in eBay and international
online sales, spurred on by the strong Aussie dollar, has led to
Occupational Health and Safety concerns for workers handling large numbers
of parcels. Post Office Agents Association Ltd chief executive Ian Kerr said
the added workload of dealing with more parcels was putting pressure on the
licensees, particularly in metropolitan areas.
Forbes: UPS is keenly focused on growing its international business
especially in China. UPS is the largest package delivery company globally as
well as a leader in the U.S. trucking industry for small packages and global
supply chain management. Its main competitors are FedEx Corp. and national
postal services such as the United States Postal Service.
Chicago Magazine: With the United States Postal Service losing $8.5
billion last year—and with nearly half of all bill payments now being made
online—some 3,653 post offices nationwide (out of 31,871) are being reviewed
for possible closing. Illinois carries the dubious distinction of having the
most potential closures—176. The vast majority are in small communities and
rural areas, but Chicago gets whacked with the possible closing of 12
stations—and all of them sit in the congressional districts of either Danny
Davis or Bobby Rush. Review—which includes such factors as number of
customers served, revenue generated, and alternative facilities located
within a reasonable distance—does not necessarily mean the facility will be
closed. Members of Congress could attempt to stop the closures; their
constituents are allotted 60 days and a community meeting to respond or
complain; they can then appeal the decision to the Postal Regulatory
Commission. Congressman Davis, who sits on the subcommittee on Federal
Workforce, Postal, Labor—he was chairman until the Republicans took over the
House—has no intention of quietly accepting the closings.
Geek Wire: Google’s battle against Microsoft and Apple over their use of
“bogus” patents promises to result in greater scrutiny of its own
intellectual property holdings. And we have a hunch that Amazon.com, UPS,
the U.S. Postal Service and pretty much everyone else in the shipping
business will be highly interested in this new addition to Google’s
portfolio. The search giant this week was awarded a patent on electronic
shipping notifications, of all things.
Sun News: U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-10, Cleveland, is opposed to the
plan by the U.S. Postal Service to close the Pearlbrook branch, 4160 Pearl
Road, in the Old Brooklyn neighborhood. Kucinich on Aug. 1 wrote the U.S.
postmaster general to “strongly” oppose closing the branch, whose Zip Code
is 44135. Kucinich said closing the branch could be “devastating” and could
“spell out the difference between a struggling neighborhood’s survival and
its destabilization.”
Postalnews Blog: An audit by the US Postal Service Inspector
general confirmed what many postmasters and supervisors have long
known: managers have arbitrarily and improperly reduced the
performance ratings of their subordinates, reducing or eliminating
salary increases for those employees. The audit was requested by the
management organizations in the wake of widespread complaints about
wholesale reductions in employees’ performance ratings at the end of
fiscal year 2009. Some suspect that the arbitrary downgrades were
“payback” for the organizations’ refusal to agree to a total
moratorium on Pay For Performance increases that year.
August 10, 2011
PrintWeek: Direct mail printers are set to lose the 1% rebate on
postal costs offered by Royal Mail for the quality of mail
presentation from 1 October, following changes to the Mailing House
Scheme.
Dead Tree Edition: The U.S. Postal Service has about 170,000 too
many employees and pays them about 30% too much, according to four
major mailers groups. “The notion that the Postal Service operates
at the frontier of efficiency—and can do nothing further to reduce
costs—is refuted by the record,” they wrote in a joint filing with
the Postal Regulatory Commission last week.
CEP News
(Courier-Express-Postal), published by the MRU Consultancy, has reported that:
The MRU, founded in 1992, is the only consultancy in Europe, which has specialised in the market of courier-, express- and parcel services. For large-scale shippers and CEP-services in particular, the MRU provides interdisciplinary advice for all major questions of the market, as there are for example market entry, product design, organisation, and EDP.To learn more about the stories reported above, contact CEP News. (We appreciate the courtesy extended by CEP News to help whet your appetite for more of what CEP offers.)
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory
Commission
NOTICES
Postal Service Initiative on Retail Postal Locations;
Correction , 49511 [2011–20196]
[TEXT] [PDF]
1asig.ro: After signing a partnership in May with an insurance
broker for selling premiums at the postal counters, the National
Romanian Post Company is currently founding an insurance company and
analyzes the possibility of entering the banking market, in 2012.
Romania is an under-banked country, according to the institution's
analysis, therefore there is still room for one more bank on the
market, especially in the country side, where the services offered
by the bank are not developed and where the Romanian Post Office
will benefit from unique territorial coverage.
Hellmail: PostNL expects underlying cash operating income to be
at the top half of the guided range of €130 – 170 million in 2011.
Due to ongoing substitution and competition, in this second year
after full liberalisation, the expected decline in addressed volumes
in 2011 in the Netherlands is 8 – 10%. Master plan savings of €50 –
60 million are targeted for the year.
KHOU: Americans trust postal workers to sort and deliver mail,
but some of them are slyly stealing on the job. The U.S. Postal
Service confirms that 416 postal employees were arrested for theft,
delay, or destroying mail in 2010. The USPS won't talk specifics,
but several customers have discovered their mail-order prescription
drugs are vanishing before they make it to their mailbox.
Pocono Record: A U.S. Postal Service worker from Saylorsburg
suffered minor chemical burns Thursday in Bushkill Township when
liquid from an exploded soda-bottle bomb dripped on her hand, police
said.
WVNS: The U.S. Postal Service is considering putting more than
150 post offices in West Virginia on the chopping block and 85 of
them are in southern West Virginia. Leaders in the postal service
say they're responding to changing customer habits, expanding their
products and services into third party locations like grocery
stores, drug stores, retail chains and even self-service kiosks. But
it's a change that's prompting U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D- W.Va., to
urge people in our region to voice their discontent. "It's not a
done deal. This targeted list is proposed. The postal service is to
have public hearings on these proposed closures and it's ironic in
many of these rural communities, these public hearings are held in
post offices that are being proposed to be closed," said Rahall.
Superior Telegram: Congressman Sean Duffy, R-Ashland, says the
closing list should be returned to sender. With many of the offices
in rural areas like his northern district, he says they shouldn’t be
closed. “For me, I have been aggressively advocating for our post
offices,” Duffy said. “If you’ve been a member of a small community,
you know that often times your identity is tied up within your post
office. You may not have a police force but you do have your post
office.” Duffy says several members of Congress are getting behind
bills that would send the closing list to the dead letter office.
The Saudi Gazette: Saudi Post, the sole provider of postal
services in the Kingdom, has joined the ranks of humanitarian
organizations during the holy month of Ramadan by enabling Saudis
and residents to deliver charity to needy visitors to the Grand
Mosque in Makkah.
Washington Examiner: "USPS plan should be returned to sender."
August 9, 2011
The News-Review: Five Oregon federal lawmakers sent a letter to
Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe on Monday urging the U.S. Postal
Service to carefully examine the post offices being considered for
closure in Oregon. The lawmakers did not offer alternatives to
closing post offices as the agency seeks to reduce its losses.
Staten Island Live: Staten Island elected officials, flanked by
dozens of postal workers outside the Manor Road Post Office this
morning, decried possible consolidation plans that would have the
borough’s incoming mail processed off-Island — only to be trucked
back again for delivery. They said it would result in the relocation
of 90 Staten Island jobs and reduce the quality of service,
currently pegged at a 94 percent accuracy rate. The United States
Postal Service — eyeing closures and consolidations nationwide to
stem its $8 billion hemorrhage — is weighing having the borough’s
incoming mail go to Manhattan or Brooklyn for processing as a
cost-cutting measure. In 2009, the USPS pulled the borough’s
outgoing mail and did away with the Staten Island post mark. "It’s
time to say enough," said Rep. Michael Grimm, who led the
bi-partisan rally. See also
FoxNews.
Politico: Bill Clinton's longtime top aide Doug Band has been
named in a report by the inspector general of the United States
Postal Service that charges that his dealings with a friend and
former postal service governor, Alan Kessler, created the
"appearance that [Kessler] used his public office for private gain."
Band, who survived a
scandal involving an Italian con man in 2007, is the
representative for his family's real estate company, which Kessler
allegedly tried to do a good turn on Band's behalf.
Washington Post: The U.S. Postal Service is facing default and
may have to contemplate cutting back on services (closing more than
3,000 underutilized post offices, paring back delivery to five days
a week, and so on). It’s worth noting that many countries in Europe
have gone even further in this regard, partially or fully
privatizing their postal services. For an upbeat look at this
experiment,
here’s a Businessweek rundown. For a more critical take, James
Meek had a longer and unexpectedly fascinating piece in the London
Review of Books on the Dutch experience with privatization
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Vimeo: A visualization of US
expansion in North America from 1700 to 1900, seen through changes
in the spatial distribution of post offices.
