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.
August 27th, 2006 14:40
your said
“Burrus might be better off looking for more lucrative buyout options than trying to protect unnecessary plants”
will you help change the law, as it now stands buyout are not permitted.
August 27th, 2006 15:27
go read this it might give a better picture!
http://www.postcom.org/public/2006/burrus.letter.08.06.pdf
August 27th, 2006 16:30
Changing the law is the kind of thing Burrus ought to be working on- along with coming to some kind of consensus with the other postal stakeholders on postal reform, not grandstanding against the postal services’s customers.
August 29th, 2006 00:28
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.
You are trying to say that big mailers are paying well enough to be concidered (paying USPS salaries) this is not even close to the truth. The big mailers (thanks to USPS upper management) are a drain on the USPS and provide no profits.
Due to this the USPS management have been trying to hold to the true budget coming in from Foreign mail, Express mail, Priority Mail and First class mail.
The big mailers provide work without profits! In what way does this benefit the works? You are saying workers should get use to doing more work for less money. This is already occurring elsewhere as the country freefalls into depression thanks to the greed at the top, not real business concerns.
We can do without the freeloaders!
p.s. tell you what, how about letting the letting the largest groups you receive money from having their advertising for 60% off! You others writting here can take money cuts to make up the difference.
This is what will happen if the greed trend does not stop your pay will be a target as well and the greed at the top will get it in the end as well, once they ruin the economy.
August 29th, 2006 05:46
Rambo-
It might help if you had some data to back up your argument. Let’s say you’re right, though, that the big mailers are a drain on the PO. So get rid of them- and what are you left with for revenue? $15 billion from single piece mail, $3 billion from Express and Priority, another $4 billion from packages, services and international. That’s $22 billion. The evil “Big Mailers” paid you $33 billion. So are you going to get rid of 60% of the employees when you chuck 60% of the revenue?
August 29th, 2006 15:49
As a former bulk mail tech my problem with direct mailers that I had for so called customers is that most of them are stupid or crooks. there is no way that every mistake made with a mailing, without fail always took money from the usps and put it in their pockets.Not one time while I worked in bmeu did I find a mailing that was over paid.I think this rules out stupid so what does it leave crooks.I don’t think any business needs nor wants customers like that.
August 29th, 2006 18:05
The price a big mailer pays for 1 piece of mail, doesn’t even cover the cost of mailing it! The Domestic Mail Manual is so outdated that upper management knows this but is unwilling to change it. And why you may ask? Is because these same upper management will be working for these same mailing companies when they retire or resign. Great scam don’t you think? This why we (postal workers) dislike big mailers so much because they are skimming money from 1st class mailers (like me and others). That is why postage goes up, not from workers, but from big mailers. The big mailers also want to consolidate plants so it will leave small businesses in the position to use their services (IE:force them).
It all boils down that the people’s guaranteed service will become the corporation’s guaranteed service. And if people don’t start fighting back for their postal service, maybe our corrupt corporations will change the constitution to read… WE THE CORPORATIONS…
August 29th, 2006 20:54
Mike and Chris-
You both have strong opinions, but neither of you offer a solution to the problem you say exists. Like I said in my comment to Rambo, if you get rid of 60% of the revenue, you have to get rid of 60% of the expenses. The vast majority of postal expense is employee’s salaries. So getting rid of the big mailers means getting rid of 60% of your fellow employees. Do you really think that’s better than trying to grow the business, the way a normal enterprise would? How is shrinking the post office’s market going to help anyone?
August 30th, 2006 20:50
Brian,read my statement. We don’t need customers like we have.Their permits should be pulled and in a free market they will be replaced by honest mailers,ones that can abide by the rules instead of screwing the po every chance they get.
November 22nd, 2006 02:12
Wow, Brian you are right. If we get rid of 60% of the revenue, we have to get rid of 60% of the expenses. These large junk mailers, while annoying as they are filling our boxes with…junk that gets immediately recycled, are a necessary evil. If like Mike the Retard says we get “honest” mailers, they won’t have the profit margins to want to stay in business and they too will resort to electronic advertising or bill payment or anything else they can think of.
I came here to do research on a simple college econ project. It’s amazing our mail gets anywhere….they’re all idiots.