Newspaper coverage of the various plant consolidation controversies has been sloppy, but this story from the Akron Beacon Journal takes the cake. According to ace reporter Ed Meyer, the plan to shift mail processing operations from Canton to Akron was “put together by the Bush administration and the Government Accountability Office”. Uh oh.

The rest of the story is pretty much what we’ve heard before- the APWU says shifting the work will delay the mail, and the Mayor of Canton says the city will lose its identity if it loses its postmark. (I’ll resist the urge to make a smart remark about what the “identity” of Canton, OH might consist of currently.)

The idea does sound pretty far-fetched- after all, it is all of 23 miles from Canton to Akron! Imagine that! How could they possible get mail from one city to the other (and back!) in less than a week?

Canton letters could get loopy

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.

The following commentary is by Clint Burleson, President of the Olympia, Washington local of the American Postal Workers Union:

There are plenty of problems with the Postal Service decision to move the cancellation, postmark and sorting of the outgoing mail from Olympia to Tacoma.  But now the Postal Service has admitted that they have possible plans to sort the outgoing Olympia and Tacoma mail in Seattle, which will further increase the problems.   Read the rest of this entry »

The LA Daily News story about lengthy delays in processing mail in Los Angeles is a serious matter by itself (see Congressman Waxman’s letter requesting a full investigation by the OIG). But it should also serve as yet another reminder to the USPS that the public, the media and the politicians have a very different view of what service means than we sometimes do.

In discussing proposed consolidations, USPS spokespersons have focused on overnight delivery standards, while the APWU has raised a host of other issues, from collection box cutoff times to delivery times. That has allowed the union to argue that all it’s concerned about is the welfare of our customers, not the convenience of its members. Regardless of how you feel about that, you can’t deny that it worked in Rockford.

If Rockford and the other AMP controversies demonstrated a broadened view of ’service’, the LA case show that one piece of paper can drastically narrow the focus. Henry Waxman doesn’t care what LA’s overnight EXFC score was in Quarter 3- he wants to know why there was six day old first class mail in the inventory on May 4, 2006.

According to the local TV station, the city of Rockford Illinois must be sitting on the edge of its collective seat this morning. WIFR reports that the “fate” of the Rockford processing plant will be announced today. That may or may not be the case, but the story at least provided a local politician with another opportunity to milk the alleged controversy. Congressman Don Manzullo is quoted as saying: “When you start off with the premise that Rockford has probably the finest cancellation service in the country, you can only come to one conclusion…that it should stay open”.

“The finest cancellation service in the country”? What does that even mean? No smudges?

Postal Service Announcement to Come Monday

Update: It’s official!

The finely crafted Rockford cancellation lives! Good for the employees! Having been through a number of boneheaded, arbitrary reorganizations myself, I can sympathize with the workers who would have ended up moving to other jobs and locations.

I can’t help thinking that management missed the boat on this one, though. Its clumsy PR efforts allowed the APWU and local politicians to set the agenda and monopolize the discussion. Maybe the Rockford move made sense, and maybe it didn’t- we’ll never know now. It certainly doesn’t bode well for the future of the USPS’s network redesign plans.

I enjoy Azeez Jaffer’s responses to anti-postal newspaper columns, editorials, etc., as much as anyone, but I sometimes wonder if he’s missing the Postal Service’s real PR problem. Sending off another clever letter to the editor complaining about the use of the phrase “going postal” may be satisfying, but in the long run, what difference does it really make?

Meanwhile, we seem to be either shooting ourselves in the foot when we deal with postal reform in DC, or burying our head in the sand when it comes to dealing with plant consolidations in the field. Why can KFOX in El Paso say that they’ve waited months for someone from the El Paso Post Office to talk to them? Why can Senator Harkin complain that we won’t tell him what our plans are for Sioux City? Why are we letting the mailers, unions, and politicians do all the talking?

Why are we wasting our time going postal over “going postal” when there are more important things to worry about?

From  Bill Lewis, President, APWU Trenton Metro Area Local

On April 17, 2006 the parties convened to discuss the excessing of Kilmer and Trenton impacted employees.  The manager of labor relations informed me that Trenton was not going to be discussed.  I questioned him as to why was I invited,  he informed me I was invited because I was the NJ state president.  I was shocked because only 3 months ago when Monmouth was excessing I was barred from attending the meeting, reason being, I was too disruptive.  Read the rest of this entry »

Statement by Clint Burelson, President, Olympia Local, American Postal Workers Union

Union and community resistance to Postal Service consolidation plans are making big corporate mailers such as Time Warner nervous.  Read the rest of this entry »

WASHINGTON, April 7 — The office of Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, issued the following press release:

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) today announced that the United States Postal Service (USPS) will hold a meeting on the proposed consolidation of the Siouxland Mail Processing Operations. The meeting will take place Thursday, April 20th at 10 AM at the Sioux City Convention and Conference Center on 801 Fourth Street. The meeting will be open to concerned residents and attended by Sioux City Chamber and government officials, Harkin staff and representatives of the USPS.

Read the rest of this entry »

The following is a letter to the editor of the Olympian from Clint Burelson, President of the Olympia Local of the American Postal Workers Union:

The Olympian’s editorial, “Let the Postmark Go,” and its articles concerning mail consolidation failed to report important information relevant to the issue of mail consolidation in general and the Olympia consolidation in particular. 

Read the rest of this entry »