AOL Jobs: "12 Biggest U.S. Job-Killing Companies" 3. U.S.
Postal Service
Media Life Magaines: What are the biggest issues facing
magazines right now in terms of circulation? Not quite a problem for
publishers yet but something to watch on the cost side are postal
rates. The postal service is perennially challenged and looking for
more revenue. Since about 85 percent of major magazine copies are
mailed to subscribers, a postal rate increase would cut wide across
the publishing industry.
Hellmail: The International Post Corporation (IPC) and the South
African Post Office today announced the signing of an agreement for
the latter to participate in IPC’s Environmental Measurement and
Monitoring System (EMMS). The agreement was signed by Kgabo
Mokgohloa, Head of Environmental Sustainability at South African
Post Office, and Jane Dyer, Director of Markets and Communications
at IPC.
 Welcome
to PostCom RadioJoin PostCom President Gene Del Polito and Postal Regulatory Commission chief counsel to the chairman Michael Ravnitzky in a discussion about governments' use of mail. |
Federal Communications Commission:
Financial Times: American shops are getting smaller as retailers
seek to reach consumers through new compact formats in the face of a
stagnant economy, demographic shifts and a growing demand for
convenience.
Wall Street Journal: End the mail monopoly. The U.S. Postal
Service, which posted a net loss of $3.1 billion in the third
quarter alone (there is only so much junk mail and Hallmark cards to
deliver anymore), is finally starting to rationalize small post
offices, recently putting 4,000 of them on a list for possible
closing. Accelerate this task by ending the USPS monopoly on first-
and third-class mail. Entrepreneurs will jump into action. Online
bill payment will become ubiquitous. UPS and FedEx and a host of new
companies will create more productive forms of delivery. The Postal
Service won't end, it will just slowly fade away.
Sarasota Herald Tribune: A real estate deal involving the
downtown Sarasota post office has been tied to the resignation of a
high-ranking postal official and has embroiled Sarasota's wealthy
Band family in allegations of favor-seeking. A report by a federal
inspector general says Alan Kessler, who resigned at the end of July
from the U.S. Postal Service's board of governors, tried to keep the
Postal Service from buying the downtown Sarasota post office
property from a partnership that includes the Bands — at a price
millions below its value. In his interview with investigators,
Kessler said he treated the matter in "the same way he treated any
other request he received from an outside party," the report said.
He also denied that Gibbons had informed him of any ethics issue.
Kessler said she had told him to continue playing his role between
the Postal Service and the property owners. But the investigation
found that Kessler's statements "are inconsistent" with evidence
from emails and meeting notes.
Save the Post Office: On July 27, 2011, the US Postal Service
submitted a request to the Postal Regulatory Commission for an
Advisory Opinion about its Retail Access Optimization Initiative,
and the PRC opened Docket No. N2011-1, which will contain all of the
testimony and related documents for the case. N2011-1 is likely to
go down in history as one of the most important dockets ever to be
considered by the PRC. The outcome of this process may determine the
fate of the brick-and-mortar post office in America.
Pantagraph: Many reasons exist to lament the impending closings
of thousands of rural American post offices. None of those reasons
has to do with efficiently moving letters and packages across the
country. We join those sorry to see customer preferences and
technology pass by these small offices that provide a social hub,
downtown business and, often, just a cherished postmark. But when it
comes to getting letters and packages from points A to B, the postal
service simply can't justify operating more outlets than Starbucks,
McDonald's and Walmart combined. Unlike those wildly successful
private retailers, U.S. post offices aren't always located where
they can generate the most business or serve the most customers.
Many remain anchored in shrinking communities that simply don't
generate enough business to support the office. And no amount of
promotion or community cheerleading can change that. So postal rates
-- not tax dollars -- are increased to carry on tradition, not
provide efficient service.
City A.M.: Shares in postal outsourcing technology provider
Escher Group traded for the first time on London’s Alternative
Investment Market (AIM) yesterday, after the company raised $25m
(£15.4m) ahead of the float. A total of 17,033,097 ordinary shares
were issued on admission, giving the company a market capitalisation
of around $47.1m. Escher Group provides automated postal counters to
companies across Europe, including Austria Post and Deutsche Post.
Catanduanes Tribune: Congressman Cesar V. Sarmiento has asked
the House Committee on Government Enterprises and Privatization to
investigate PhilPost’s delay in giving mandated salary increases and
other benefits to its employees and its delay in remitting payment
of mandatory dues, obligations and loan amortizations to government
financing institutions despite the fact that these are regularly
deducted from their monthly paychecks.
ERR News: National postal service Eesti Post will announce an
open public procurement for an operating lease of 170 cargo vans.
Over the period of 2012 to 2013, all cargo vans older than five
years will be replaced.
Hellmail: Russian Post, once the only mail provider in Russia,
is now subject to the same pressures as European operators with the
Russian government rolling out competition across a range of
industries, but these changes could spell disaster for some
citizens, particularly those in the north. However laying the
groundwork for a completely competitive postal sector brings a whole
new set of problems, and all too familiar to postal regulators
across much of Europe. How exactly do you encourage competition
whilst maintaining the universal service? After all, new operators
want to make a profit and target the big cities accordingly whilst
the incumbent operator is obliged to deliver to loss-making areas
and facing rapid shrinkage in the process.
From the Federal Register:
Rural Updates: NRLCA President Don Cantriel said the decision to
go to arbitration was made a week or so ago. “We just couldn’t
accept where they wanted to go,” Cantriel said. While the rural
letter carriers had offered concessions similar to what the American
Postal Workers Union had accepted earlier this year, he said, the
Postal Service then wanted to “completely alter” several of the
standards in the evaluated system used to determine carriers’ pay.
The effect would be “devastating,” Cantriel said. “They basically
want us to do the same amount of work for significantly less
money.”"
HuffPost Politics: A former governor of the Postal Service is
being investigated over claims he tried to influence a real estate
deal involving an associate and the post office. The case involving
Alan C. Kessler, who left the agency governing board earlier this
year, has been referred to the chairman of that board by the postal
inspector general's office.
MarketWatch: FedEx Freight, a subsidiary of FedEx Corp. FDX
-0.03% , will implement a 6.75% general rate increase (GRI)
effective Sept. 6, 2011. This rate increase applies to FedEx Freight
shipments within the contiguous U.S., between the contiguous U.S.
and Canada, and within Canada. The rate for cross-border FedEx
Freight shipments between the U.S. and Mexico will also increase
6.75% for only the U.S. portion of the shipment, and will be
effective Sept. 6, 2011.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
August 8, 2011
SavethePostOffice: Closing a post office doesn’t just take away
a place that people value. For many communities, the post office is
holding the town or neighborhood together. In a deeply existential
way, the post office is the place.
ZDNet: More than 3.5 million Americans have jobs that are
directly or indirectly supported by advertising mail. Banning
advertising mail would be a bad idea in good economic times, but it
is a terrible idea during the economic crises currently facing the
United States.
Post & Parcel: James Wilkins, operations director at UK-based
Secured Mail, says the postal operators who prosper will be those
that embrace technology.
Marketwire: Zumbox, the leader in digital postal mail services,
today announced the formation of the Zumbox Advisory Board,
established to give leaders in the mailing industry the ability to
provide strategic direction into, and gain insights from, the future
of digital postal mail.
Post & Parcel: Only “serious” cost-cutting structural reforms
can save the US Postal Service, said the Chairman of the US House of
Representatives Oversight Committee, Darrell Issa, on Friday. Issa,
the Republican from California who is staunchly opposed to any kind
of taxpayer assistance for the strugging USPS, said the Postal
Service had to cut its workforce costs and rightsize its
infrastructure to cope with the “permanent decline” in mail volumes
stemming from increasing competition from electronic communications.
CBC News: A paraplegic woman in Yarmouth County says a move by
Canada Post to protect its workers is actually putting her at risk.
Lorraine Scott-Bain is locked in a battle with the postal service
over mail delivery to her home in Plymouth. Canada Post has
installed community boxes in the area. This means after 30 years,
she no longer just wheels down to the end of her driveway to pick up
her mail.
NBCMiami: The U.S. Postal Service is quickly becoming a
preferred method of shipping drugs to South Florida, as traffickers
would rather pay for postage than risk their lives moving marijuana
and cocaine.
