Sounds fair to me!

OK, so maybe that won’t work- but neither will going the other way and eliminating workshare discounts. I don’t understand the arguments of people like Bill Burrus, and the readers who posted comments on the BMG story, who claim that big mailers are getting unfair discounts. This may come as a surprise to Bill, but when my electric company sends me my statement, they don’t take up a collection among the shareholders to come up with the postage money. It’s a business expense- the customer pays it- me! So if they can get a few cents off the postage by presorting, it’s to my advantage, too! And the same goes for Aunt Minnie’s subscription to Rolling Stone- take away the discount, and she’s the one who’s going to foot the bill, not Jann Wenner.

So let’s get real about this- the APWU doesn’t like automation discounts because they don’t like automation, not because there’s anything unfair about the discounts. And they don’t like automation for one obvious, and perfectly understandable reason- it costs the APWU members. Notice that I didn’t say it costs jobs- jobs may disappear, but not one person loses his or her job. People who leave aren’t replaced, and in some cases, employees end up having to commute further or work a different shift, but they don’t get laid off. As I pointed out a while back, it’s difficult to work up a lot of sympathy among the general public for people who have ‘jobs for life’, but who may have to work a different shift because of changes in the way mail gets worked. It’s much easier from a PR perspective to rant about evil business tycoons, or the shame of not having a postmark to call your own.

The APWU, and the BMG commenters, are right to argue against unreasonable consolidation proposals, and to try to keep postal work in house. But a scorched earth policy of demonizing the customers who pay their salaries isn’t the way to do it.

Postalnews.com (a web site frequented by postal employees) posted yesterday a letter from a BMG-Columbia House to the USPS’ chief operating officer which said that current USPS rate plans threaten to put his company out of business. The following are excerpts from some of the comments posted by some of the visitors to this site.

“Fantastic…..the less mail, the less work!!!!!!!”

“Quit selling the Cd’s and DVD’s for 1 penny for the first order jackasses. Make up the shortfall there and you can then absorb some of the increase and pass the remainder on to the customer. The Constitution calls for Congress to establish this mail service and all men are created equal but don’t see where it says businesses are created equal. Guess your lobbyists aren’t greasing the right palms.”

“It’s the beginning of the end.”

“Another rate increase? Do rate increases make up for lost business, or is business lost due to rate increases?”

“Out of business so what? Technology is changing. The car put the buggy business out of business, the internet, not postage will put these dolts out of business.”

“Their products end up seeming just like rackets anyway. good riddance.”

“They ship at media mail rates for next to nothing. Goodbye BMG and Columbia house.

Quite a collection. You’d never know they were talking about one of their “customers.”