USPS asks to expand test of grocery delivery: Some CCAs about to get even busier

July 9, 2016 The U.S. Postal Service wants to expand and extend its test of same-day grocery deliveries but isn’t ready yet to take the venture nationwide. The agency asked the Postal Regulatory Commission on Friday to extend the two-year test for another year, to October 31, 2017, and for permission to enter new markets….

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Survey Says: The USPS Is a Terrible Place to Work

Saturday, April 30, 2016 An organizational tumor that has festered within the U.S. Postal Service for years burst into public view this week at exactly the wrong time. An employee survey that postal officials tried to keep under wraps proves what countless postal workers have been saying for years: The USPS is generally a horrible,…

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Good Money After Bad? Mailers Try to Block FSS Expansion

Monday, April 18, 2016 Where the U.S. Postal Service sees an opportunity to expand the Flats Sequencing System to more ZIP codes, mailers see a backdoor rate increase. Postal officials recently told mailing-industry representatives that declining volumes and some equipment upgrades are creating excess capacity for the FSS. At a meeting of the Mailers Technical…

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Slower Service, Higher Costs: USPS’s Phase II Debacle

February 20, 2016 The U.S. Postal Service’s aborted attempt to save money by consolidating its processing facilities backfired: It actually increased costs in 2015, USPS officials recently acknowledged. Higher transportation expenses from Phase II of the USPS’s “Network Rationalization” effort more than wiped out the program’s savings on labor and parts, the Postal Service told…

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Postal Service Revs Up Its Hiring

February 13, 2016 The U.S. Postal Service hopes to bring on 125,000 new employees this year, continuing a recent hiring binge caused by the agency’s blossoming package-delivery business. The agency hired 117,000 new workers during Fiscal Year 2015, virtually all of them into non-career positions, postal officials said Thursday in a document presented to the…

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USPS Backing Down on Saturday Mail Delivery

January 19, 2016 Postal officials are ready to raise the white flag in their six-year battle to end Saturday delivery of letters and flat mail. Postal-reform legislation with broad-based support is gradually taking shape in Congress, Deputy Postmaster General told last week’s meeting of the Mailers Technical Advisory Council (MTAC), according to PostCom Bulletin. “In…

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Holiday Shipping Boosted USPS Overtime

Thursday, January 7, 2016 U.S. Postal Service employees were unusually busy during late December, which apparently confirms projections that the agency’s package business experienced dramatic growth during the holidays. In the pay period from Dec. 13 to Dec. 26, overtime increased 15% over the same period last year, while total workhours were up more than…

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Report Predicts Major USPS Downsizing – But Is It on Target?

January 2, 2016 Here we go again: Yet another government study has spurred news stories about how the U.S. Postal Service is on the verge of massive downsizing. “The next decade isn’t expected to be kind to postal worker employment,” stated U.S. News & World Report recently, based on a new Bureau of Labor Statistics…

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