Federal Times: More than eight months after an impasse was
declared in contract talks, the National Rural Letter Carriers’
Association and the U.S. Postal Service are headed to arbitration,
according to a new USPS financial filing. While mediation would
normally be the next move, both sides are interested in bypassing
that step and going to straight to arbitration, the third quarter
financial report says. The next step will be to select an “interest
arbitrator” and decide on some dates for the proceedings.
Red Orbit: When the full date of birth is used together with the
full postal code, then approximately 97% of the population are
unique with only one year of data. When the full date of birth and a
multi-year residential trail are considered, then almost 100% of the
population is unique.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Village Post Offices: A Step Forward or Step Back for Postal Retail Services? The Postal Service recently announced that it would study approximately 3,700 postal retail facilities for possible consolidation. To address customers’ concerns, the Postal Service revealed plans for Village Post Offices (VPO), which would sell popular products and services at authorized third party vendors. Are VPOs a viable substitute for traditional postal retail facilities? Share your thoughts on our blog.
Globes: In light of the Post Office's huge losses, which are
being revealed for the first time today, concerns are arising over
whether the government company is capable of meeting the bond
payments.
Federal
News Radio: The Postal Service reported Friday it lost $3.1
billion in the third quarter of the fiscal year. With no end to the
financial bleeding in sight, postal officials said they would
default on payments to the federal government due next month. USPS
officials say it is constrained by its business model from making
wide-sweeping reforms. Its mandate requires it to operate like a
private firm, but it has certain public obligations. USPS wants
permission to reduce mail delivery to five days a week as part of a
series of cost-cutting measures. And it would like a refund for
over-payments it says it made to employee retirement accounts.
Lawmakers were not surprised at the latest financial news. And, in
fact, there are several bills designed to change the law governing
the post office, an independent government agency, pending in both
the House and Senate.
Daily Guide:
Deutsche Post DHL, the world’s leading mail and logistics company
and the national postal agency of Ghana, Ghana Post Company Limited,
have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in which both
entities will seek mutually beneficial relationships across a broad
range of business activities. The activities set out in the MoU
include synergies in the international distribution of express mail
shipment, warehousing and improvement in the domestic network
delivery.
D Magazine: Who runs the USPS? Now, if you’re talking day-to-day
operations, that would be a Postmaster General, who is elected by 10
people on a Board of Governors. This board is required to be made up
of no more than five people of the same party (in other words, the
best you can have is a 50/50 split of Democrat and Republican
influence). They serve 9 year terms, and are appointed by the
President and voted in by the Senate. So in other words, the day to
day running and ultimate decision making regarding this sort-of
government agency that is run like a private business is in the
hands of a board that is equally made up of both parties, and was
appointed by a Democratic president, and a Republican president.
The Sofia Echo: Bulgaria's postal services operator Bulgarian
Posts seeks to obtain a loan of up to five million euro to bolster
its working capital, the company said. The state-owned company will
call a public procurement order to select the bank that will provide
the loan.
Hindu Business Line: The huge cash outgo on implementation of
the Sixth Pay Commission’s recommendations increased the Indian
Postal Department’s deficit by 84.84 per cent to Rs 6,641.30 crore
for the year ended 2009-10.
Forbes: The largest Dutch postal company, PostNL NV, has
reported a second quarter profit of euro1.77 billion ($2.54
billion), with results dominated by effects of the spin-off of its
express delivery arm, TNT Express NV. See also
Reuters.
Courier, Express, and Postal Observer: On August 2, the Postal
Regulatory Commission issued a Request for Proposal to produce a
“Report on Peak Load Costs.” Peak load costs are traditionally
thought of as additional costs that are born to cover higher demand
than normal. Traditionally, it is thought that Postal volume peaked
in the fall and is at a low point in the summer month. Similarly,
certain days of the week, and days of the month have more mail
volume than other that relate to publishing, billing, and sales
cycles. To the extent that labor, capital, and purchased
transportation assets are less flexible than the variation in mail
volume would result in times when there is excess capacity and other
times when all asset are more than fully utilized and overtime costs
are born or additional transportation is added.
Press TV: The U.S.
Postal Service, which predicts an annual loss of as much as $9 billion, said
it may ask Congress to raise its $15 billion debt limit unless lawmakers
allow changes like stopping Saturday deliveries or closing more post
offices. Even if Congress allows the Postal Service to delay a required $5.5
billion payment next month for future retiree health-benefit costs, the
agency will “barely” have the cash flow to continue operations when its
fiscal year starts in October, James Miller, chairman of the postal board's
audit committee, said today. “One of the things we'd have to look at is
talking to people about looking at getting some breathing room with our debt
limit since we've hit our limit of $15 billion,” Postmaster General Patrick
Donahoe told reporters after a board meeting in Washington. The Postal
Service will reach its debt limit at the end of September, spokesman David
Partenheimer said. The agency, which has a $3 billion annual borrowing
limit, had $784 million of cash and cash equivalents as of July, according
to preliminary data. The Postal Service is seeking to stem losses as more
people use the Internet to correspond, receive publications and pay bills.
August 7, 2011
The Wichita Eagle: A school, a grocery store, a restaurant and a
post office. The first three of those four brick-and-mortar markers
of a self-sufficient small town took direct hits in Kansas from ’60s
school consolidation, multiple recessions and other stressors. Now,
the last one is on its last legs, rattling rural communities and
fueling questions about how small Kansas towns can sustain
themselves.
The Hill: A large majority of post offices that have been
targeted for closure are in Republican districts. More than 2,500 of
these post offices are in GOP districts while about 1,000 are in
districts represented by Democrats, according to a review by The
Hill. [EdNote: A fact noted some time ago by the Courier,
Express, and Postal Observer.]
Tri-Cities.com: The Postal Service must watch its bottom line –
but that doesn’t mean it should operate exactly like a business.
That’s because the mission is not profit. As a government entity,
the mission is service.
Lake Placid News: The steady decline of the U.S. Postal Service
and the subsequent closure of small post offices around the country
is something people are just going to have to get used to. It’s sad
to say, but smaller offices are a luxury the agency can no longer
afford. While it is true that rural post offices are a vital part of
the lives of the communities they serve, the Postal Service loses
billions of dollars each year. I have rarely — if ever — defended
the management of the Postal Service, and still maintain that with
better upper-level management, the post office would not be in such
dire straights today — however, the closure of smaller post offices
is a necessity.
Postal
Regulatory Commissioner and Vice Chairman Mark Acton on C-Span.
August 6, 2011
Financial Times: Last month subscribers to the US film rental
service Netflix awoke to an unpleasant surprise. Until then most had
paid a monthly fee of $9.99, allowing them to watch an unlimited
number of films online and to order DVDs through the post. Netflix
abruptly ended that deal. Instead, customers could choose: either
the streaming package or the postal option, for $7.99 each. Both
together would cost twice as much. More than 10,000 mostly furious
comments were posted on Netflix’s website and threats of cancelled
subscriptions flooded in. However, the move would win Robert
Levine’s approval – as a rare example of a technology company
persuading people to pay more money to watch films and television
programmes online.
Lancaster Intelligencer Journal: Items that are past their
prime: eight-track tapes, typewriters, black and white televisions,
beta video recorders, Atari games, U.S. Post Offices.
Marshfield News Herald: The U.S. Postal Service has a long and
glorious history. And, without some major changes in the way it does
business, its days may well be limited. Congress must give it the
opportunity to make those changes.
Kearney Hub: Clearly, post offices are as important in
communities as schools, banks, gas stations and grocery stores. Lose
any one of those and it could have a profound effect on the
community’s health. The Postal Service is considering closing about
one in 10 of its 32,000 local offices. Doing so would continue the
trend of the past 10 years, when the number of post offices declined
from 36,000 to 31,871 today. Postal officials realize radical action
is necessary, but rather than closing post offices, could other
strategies work? How about reducing postal rates so more Americans
could afford to use the service? A rate reduction might boost volume
and would be possible if the Postal Service could reduce its
expenses, primarily personnel costs.
Dead Tree Edition: The dramatic downsizing of the U.S. Postal
Service's workforce has slowed considerably in the past year,
according to USPS documents.
The Hill: House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.)
has proposed a bill that he says would save at least $6 billion
annually by, among other things, creating a new commission to shed
excess USPS facilities. He would also allow the USPS to cancel
Saturday mail, something it is seeking to do. Issa does not allow
the USPS to dodge the September payment. “The Postal Service’s
announcement of yet another multibillion-dollar loss underscores the
need to enact meaningful reforms in order to avoid a taxpayer-funded
bailout. These deficits clearly cannot be closed by bailing out the
Postal Service with taxpayer money or allowing the Postal Service to
amass obligations to employees, retirees and taxpayers that are
unlikely to be fully met in the future,” Issa said in a statement
Friday.
