If you were in attendance at the Industry Meeting of May 7, you will recall that the members voted unanimously to make the following resolution:
“It is the sense of the MTAC membership that the USPS should
continue its commitment to Product Redesign and to report on
the status of all of the recommendations of industry in order to
understand why the project has not been moving forward as
envisioned.”
Below is the USPS written response to the resolution, as well as verbal response from Anita Bizzotto, Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer
“Thanks
to the diligent efforts of many of our industry partners,
passage
of the Civil Service Retirement System legislation is behind us.
Associated with this is the Postal Service promise for postal rates to remain
stable until 2006. We recognize that this offers us an almost
unprecedented window of opportunity to move forward with changes that build on
our successes and help us grow the business by implementing some of the
innovative ideas developed in our Product Redesign work groups. I understand
that many of you and many of the work group participants have a sense that
movement on the Product Redesign ideas is not progressing as rapidly as it
should. I think that may be due to a dearth of external communication
rather than the lack of activity on the part of the Postal Service to move
forward.
We
would like to get the Steering Committee together as soon as possible to discuss
our plans to move forward and to receive your input about how to proceed with
ideas that can be implemented soon, without going to the PRC, and well as with
those ideas that will need to go to the PRC. Hopefully, we can dispel your
concerns about a lack of activity and you will agree that we have not lost our
focus. We also understand that our plans need to be clearly communicated
to our external stakeholders and we will ensure that happens.”
Verbal
In
a telecom on May 9, Anita Bizzotto assured Joe Lubenow and me that the Postal
Service is committed to move forward with Product Redesign.
She further stated that while a full Product Redesign classification case
may not go to the Postal Rate Commission in the next two years, most of the
initiatives could be advanced as either “Options” (non-classification
changes) or Niche classifications.
The Product Redesign Steer Committee is scheduled to meet on May 19. As noted above the results of this meeting will be clearly communicated to USPS stakeholders. At that time, we will have a further opportunity to express our opinions