Postmaster General Pat Donahoe may be having his difficulties with Congress, but he can take solace in one fact: Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle still use the mail. Among the correspondence Donahoe received this week: A Wednesday letter from 43 senators pressing him to extend the U.S. Postal Service’s self-imposed freeze on post office and processing plant closings. That moratorium is currently set to expire May 15; the group of mostly Democratic senators wants the Postal Service to hold off on any closures until Congress approves a comprehensive fix for the mail carrier’s problems. “We are deeply concerned that the closing…
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Financially, the U.S. Postal Service has been performing a bit better than expected lately. Politically, that could be bad news for the mail carrier. Why? Because USPS leaders have banked on a sense of crisis to rouse Congress to agree to some heavy-duty service cuts. The faintest glimmer of hope may be all it takes to persuade lawmakers to let the Postal Service instead muddle through until after the November elections–if not longer. “Congress is never going to really do something final until it knows the clock has run out, the money has run out, it’s got no choice,” said Gene Del…
On Capitol Hill, members of Congress have had plenty to say about alleged abuse of the federal workers’ compensation program. Ricky Cook would like to offer a different view. “I’m very upset at the perception that everybody who’s on workman’s compensation is abusing it,” Cook, a Federal Aviation Administration employee in the Kansas City, Kansas area, said in a phone interview this week. “That’s just not the case.” Cook, who had been an air traffic control supervisor, suffered lasting spinal damage in an on-the-job accident in 2007. He was out of work for almost two years. Although the FAA eventually…
As anyone who follows postal matters knows, the Senate this afternoon approved legislation aimed at putting the U.S. Postal Service back on its feet financially. But the USPS Board of Governors just put out the following statement indicating that it’s anything but happy with the outcome. Here’s the statement in full, following by separate comments from Postmaster General Pat Donahoe: “The Board, in working with management, has spent the past two years preparing a comprehensive business plan to make the Postal Service viable so it would not become a liability to the American people. This plan was validated by outside…
Looks like the Senate’s going to be very busy next Tuesday with rapid-fire voting on more than three dozen amendments to S. 1789, the postal overhaul legislation. According to a message this evening from the office of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., the amendments pertain to everything from post office closings to unions to compensation for U.S. Postal Service executives. There’s also one from Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., that would require more reporting by government agencies on conference spending. (Hmm–FedLine can’t imagine what prompted that.) Anyway, for the hard-core postal aficionados out there (and in the interest of open government), here’s the portion…
Politicians are fond of invoking the elderly on behalf of a favored cause, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., took that gambit to a new level yesterday when discussing S. 1789, a bill intended to keep the U.S. Postal Service afloat. Who knew that the only thing connecting Gramps to the rest of us were auto insurance come-ons and grocery store fliers? Here, straight from a transcript in the Congressional Record, is Reid’s take on one reason for saving the Postal Service. For seniors who cannot leave their homes, mail carriers deliver lifesaving medications—an important link to the outside world. Elderly…
Well, that didn’t take long. Less than a month after National Association of Letter Carriers President Fredric Rolando said the union was “committed” to reaching agreement on a new labor contract through mediation, it’s now headed to binding arbitration with the U.S. Postal Service, according to a release posted on a USPS site. The arbitration process will wrap up later this year, the Postal Service said. A NALC spokesman had no immediate comment this morning. The news comes three months after impasses were declared in the Postal Service’s negotiations with both the NALC and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union.…
Six months after its hiring by the National Association of Letter Carriers, the Lazard Group is out with recommendations for turning around the U.S. Postal Service. Not surprisingly, the Wall Street firm doesn’t see salvation in USPS management’s current strategy, which involves cutting lots of jobs, post offices and processing plants. “Instead of focusing on shrinking its network and capabilities, the Postal Service needs an ambitious rethinking of its business model,” says the six-page “white paper.” As an alternative, Lazard calls on the Postal Service to exploit its “last mile” delivery advantage to keep expanding its parcel business and offer…
Even if fewer people mail their income tax returns in this era of electronic everything, plenty of last-minute filers will likely be showing up at post offices today to meet the IRS’ deadline. Two unions plan to use the opportunity to press their case against proposed U.S. Postal Service cutbacks. The American Postal Workers Union and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union are teaming up to do “informational leafleting” at numerous post offices around the country, particularly those that draw media coverage because they stay open late. “We’re trying to just educate the public as to what would happen to the…
The focus of a congressional hearing last week was on the U.S. Postal Service’s desire to create its own employee health insurance plan. But Postmaster General Pat Donahoe also had something intriguing to say about the possibility of some kind of employee buyout program. Asked by one lawmaker whether he had any plans or suggestions to “incentivize” retirement for workers who are eligible to leave, Donahoe said this (according to a transcript): “We do plan on issuing some incentives based on the fact that we make some changes in our operations. As we shrink the network, as we move from…