Federal Times: Former U.S. Postal Service Governor Alan Kessler
pressured postal executives to scuttle a planned property purchase
that would have cost a friend millions
of dollars, according to a report from the Office of Inspector
General. The IG also found that the Postal Service general counsel,
Mary Anne Gibbons, failed to act as she should have to halt
Kessler's actions and report them to the IG. In a statement to
Federal Times, Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, expressed dismay at the
IG's findings. Collins is the ranking Republican on the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which oversees
the Postal Service. "It is disappointing that a member of the Postal
Service Board of Governors allegedly attempted to use his position
for the financial benefit of a longtime friend and political crony,"
Collins said. "The Postal Service has enough trouble without a
presidentially appointed leader appearing to act in a way that
violates the public trust. At all levels, the Postal Service must
responsibly steward every single dollar."
Senator Thomas Carper: "The
U.S. Postal Service is sinking quickly, and if we do nothing, we
face a future without the valuable services the Postal Service
provides. We have the opportunity to keep it afloat, but we must act
now. I urge Congress and the Administration to join me in pushing
for this much-needed reform so we can prevent the Postal Service
from going broke by the end of the year."
INDUSTRY
ALERT The Postal Service recently filed for a change to Reply
Rides Free with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) to let
customers mail their qualifying pieces weighing up to 2 oz at the 1
oz price. If approved by the PRC, this change will go in effect on
September 1 through December 31, 2011. The extension of Reply Ride
Free is intended to simplify this program for participating
customers. The Postal Service intends to extend the 2 oz free rate
to First-Class Mail Presort and Automation letters (NOT First-Class
Mail Single-Piece letters) as of January 2012. Earlier
implementation is not feasible.
Government Executive: The Postal Service continues to face
long-term financial challenges and despite significant cost
reductions will reach its statutory borrowing limit by the end of
the fiscal year and default on a number of obligations to the
federal government, officials told reporters. USPS has a $5.5
billion payment to its retiree health benefits fund due Sept. 30.
"This is not sustainable," USPS Chief Financial Officer Joseph
Corbett said. "We can't continue to lose this amount of money." See
also
Politico.
August 5, 2011
Post & Parcel: USPS chief executive and Postmaster General
Patrick Donahoe said Congressional action was urgently required to
prevent USPS going into default on government payments expected this
fall. Key actions required, he said, was an elimination of annual
Retiree Health Benefits pre-funding payments of $5.5bn a year;
allowing USPS access to overpayments made into its pension funds,
thought to be as much as $75bn; and new powers for USPS to drop
Saturday deliveries. “Current predictions are that we will not be
able to make the $5.5bn Retiree Health Benefits prefunding payment
at the end of September.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
Wall Street Journal: The U.S. Postal Service's fiscal
third-quarter loss narrowed on higher shipping-services revenue,
though it continues to face declining mail volume as consumers turn
to electronic communications instead.
WTAQ: There’s an effort brewing in Congress to save the post
offices that are targeted for closing. The Postal Service wants to
shut down 41 facilities throughout Wisconsin, to try and reduce the
millions-of-dollars the agency has been losing. But freshman House
Republican Sean Duffy of Ashland says he’ll fight to keep them open.
He says his district has dozens of small towns where the post office
is their identity. Duffy says he’s found a lot of fat that can be
cut in Washington, and post offices are not among them.
Sydney Morning Herald: First it was the telegram. Then the
letter. The internet has threatened to all but wipe out traditional
modes of post, but with shoppers rapidly deserting bricks and mortar
shops for online stores, Australia Post - whose job is to deliver
the goods we are buying online - has emerged an unlikely winner.
The Postal Service has
reported a
$3.1 billion loss for quarter three.
It now projects its
2011 fiscal year loss at $9 billion.
See also
PR Newswire and the
Associated Press.
|
PostCom Webinar: EMA's
Mailing Industry Job Study - The Importance of the Mailing
Industry to US Economy | ||||
|
Television Buisness International: Netflix is being tipped to
launch a UK service after inking a content deal with Hollywood
producer and distributor Lionsgate. The streaming and postal service
is understood to have agreed a multiyear deal with Lionsgate -
having recently inked a US deal with the mini-major that gives it
access to Lionsgate-distributed scripted series Mad Men.
Philippine
Information Agency: The Philippine Postal Corporation (PhilPost)
will soon introduce new mail services such as electronic business
mail and electronic money transfer in order to cater to the needs of
people using new technologies. Philpost director of operations
Benito Quiros said during the weekly AGIO-7 Forum that personal
communications have decreased to 10-15 percent in volume due to the
trend in social networking while the business mails continue to
increase such as the billing collection and delivery of goods.
Arizona Daily Sun: The U.S. Postal Service is moving all mail
processing operations from Flagstaff to an operations center in
Phoenix. The move will not have an impact on the timeliness of mail
delivery in Flagstaff, even for letters from Flagstaff sent to a
local address, said USPS spokesperson Peter Hass. But it will reduce
the number of Flagstaff-based postal employees.
The Northwestern: In a letter to Postmaster General Patrick
Donahoe, U.S. Rep. Tom Petri, R-Fond du Lac, called on the U.S.
Postal Service to immediately halt the transfer of processing and
distribution work from Oshkosh to Green Bay.
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory
Commission
NOTICES Mail Classification
Changes , 47614 [2011–19888]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Post Office Closings , 47614–47615 [2011–19901]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Postal Rate Changes , 47615–47616 [2011–19848]
[TEXT] [PDF]
American Postal Workers Union: “Tea Party” groups are building
public and congressional support for H.R. 2309, legislation
sponsored in the U.S. House of Representative by Reps. Darrell Issa
(R-CA) and Dennis Ross (R-FL) that APWU President Cliff Guffey has
called “a reckless assault on postal workers and the Postal
Service.”
August 4, 2011
American Postal Workers Union: The APWU has filed an unfair
labor practice charge [PDF]
with the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) protesting the Postal
Service’s refusal to provide the union with information regarding
Area Mail Processing (AMP) feasibility studies. The union contends
that management’s failure to provide the information constitutes a
breach of its obligation to bargain in good faith.
Post & Parcel: Government officials and postal service
representatives met in Brasilia yesterday to answer questions from
Brazil’s lawmakers on postal reform legislation that is set for a
vote in Congress next week. Provisional Measure (MP) 532 would allow
Brazil’s postal service, ECT, to modernise and expand its
operations. This would include new powers for ECT to set up
subsidiaries, take ownership or part-ownership of other companies
and establish operations abroad in order to compete with the large
multinational logistics players.
CNN: Call it technology in reverse: Thousands of people are
lining up online to have messages they could send in an instant
delivered far more slowly. And according to the creator of Snail
Mail My Email, a monthlong volunteer project, that's the point. The
concept is simple. Since July 15 (and until August 15), anyone
interested has been able to e-mail a letter to the project's
volunteers. They turn around and hand-write the letter -- complete
with extras like a doodle, flower petal or lipstick kiss if desired
-- and mail it to the recipient.
CNBC: The likely loss
of unemployment benefits for 3.71 million Americans in a few months
will only add to an economy edging ever closer to recession,
according to analysis that puts the chances of another downturn at
better than 1 in 3. In fact, chances of the U.S. economy entering
another recession, the firm says, are now 35 percent, about double
from a forecast it issued during the spring. Recession is often
defined as two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic
product growth. The good news is that the recession likely would be
"mild since the economy already is very lean," specifically citing
the 8.8 million jobs sliced during the previous recession and only
1.8 million rehires.
Media Daily News: A new "business climate" survey of
communications executives from consultant KPMG reports that there is
less optimism about the economy and employment in the sector going
forward. On the plus side, most of those surveyed -- nearly
three-fourths -- predicted some revenue growth for their firms in
the next year. And 44% said that digital-related products and
services would be the key drivers to overall revenue growth.
eCommerceBytes: The U.S. Postal Service rolled out its new,
redesigned website in late July, and in the fall, the site will
re-launch with new customer-focused features, including the ability
to use PayPal, Spanish and Chinese translations for all new pages,
an improved Post Office Locator, and more user-friendly "Hold Mail"
and "Mail Redelivery" functions. EcommerceBytes checked in with USPS
General Manager of Digital Access Joseph K. Adams to learn more
about new features.
Fond du Lac Reporter: U.S. Rep. Tom Petri, R-Fond du Lac,
requested the audit by the Office of the Inspector General after
post office workers and Oshkosh residents raised concerns about the
merger, especially since an earlier study had explored moving the
Green Bay operation to Oshkosh.
