Let the USPS handle your luggage?
With all the hysteria that followed the alleged terrorist plot to blow up airliners a few weeks ago, it was probably inevitable that someone would suggest doing away with luggage altogether. A piece in Ground Support magazine does just that. So how would you get your stuff to your destination?
Allow the United States Postal Service along with 4,000 parcel carriers to handle baggage that is currently carried by the airline industry and directed by a leader of the luggage movement industry.
Fractured syntax aside, who do you suppose the “leader of the luggage movement industry” might be who would direct this? Well, the author of the piece, Richard Altomare, is CEO of Universal Express, which says its business is to “facilitate and manage the movement of baggage door to door for leisure and business travelers”. And if the phrase “luggage movement industry” is new to you- don’t feel bad. A google search produced only three hits, all of them to pieces written by Mr. Altomare.
Federal Times calls on Potter to act on Jaffer case, or step down
In a sternly worded editorial, the Federal Times last week called on Postmaster General Jack Potter to take action against disgraced former executive Azeezaly Jaffer, or make way for “a new leadership team”. The paper points out that “Jaffer’s alleged improprieties were known and apparently tacitly accepted for years before he finally resigned in June”.
The editorial, published in the August 21 print edition of the paper, asserts that “What has been sorely absent here is basic leadership from Postmaster General John Potter”, that both the PMG and the Office of Inspector General “failed to take allegations against Jaffer seriously when they first surfaced, and he failed to ensure that the proper controls were in place to prevent the kind of wasteful spending exemplified in the IG report”.
The piece concludes: “Potter and the leadership of the Postal Service have a choice to make now. The IG report documents a strong case, depicting a public official who ran amok with his official credit card, sexually harassed fellow employees and abused his trusted position. If Potter doesn’t think that merits criminal or other punitive action, perhaps it is time for a new leadership team to take charge of the U.S. Postal Service.”
MFSA looking for reports of BMEU problems
According to an entry on the WindowBook blog, the Mailing & Fulfillment Service Association is looking for “examples of inconsistency” in mail verification and acceptance by the USPS. Specifically, the MFSA is looking for:
situations in which your DMU or BMEU has failed to correctly apply or perform the established mail verification and acceptance procedures (whether with MERLIN or other activities), failed to demonstrate awareness or understanding of the applicable standards and processes, or was inconsistent in applying or interpreting DMM standards, it’s important that you send me a detailed and specific report.
How to fire an employee
If you’re a postal employee, you know that while it’s not easy to get a postal job, it’s even more difficult to get fired from one. So I was surprised to see an article in Inc. that explained the rights and wrongs of firing, and held up a postal supervisor as an example of the right way to fire someone- it’s an interesting article, regardless of your personal viewpoint.
Pluto: collectible or clearance item?
There is a web site for every interest- who knew that there was one devoted to “space collectibles”? collectSPACE.com reports that yesterday’s decision by the International Astronomical Union to remove Pluto from the list of planets might make items that include the tiny “dwarf planet” more valuable. And one of those items is the set of ten ‘planet’ stamps issued by the USPS in 1991.
Yuma: the little town that time forgot?
It sounds like an item from the Lake Wobegon Herald Star: “Post offices dump ticket system in favor of stand-in-line system“. But it’s apparently for real- one of the “Top News” stories in the Yuma Sun actually reports on a postal service announcement that “from now on, customers should simply form a line when visiting the post office to ship a package or pick up some stamps”.
Prior to this, apparently, they’d been using one of those numbered ticket machines you see in delis or bakeries.
The postmaster seems excited but cautious about this daring innovation: “I haven’t heard any comments yet. It’s pretty fresh,” he said, adding that this is the local post office’s slowest season without the winter visitors. “Plus, it’s only August. October and November might be a truer test of the new and improved system. I think it’s going to be pretty dramatic in the winter months.”
Yuma- on the cutting edge!
Do postal employees hate their customers?
I almost titled this piece Why do postal employees hate their customers? You would certainly get the impression from some of the comments posted on postalnews.com, that most postal employees do indeed detest the people who pay their salaries. Now obviously you have to take comments posted anonymously online with an enormous grain of salt, but given the overwhelmingly negative comments, you’ve got to think that the attitude is pretty widespread.
