August 20, 2015 The Postal Service is working on phase two of POStPlan, its initiative to reduce hours and staffing at half the country’s post offices. From September 2012 through February 2015, the Postal Service implemented phase one — 13,000 small post offices had their hours reduced from eight a day to six, four, or…
August 17, 2015 Earlier this month Dakotafire Media published a couple of very good articles about the ownership arrangements for post offices. It’s an important issue, since about three-fourths of the country’s post offices operate in spaces leased by the Postal Service. As noted in a recent OIG report, the Postal Service leases more than…
Immediate Release – July 26, 2015 Dozens of postal workers, retirees, and community allies turned out Sunday to celebrate the 240th birthday of the US Post Office. Postal unions have called on President Obama to declare July 26th Postal Heritage Day. Chanting, marching through the Main Post Office in downtown Portland, singing and eating birthday…
July 20, 2015 Last week the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provided an estimate for how much it would cost the Postal Service to return to the service standards that were in effect on July 1, 2012. Going back to these standards for delivery times is one of the provisions in a proposed amendment attached to…
April 30, 2015 The Postal Service’s Office of Inspector General has issued its fourth report criticizing the Postal Service’s oversight of the contract with its real estate broker, CBRE. It’s entitled “Postal Service Management of CBRE Real Estate Transactions.” The OIG finds fault with both the leasing deals and the sales of postal property, and…
April 9, 2015 The Postal Service is proposing to change the way it measures the on-time service performance of First Class Mail. Instead of contracting a third-party to evaluate how long it takes for the mail to be delivered, the Postal Service wants to count the days itself. The change requires the approval of the Postal…
Last week Newsweek ran an opinion piece entitled “Do We Need a Postal Service?” It originally appeared on the website of the Brookings Institute with the title, “The U.S. Postal Service’s existential problem.” “The U.S. Postal Service has an existential problem,” begins the op-ed, and twice more in the space of just 840 words it…
April 1, 2015 Last week I wrote a post about the Postal Service’s new employee survey, Postal Pulse. The Pulse replaces the Voice of the Employee (VOE), which the Postal Service has been using for the past 17 years. The Pulse is now being administered to over 600,000 postal workers, and the Postmaster General is…