Baltimore Sun: The post office in the Laurel Mall is on the list
of 3,700 post offices, postal stations and branches that federal
officials are considering closing as officials look for ways to
reduce costs. In addition to the mall post office, 42 other postal
facilities in Maryland face the possibility of closure, including
the one in Towson Town Center, the Carroll post office in Baltimore
and the Suitland post office.
Half Moon Bay Review: The U.S. Postal Service is looking closely
at Loma Mar to see whether that sense of community justifies the
cost. Loma Mar and another Coastside post office, located in the San
Gregorio General Store, are among about 3,700 branches nationwide
that could be closed as a way to save $200 million. The postal
service made the announcement last week. The news led some
Coastsiders to fear the loss of their small-town hub. Meeting
neighbors picking up mail or reading the bulletin board posted
nearby were pretty much the only surefire ways all Loma Mar
residents interacted, said Kate Haas, a Loma Mar farmer who
represents the area on the Pescadero Municipal Advisory Council.
WJLA: Police are looking for two men who they believe are
responsible for robbing postal workers at gunpoint. The men have
been seen walking on to postal property in the early evening,
pulling a gun and demanding money and other items. Investigators
think the men have already robbed several locations: a branch in
Congress Heights, an office in Fort Washington and two offices on
Peninsula Avenue in the southeast.
Gallatin North Missourian: Coffey, Jameson and McFall may be
among 167 post offices in Missouri to close. The Postal Service said
Tuesday it would consider closing 3,653 post offices, mostly in
rural areas but some in cities, including 167 in Missouri.
WCTI:
The post office in Comfort has been open for more than 40 years. A
spokesperson for the United States Postal Service said the
government began a survey last Tuesday to try and determine the
amount of volume the post office gets and whether it should remain
open. This post office is one of many in the state that could be
affected by downsizing. A lot of people who live in the area believe
closing the office would hurt morale.
WPTZ: A
sign of the tough economic times, the Postal Service is looking at
mail processing operations at one of its Plattsburgh, NY offices,
and thinking about shifting those functions to Burlington, VT.
Radio
New Zealand International: A small post office in American Samoa
has been spared from being closed down, as part of a nation wide
move by the U.S. Postal Service to cut costs. The Pago Pago Post
Master, Aneterea Ioane, told state run KVZK-TV that he was informed
by a committee charged with assessing the closure of post offices
that the post office in Leone village was among the targeted ones
for closure. However, Aneterea told the committee the Leone post
office is very new and with a growing population, American Samoa
needs this second post office. The Leone post office was dedicated
this year and replaces the one that was destroyed in the 2009
tsunami.
The Topeka Capital-Journal: Residents in the Douglas County
community of Lecompton are worried that their post office could be
on the verge of closing due to the U.S. Postal Service’s
well-documented budget problems. It would take a hard heart not to
sympathize with the concerns. Lecompton is a small town, and losing
any operation that provides jobs and services can have a big impact
on the local economy of any smaller community. But the Lecompton
situation shows how difficult of a task the post office faces in
solving its budget problems.
The Bismarck Tribune: Closing a small town's post office pains
the local community. Like shutting down the grocery store or the
school, closing the post office raises dire questions about the life
force of the community. These closings typically are symptoms of
long-term economic changes. But that doesn't make them any easier to
take.
Post & Parcel: Postal quality controllers from eleven countries
have come together to increase their knowledge of the UPU Global
Monitoring System (GMS). The GMS was initiated in 2009 and now has
50 participating Posts, with the aim of helping Posts monitor the
flow of global mail by sending international test letters with radio
tracking tags. By tracking the test letters, Posts can find and
target problem areas that slow the flow of mail.
WFMD: Citing the results of a study begun on February. 1st,
2011, the US Postal Service says it will be closing the Frederick
Processing and Distribution Center on Tilco Drive early next year.
The agency says processing and distribution of mail for the
Frederick area will be handled at the Baltimore Processing and
Distribution Center.
Logistics Manager: TNT Express has opened a 99,087 sq ft
distribution facility in Hong Kong to provide Asia-Pacific regional
distribution and value-added logistics services to the fashion
industry.
Logistics
Manager: House of Fraser has awarded an £85 million five year
contract extension to DHL Supply Chain, to manage its supply chain
within the UK. See also
Analytiqa.
Patriot-News: The Postal Service is talking about expanding its
“village post office” program. This allows chosen private retail
businesses to provide many of the services you get from a regular
post office. Presently, they account for 35 percent of the Postal
Service’s retail revenue. Nationally as well as locally, there is
much talk about private-public partnerships. This is a good example
of one. The Postal Service is right to consider expanding the
concept and should increase the services and products that these
“village post offices” can provide.
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory
Commission
NOTICES Post Office Closings
, 47274–47275 [2011–19770]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Postal Service Initiative on Retail Postal Locations ,
47275–47277 [2011–19725]
[TEXT] [PDF]
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission: Attorney Advisor, Associate Grade: PRC
Salary Range: $84,375-$135,002 Location: Postal Regulatory Commission Office Of
The General Counsel 901 New York Avenue, NW, Suite 200 Washington, DC 20268-0001
Position: Full Time
August 3, 2011
Printing Brain: Problems with QR codes: Most end users probably
don’t know what they are They need a compatible smart phone They
need to install the correct software They need to know how to use
the software Most can be used for free – though more advanced usage
& tracking costs
Campaigns & Elections: Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe
sounded the alarm late last month in an interview with USA Today,
telling the newspaper that financial woes necessitate some serious
changes, starting with the elimination of Saturday mail. Within 15
years, he warned, it could mean scaling back mail delivery to just
three days a week. Dropping Saturday delivery would save an
estimated $3.1 billion a year, according to the Postal Service—no
small sum for an organization projected to be $238 billion in the
red by 2020. As for what it means for political direct mail vendors,
several consultants tell C&E eliminating Saturday delivery could
mean a major hit and lead to “crowding the box,” potentially making
mailers less effective. “This will crowd the mailbox,” says David
Johnson, who heads a Republican direct mail firm. “It narrows our
opportunity to get into mailboxes.”
SmartSoft: Despite the fact that the United States Postal
Service is looking into closing more than 3,600 offices around the
nation, many experts in the direct marketing field contend that the
volume of printed materials being sent out will not be affected. In
a statement, postmaster general Patrick Donahoe said that while
people continue to rely on mail, having so many brick-and-mortar
locations was unnecessary, and the agency could save money by having
smaller locations. The USPS is hoping to combat $8.3 billion in
losses without negatively affecting entrepreneurs marketing
strategies. "The service standard might change because of the loss
of postal offices and so some mailings might take a day longer to
get there," he added. "But as long as they let our members know we
don’t see that having an effect on volumes – - and hopefully it will
also save the Post Office some money and get them out of their
financial straits."
Post & Parcel: Manilla, the digital mail service launched by
publishing giant Hearst Corporation in June, now offers its users
access to more than 1,100 service providers. The service at
Manilla.com is being marketed as a free personal account management
service for consumers in the United States, allowing householders to
receive, store and pay bills, manage finances and organise magazine
subscriptions and loyalty programmes. Manilla has already
established relationships with credit card company Citi Cards, cable
television giant Comcast and KUBRa, the provider of customer
management platforms for a variety of transactional mailers
including power utility Duke Energy. As well as billing and
statements, service providers can use Manilla to provide targeted
offers to customers, although the marketing offering is opt-in on
the part of consumers. The company said this week that its service
has grown “tremendously” over the two months since its consumer
launch.
PostalReporter News: The Washington Post has published at least
seven editorials about the USPS over the last two years, and has
taken an anti-labor stance in each one — either criticizing USPS
labor contracts as too generous; attacking the no layoff clause or
the level of health care and retirement benefits employees receive,
or claiming that the collective bargaining system is tilted toward
unions. Endorsing legislation that would allow a commission to void
labor contracts is only the latest example of the Post’s hostility
toward workers and unions.
Direct Marketing Association: In response to an editorial
published July 28 by the Washington Post entitled, “A Better Route
for USPS," the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) comments: The
editorial, “A Better Route for USPS,” supporting the postal
legislation introduced by Representatives Issa and Ross, correctly
highlights the financial situation facing the US Postal Service (USPS)
is much worse than most Americans and legislators realize.The
editorial did not mention the provision concerning mail sent by
nonprofit organizations. The bill would decrease significantly the
nonprofit preferred rate differential, which is not taxpayer
supported. The result would be a dramatic and unsustainable postage
increase for many nonprofits at a time when charities are being
called upon to increase their efforts to provide a safety net
throughout America and the world. Most of the donations that these
charities receive come via the USPS.