I know that many of the commenters would protest that it isn’t their customers that they hate, it’s the Big Mailers. Which is one of those strange things about the postal service- when postal employees (myself included) think of the word “customer”, we think of the people we deliver to, or serve at the window, or talk to on the telephone.
Most dictionaries, though, would tell you that a customer is “one that buys goods or services”. And who buys the postal service’s goods? Just about everyone in the country. But if you look a little deeper into the revenue reports, you’ll find that of the $55 billion the USPS took in over the first three quarters, only $15.5 billion was from single piece letters, flats and cards. The vast majority of the revenue, and all of the growth came from presorted (i.e. “workshared”) first class (up 1.5%), and the various standard (don’t call it ‘junk mail’) classes (up 2%).
Single piece first class mail volume was down 2.7% from the prior year. Aunt Minnie just isn’t sending as many letters. Like it or not, our biggest customer is Advo.
So why then do so many postal employees, and union heads like Bill Burrus, seem to despise the people who are paying most of their salaries? The most obvious answer seems to be simple short-sightedness. It’s much easier to rail against plant consolidations than it is to respond with well-reasoned alternatives. Burrus might be better off looking for more lucrative buyout options than trying to protect unnecessary plants. Keeping every small plant open will win votes in the union elections, but it might not insure that the USPS is still around when it comes time for younger workers to retire.
The other problem some employees have with big mailers is the perception that they’re somehow getting a free ride- that workshare discounts go too far. Well, maybe they do- but the idea that raising prices will force the mailers to come up with their ‘fair share’ is naive, to say the least. Mailers are in business to make money, period. Raise the price, for whatever reason, and you change the equation, and to some extent, you lose business, and revenue. It doesn’t have anything to do with fairness, or right or wrong.
The bottom line is that the mailers and the postal workers need each other- they should be working together to safeguard the postal service they both depend on, rather than sniping at each other.
It’s the unions, particularly the APWU, that have the most to lose in all this. If the USPS has to keep raising prices because it can’t trim costs, advertisers will find alternatives to direct mail- there are plenty of them out there. Financial services providers will continue to up the incentives for electronic fund transfers rather than shell out more for postage. The growth in workshared and standard volume will slow, and eventually decline. Where does that leave the APWU’s members?
I don’t envy Bill Burrus- he’s in an extremely difficult position, representing the postal workers whose jobs are most at risk from modernization and automation. But demonizing the people who pay his members salaries isn’t going to do him, or them, any good.
Newman makes list of greatest fictional New Yorkers
Yes, ahead of Holly Golightly, Travis Bickle, and even Ralph Kramden, he’s number 12 on the list. Everyone’s favorite postal worker with the poorly developed socialization skills and intense desire to transfer to Hawaii. I have to take issue with one item in the story, though- the Memorable Quote offered is “Hello, Jerry”. Well, maybe, but as a postal worker myself, I can still hear Newman explaining that postal workers ‘go postal’…
…Because the mail never stops. It just keeps coming and coming and coming. There’s never a letup. It’s relentless. Every day it piles up more and more, but the more you get out, the more it keeps coming. And then the bar code reader breaks. And then it’s Publisher’s Clearinghouse day.
Pleeeease don’t standardize this one!
Another interesting Post Office spotted on Flickr- in Kaweah California, not far from Sequoia National Park. There’a also a picture of the same building taken in 1910 at this historic photo archive that shows how little it has changed over the years. Kaweah turns out to be a pretty interesting place- it was founded by a Danish-American socialist as a utopian community in 1886. Click here for more on the community’s history.
Bill Young goes all bushy at convention
I guess turnabout is fair play- if George Bush and the Republicans can demagogue the so-called war on terror every chance they get, why can’t a labor leader use it every now and then? That must have been Bill Young’s reasoning when he decided to tell NALC delegates at the union’s convention that “In the midst of a global war on terror, now is not the time to open a hole in the nation’s defenses by giving unscreened, contingent workers access to the mail stream.”
Come on, Bill- you’re about as worried about terrorism as Bill Burrus is about service standards. Contracting out delivery is bad for your members because it will cost them their jobs, and it’s bad for the country because it furthers the right wing agenda that seeks to deprive American workers of their rights and benefits. It’s got nothing to do with terrorism.
Young Warns That Contracting Out Mail Delivery Could Weaken Nation’s Defense Against Terrorism