Post & Parcel: A difficult economy and increased competition
have hit profits at Poste Italiane in the first half of 2011, but
operating costs have also fallen. Italy’s state-owned postal
operator saw a 6.8% drop in revenues in the six months to June 2011,
to EUR 11.5bn, while profits dipped 5.6% to EUR 488m for the period.
Along with the continuing “natural decline” of postal volumes,
results were affected by a marked reduction in earnings at Poste
Vita, the insurance arm of Poste Italiane, along with a cut in
government subsidies. Among its divisions, Poste Italiane saw an
8.8% drop in sales for its postal services, to EUR 2.4bn, an 8.2%
drop in insurance revenues to EUR 2.4bn, and a 1.9% dip in its EUR
6.4bn financial services revenues. Mail volumes fell 10.3% in the
first half of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010, with
Italians sending 308m fewer items during the six months. This
included an 8.5% drop in direct marketing volumes, although a
quarter of this was due to the reduction in election-related
mailings.
CEP News
(Courier-Express-Postal), published by the MRU Consultancy, has reported that:
Singapore Post probably remained the worlds most profitable postal company in the first quarter (June 30) of the business year 2011/2012 despite a slight decrease in profit.
The MRU, founded in 1992, is the only consultancy in Europe, which has specialised in the market of courier-, express- and parcel services. For large-scale shippers and CEP-services in particular, the MRU provides interdisciplinary advice for all major questions of the market, as there are for example market entry, product design, organisation, and EDP.To learn more about the stories reported above, contact CEP News. (We appreciate the courtesy extended by CEP News to help whet your appetite for more of what CEP offers.)
Financial Times: Lamberto Dini, former prime minister and now a
senator in Mr Berlusconi’s People of Liberty party, is openly
critical of the austerity package and the government’s stance that
Europe must take the leading role in saving the euro and Italy from
market “speculators”. “Italy cannot be expected to be saved by
Europe. Our debt is too high. The problem of our debt and budget has
to be dealt with domestically by our own measures,” he told the
Financial Times. Mr Dini said the government must pass additional
measures aimed at balancing the budget by the end of next year
rather than 2014 as planned. He proposes abolishing a whole level of
government at the provincial level and implementing
privatisations – including the Post Office bank, which he says
could raise €30bn.
RIA
Novosti: Online payment company PayPal plans to start business
in Russia with a $25 million investment and open its first office in
Moscow soon. Auction payments will be done through PayPal which is
holding talks with DHL and other postal services.
The Pilot: The Postal Regulatory Commission has been wrestling
with the painful idea of reducing universal postal service,
something that has been part of American life for decades. The USPS
has prided itself on its ability to get mail to all of its
customers, six days a week, regardless of location or difficulty.
Perhaps we should adopt a change in the method of deliveries to a
radical approach such as "mail call."
Azerbaijan
Business Center: In Azerbaijan certificates of electronic
digital signatures will be issued at post offices. The Ministry of
Communications & Information Technology of Azerbaijan reports that a
relevant agreement has been signed with national postal operator
Azerpoht in this regard.
Seacoast Online: The economic woes of the U.S. Postal Service
are well-known at this point. Pension plan problems, the dwindling
need for stamps and other services in the digital age and fierce
competition have all combined to leave the agency in the hole.
Billions of dollars in the hole, with no easy fix in sight.
Washington Post: There’s a guy fighting the U.S. Postal
Service’s move to close about 4,300 post offices in the next year,
and he doesn’t work for the agency. He’s a new blogger named Steve
Hutkins. “Save the Post Office” reports on closures, consolidations
and suspensions going on in the mail world. It is full of analysis
and opinions. And Hutkins’ opinion is not hard to discern. He’s
left-leaning, pro-union and believes the Postal Service is
outsourcing itself to greedy corporations.
Press
Information Bureau: During current financial year 2011-12,
targets for opening of 125 Franchise Outlets have been issued to the
Circles including Madhya Pradesh. Details of physical targets
allotted to the Circles as under. Madhya Pradesh Circle has been
allotted the target of 8 franchise outlets. These outlets are opened
in areas where opening of post office is justified but it cannot be
opened for some reasons.
ERR News: Thirty-six automated parcel terminals operated by the
national postal service Eesti Post will start service in the second
half of August, putting the state-owned company in competition with
privately-owned Smart Post, which has 46 similar machines. The
self-service machines will allow users to send packages to post
offices across the country or to other parcel terminals. The option
of courier deliveries is also available, Eesti Post said.
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory
Commission
NOTICES Mail Classification
Schedule Changes , 46856–46857 [2011–19669]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Post Office Closings , 46857–46858 [2011–19576]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Auctionbytes: Stamps.com launched PC Postage Version 8.9, which
includes new features to help ecommerce sellers and high-volume
shippers save money on postage costs. Stamps.com provides USPS
postage online and shipping software to approximately 400,000
customers, and its latest version adds support for Priority Mail
Regional Rate boxes and military addresses.
Bloomberg: Here are three remarkable facts about the United
States Postal Service: Its union workers have no- layoff contracts;
no post office branches can be closed solely because they lose
money; and, as revealed in an investigation by Bloomberg
Businessweek, the service is so dependent on low- profit junk mail
for revenue that it has a marketing officer tasked with lobbying
banks not to switch to electronic statements. The USPS, which is
supposed to be self-financing, faces a dismal future. Yet the USPS
continues to plant the seeds of its own destruction. This year it
reached a new contract with the union representing its mail clerks,
drivers, mechanics and custodians that included a continuation of
the no-layoffs clause for current workers, a 3.5 percent raise over
4 1/2 years, and regular cost of living increases. (The postal
service claims that it was trying to avoid arbitration that might
have resulted in an even more costly package, and it may have a
point.) The service’s management and unions are living in denial --
both want the service to be freed from having to finance its
health-care plan for retirees in advance to the tune of $5.5 billion
a year. They also push a sketchy claim that the USPS has overpaid
the Civil Service Retirement System by as much as $75 billion since
the 1970s and deserves the money back from Congress.
SavethePostOffice.com: Over four thousand post offices slated to
be closed, and just as many news articles about the closings, yet
not a word in the media about the billionaires and millionaires who
are running the show. All you hear is how postal revenues are
declining and no one uses the post office anymore. But somehow the
Postal Service was still able to outsource $12 billion in 2010. It’s
not hard to see what’s going on. The Robber Barons are stealing the
post office from the American people. Closing down post offices to
save a little money is just a big distraction, a show to make it
look like the Postal Service is acting like a responsible business.
In the meantime, the Robber Barons are plundering the postal system
via the outsourcing contracts they’ve negotiated with cooperative
Postal Service executives.
In case you haven't seen it . . . .
Introducing
the Redesigned USPS.com®
PostalReporter News: NIOSH Issues Ergonomic Report on USPS
Automatic Flat Sorting Machines at Denver, CO
National Association of Letter Carriers:
President Obama has signed into law a hard-fought measure designed
to keep America from defaulting on its credit obligations. The
agreement authorizes a two-stage, $2.1 trillion rise to the nation's
debt ceiling that's balanced with about $2.5 trillion in spending
cuts spread over the next decade. Postal employees' pensions and
health benefits are fortunately off-limits in this first round of
cuts in discretionary spending, though we will have to defend the
continuation of six-day delivery during the appropriations process.
But a second round of cuts could expose our fringe benefits to
reductions, depending on the outcome of negotiations within a
bipartisan, House-Senate select committee—the so-called "Super
Congress."
August 2, 2011
National Association of Letter Carriers: The American labor
movement has declined in membership over the past several decades,
peaking in the 1970s then steadily declining since the early 1980s.
During the same time frame, inequality between the wealthiest
Americans and working men and women has expanded alongside. While
the correlation between the two has often been assumed, a recent
Harvard study suggests that these changes are in fact directly
related.
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
The
Mailers Technical Advisory Committee has formed a new workgroup on "Enhanced
Parcel Return Processes." Its first goal is to make return
processing more efficient, reduce unnecessary handling and thereby
reduce costs. To synch with industry goal of minimizing return
postage increases and additional fees. All return flows are to be
covered such as: a) Returns processed per parcel endorsements (i.e.,
Address Service Requested, Change Service Requested, Return Service
Requested, Forwarding Requested, no endorsement). b) Returns
processed per PRS - Parcel Return Service labels and MRS –
Merchandise Return Service labels. c) Returns paid for by the
addressee. Its second goal is to eliminate confusion and lack of
detail on return options and pricing through clearer DMM language
for parcel endorsements. Perhaps develop a separate vehicle to
communicate the value of options.
Engadget: All told, data centers' energy consumption has risen
56 percent since 2005 -- a far cry from the EPAs 2007 prediction
that this figure would double by 2010, with annual costs ballooning
to $7.4 billion. Then again, this slower-than-expected growth could
well be temporary. Though Koomey can't specify to what extent the
financial crisis and technological advancements are to blame, he
insists, broadly speaking, that we're primarily seeing fallout from
the economic slowdown -- a stay of execution, of sorts, for those of
us rooting for energy conservation.
Press
Release: Bell and Howell, LLC, provider of BCC postal and data
quality solutions that optimize client communications, announces the
release of the Accurant™ AIX 64 platform. It joins Win32, Win64, and
Linux 64 as the available options for this multiplatform solution.
Accurant is Bell and Howell’s premier address validation and
standardization solution.
The latest issue of
the PostCom Bulletin is available online. In this issue:
Baltimore Sun: The post offices that serve as a defining feature
of many communities may soon be gone, but with the right reforms,
the postal service itself won't be.
AOL Government: As the chief information security officer for
the U.S. Postal Service, McGann is responsible for protecting the
integrity of information and the information infrastructure used in
operating one of the world's largest enterprises. McGann, who has
over 23 years of experience in the federal government, oversees the
security of the USPS data infrastructure, which involves over 400
business applications supporting all aspects of business and mail
operations. A significant failure of these systems could cause
delays in the processing and delivery of mail, impacting USPS's
operating costs and potentially even the country's economy. Last
month, McGann was named the new Co-Chair of U.S. Government Advisory
Board for Cyber Security at (ISC)2 the world's largest information
security professional body. He is a certified information systems
security professional (CISSP), a certified information security
manager (CISM) and holds a certification for information assurance
methodology (IAM) from the National Security Agency (NSA).
The Australian: Australia Post is entering the retail banking
market after reaching an agreement with Rural Bank to provide
banking services in regional areas. The postal service has long been
touted as a potential rival to major banks if it moves into
financial services, given its existing network of nationwide branch
services. Under the deal with Rural Bank, which is backed by Bendigo
and Adelaide Bank, customers will be able to open deposit accounts
at 1400 post offices. Rural Bank staff will be placed in 130 country
areas to offer lending services. Australia Post has consistently
ruled out a dramatic expansion into financial services. However, it
does provide some bill payment and money transfer systems. See also
the
Sydney Morning Herald.
Financial Times: Penicillin was once a wonderdrug but lost
effectiveness because it was applied too broadly. The experience of
TNT Express shows there is a similar problem with the simple
three-step process widely considered a corporate antidote to slow
old-world economic growth. The recipe: first buy up local operations
in a favourite emerging market, then apply fancy developed-world
management techniques to said emerging market and finally, watch the
cash roll in. That technique, however, led the Dutch express postal
service, which in May demerged from its snail mail unit, to a €103m
first-half loss, compared with a €51m net profit last year.
Zanesville Times Recorder: While there still are many who rely
on their village offices, the fact is there are just as many, if not
more people, who have no reason to go to the post office. The way we
communicate has drastically changed. We do not write letters to
friends and family members; we send emails or instant messages. We
can stay connected by using Skype to see and talk to those who are
thousands of miles away or just around the corner. The way we
receive and pay our bills has changed, too. We no longer need stamps
or even envelopes. And it all can be done in the worst weather
conditions at any time of the day or night. The postal service
cannot compete with the technology available to us today. It's been
incredibly slow to change with the times, and millions of dollars
will continue to be lost as it crawls toward cost-saving measures.
Eagle-Tribune: City leaders fear a plan to close the Bradford
Post Office would inconvenience people in that part of the city and
create traffic problems downtown, where the main post office is
located. Mayor James Fiorentini said he opposes closing the post
office in Bradford's Central Square and that he has written to
Haverhill's congressional representatives and top postal officials
in Washington, D.C., and Boston to ask for their help keeping it
open. Shuttering the Bradford post office would send most people who
use it to Haverhill's busy main post office downtown in Washington
Square, Fiorentini said.
Omaha World-Herald: Gov. Terry Branstad on Monday called for a
moratorium on the closing of post offices, noting that Iowa and West
Virginia are hit hardest by the U.S. Postal Service's plans to close
3,700 offices nationwide. "As governor, I believe I have a
responsibility and obligation to go to bat for those communities and
for maintaining that service," Branstad said at his weekly press
conference. "Not to say that some post offices can't or won't be
closed, but there should be a thoughtful and systematic approach
towards this; nobody will tell us what the criteria are, and the
citizens are rightly upset." Iowa could see 178 post offices closed
in the plan announced last week by the U.S. Postal Service, which
had a net loss of $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010. That comes after the
Postal Service announced that the processing and distribution
facility in Sioux City would be closed by October and the customer
service mail processing center in Fort Dodge would be shut down by
January. See also
Iowa
Politics and the
Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier.
The Northwestern: The U.S. mail processing center in Green Bay
lacks enough space to adequately absorb Oshkosh operations and is
less efficient, according to an audit released Friday. But U.S.
Postal Service officials said they still plan to close the Oshkosh
Processing and Distribution Facility and consolidate all operations
in Green Bay starting in October to save money. U.S. Rep. Tom Petri,
R-Fond du Lac, requested the audit by the Office of the Inspector
General after post office workers and Oshkosh residents raised
concerns over the merger, especially since an earlier study had
explored moving the Green Bay operation to Oshkosh.
Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan: The news last week that the
United States Postal Services (USPS) is looking at a study that
could result in the closure of 3,700 postal offices nationwide
probably isn’t real surprising, given the competition that
traditional mail service faces in this age. But it is disappointing
nonetheless, for it threatens to put a lot of rural communities in a
difficult situation in terms of mail service.
Roll Call: The U.S. Postal Service is considering shuttering the
Capitol post office, along with the other four House-side locations,
to the dismay of some Capitol Hill staff. In fact, many House
staffers do not seem to know there are five post offices in their
midst: in the Capitol, on the Cannon House Office Building’s second
floor, on the Rayburn House Office Building’s first floor, in the
Longworth House Office Building’s basement and in the Ford House
Office Building. That may be why, when asked, Members and staff said
they would not mind if the Postal Service consolidated a few of the
five locations.
The Telegraph: Adopting cloud technology has given Royal Mail
the ability to scale up and down quickly to meet demand, without
paying a premium. Royal Mail, by its own admission a very
conservative organisation, is blazing a trail in cloud computing.
Facing the threats of increased competition and privatisation, the
national postal service is under growing pressure to operate more
efficiently. For the IT department, the challenge is even greater.
Without a flexible, scalable IT infrastructure, there is a limit to
how dynamic the company can be.
KCAU: Iowa's senators and Rep. Steve King today met with the
Postmaster General about the Sioux City mail processing center. The
Iowa representatives in Congress sought the meeting to get answers
about the Postal Service's expressed intention to move this
processing center to Sioux Falls. Sens. Chuck Grassley and Tom
Harkin and King said that the Postmaster General told them the
Postal Service will provide un-redacted data and other backup
information about the study on which it's basing this decision to
local leaders in Sioux City for review. Then, the Postal Service's
vice president for area operations will go to Sioux City for a
meeting with local leaders. The Iowa representatives also said that
the Postmaster General said the Sioux City community would have an
opportunity to present a counter-proposal, the Postal Service would
take a look, and the Postal Service could potentially reconsider its
decision if there's a significant breakthrough. See also
KITV.
Postal Technology International: As more customers choose to
conduct their postal business online, on their smartphones and at
their favourite shopping destinations, the need for the US Postal
Service to maintain its nearly 32,000 retail offices – the largest
retail network in the country – diminishes.
From the Federal Register:
Postal Regulatory Commission
NOTICES Post Office Closings ,
46331–46332 [2011–19436]
[TEXT] [PDF]
46333–46334 [2011–19464]
[TEXT] [PDF]
46332–46333 [2011–19472]
[TEXT] [PDF]
46334–46335 [2011–19502]
[TEXT] [PDF]
Hellmail: Customer data from Collect+ reveals that people are
increasingly using the service to send and receive parcels outside
working hours - rejecting the rigid opening hours of traditional
drop-off points. According to Collect+, consumers have embraced the
innovative service, with a 19 per cent increase in parcels being
sent and received outside normal business hours in May 2011,
compared to October 2010 and two fifths of its transactions (41 per
cent) taking place when post offices are closed. With 98 per cent of
the 3,900 Collect+ outlets open seven days a week and, normally,
early in the morning until late at night, the service offers online
shoppers the option to pick up or drop off parcel purchases at a
time convenient to them.
Washington Post: Letter from APWU President Cliff Guffey -- "The
July 28 editorial “A better route for USPS” endorsed the strategy
that is being employed by Republican governors who use budget
deficits to attack collective-bargaining rights while ignoring other
methods of closing budget gaps.
In reply comments filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission in the
remand of the exigency case decision, the
Association for Postal Commerce, the Direct Marketing Association,
the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, and the Magazine Publishers
Association said that:
In this remand, then, the Commission has one obligation to the court: to decide the legal question of where on the spectrum of causation standards—from “due in part to” to “due only to”—the “due to” requirement of Section 3622(d)(1)(E) should be placed. . . . The Postal Service’s claim that it has done everything it reasonably can to cut costs and maximize efficiency is refuted by the extensive record in R2010-4 on this issue. . . . The notion that the Postal Service operates at the frontier of efficiency—and can do nothing further to reduce costs—is refuted by the record. There is ample evidence in the record that the Postal Service’s losses result in large part on inefficient operations, including an oversized and obsolete network of mail processing facilities; an oversized work force that receives above-market rates of compensation; a failure to prepare adequately for the eminently foreseeable loss of volume to the Internet; and a failure to respond effectively to the downturn in mail volume during the recession. The Commission’s dictum in Order No. 547 praising some of the Postal Service’s cost-cutting efforts as “commendable” does not refute these facts. . . . The Commission identified the retiree health prefunding payments as the “principal cause” of the Postal Service’s financial crisis. Order No. 547 at 68. In doing so, it recognized that the primary cause of the Postal Service’s need for additional revenue was not the recession, but a non-exigent circumstance.
August 1, 2011
At the
Postal Regulatory
Commission:
DMM Advisory: Reply Rides Free Up to Two Ounces. On Friday, July 29, 2011, we initiated a filing with the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) about the Reply Rides Free Program, requesting that the weight requirement to receive credit for qualifying First-Class Mail® letters weighing more than 1 ounce be raised from “no more than 1.2 ounces” to “no more than 2 ounces.” After PRC review, we plan on making this change available to customers beginning September 1, 2011, and the change will be incorporated into the September 6, 2011, Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®). For additional information, see the PRC filing.
August DMM Update. Postal Explorer® (pe.usps.com) is your source for up-to-date mailing standards. The Domestic Mail Manual (DMM®) is fully searchable on Postal Explorer and features fly-out menus, cross-reference links, and an extensive subject index. Today, we updated our mailing standards to capture the following changes:
Media Mail and Library Mail—Consolidation Ee revised 170, 370, and 470 to combine the standards for Media Mail® and Library Mail. With that combination, sections 180, 380, and 480 are eliminated.
Use of Precanceled Stamps—Clarification We revised 234, 244, 334, 344, 434, 444 and 604.3.0 to clarify standards for use of precanceled stamps and the use of mailer's precancel postmarks.
MetroWest Daily News: In both urban and rural areas of the
country, many of the potential closures seem to disproportionately
affect poor communities and people without transportation to nearby
branches and without the means to access postal services via the
Internet. That's why it is important for the postal customers and
public officials representing these communities to make their voices
heard.
Federal Times: The Postal Regulatory Commission has laid out an
expedited schedule for considering the U.S. Postal Service’s plans
to close up to about 3,650 post offices. The bottom line is that the
public phase of the commission’s review will take about three
months, with an advisory opinion presumably coming fairly soon
after.
Make Way For www.---.post. The Universal Postal Union (UPO) obtained exclusive rights to the “.post” top-level domain in December 2009. The .post domain will allow postal operators and customers to connect quickly and securely within a global physical/digital network. It will also provide a platform for the postal community to deploy digital products and offer a variety of services. Should the Postal Service use .post as a platform for offering digital services? Share your thoughts on our blog.
Computer Weekly: The idea that business and technology are
intertwined is evident in the management structure at FedEx - the
global CIO, Robert Carter, is a member of the executive board and
co-CEO of FedEx Services, which provides IT, customer services and
sales and marketing support to the company. Web services automate
and simplify processes The company now offers a suite of web
services, electronic trade documents and international shipping
software, all building on the information FedEx knows about the
packages being shipped. The web services enable its customers to
automate aspects of their logistics business processes. Package
shipping, in particular international package shipping, can be
complex. FedEx has built IT systems to enable its customers to
manage and simplify their shipping experience. From internet-based
shipping on fedex.com through to shipping servers that can be
integrated with a customer's individual fulfillment needs, FedEx
offers applications it says meet the needs of both simple and
complex customer situations. For international shippers, FedEx has
deployed an Electronic Trade Documents service, which allows
customers to submit customs documents to FedEx prior to the shipment
being collected.
Wall Street Journal: Delivery and freight company TNT Express NV
on Monday reported an 85% drop in second-quarter net profit as
improved profitability in Europe was offset by steeper losses in
other regions as well as restructuring costs. In Asia-Pacific, TNT
said it was unable to fully utilize its planes flying from Asia to
Europe and blamed higher wage and fuel costs. Its Brazilian revenue
continued to fall as it struggled to merge two delivery companies it
bought last year, causing large clients to take their business
elsewhere. However, in Europe—where TNT is market leader—it
benefited from higher prices and lower costs, offsetting rising fuel
prices.
Palladium-Item: The longer USPS waited to innovate, the more
drastic the changes needed to be and the more frequently it
increased the price for stamps. This lumbering giant now is getting
around to making tough decisions that should have been made 25 years
ago.
PR-Inside: Stamps.com®, a provider of USPS® postage online : and
shipping software : to approximately 400,000 customers, today
announced that it recently introduced PC Postage Version 8.9
software which includes new features to help e-commerce sellers and
high volume shippers save money.
News-Press: Run government like a business — but on second
thought, don’t. That’s the double-talk coming from some members of
Congress who demand fiscal responsibility but dig in their heels and
say no when it comes to making unpopular choices. No sooner was
Tuesday’s closing announcement made than some members of Congress
began to howl in protest, especially those from rural areas, who
made it clear they intend to fight the change. There’s also
resistance to ending Saturday delivery. But while the local closings
would inconvenience some, they would not end the world.
Zanesville Times Recorder: While a complete change away from
"snail mail" is not going to happen anytime soon as the postal
service still provides a needed service, officials aren't being
proactive enough. Officials need to act more quickly to stave off
the losses, instead of plugging small holes in a dam full of leaks.
The postal service cannot compete with the technology available to
us today. It's been incredibly slow to change with the times, and
millions of dollars will continue to be lost as it crawls toward
cost-saving measures.
Post & Parcel: Royal Mail has asked regulator Postcomm for
permission to make a number of changes to the operator’s terms and
conditions that would bring it “more in line with other delivery
companies”. The company wants to introduce a pilot scheme to leave
undeliverable parcels with neighbours when the no-one is at home and
the item of mail is too large to go through the letter box. Royal
Mail would also like to amend the compensation amounts available for
business contract customers, a change which would not affect
consumers. The vast majority of small business customers use stamped
and franked mail and parcels and would also not be affected, the
company said. See also
The Guardian.
Hattiesburg American: Just about everyone agrees the Postal
Service must be streamlined, but closing offices will be difficult
and time-consuming. But even then the Postal Service's problems
won't be over. The closures, along with increases in the price of
stamps, may simply prolong the downward spiral. The question for
Americans is how much longer they're willing to pay the escalating
price of personal service; of postal workers hand-ladling mail into
boxes, whether in front of a home or a short way down the street; of
being able to buy stamps at a counter labeled "USPS."
Post-Bulletin: It's safe to say that over the next few years,
the United States Postal Service will consider every available
option in its never-ending effort to streamline, cut costs and
increase revenue. A painful part of that cost-cutting process,
unfortunately, is already beginning to play out in thousands of
small towns across the nation.
Hellmail: The Finnish postal service has announced an operating
loss of EUR 3.4 million (operating profit of EUR 12.1 million),
representing -0.4% (+1.3%) of net sales.
The Kansas City Star: It’s time to rethink the mission and
meaning of the United States Postal Service. The old model is
breaking, if not broken. For centuries, America communicated, did
business and socialized through mail delivery. To say the Postal
Service is no longer needed is clearly wrong. Sadly, to ensure the
health of an institution, it’s time for Americans to wave goodbye to
Saturday delivery. Thousands of underused post offices will and must
be closed.
