USPS promises clarity on plans to close postal facilities
The US Postal Service promised today to provide detailed plans “in the coming weeks” on its intentions to close thousands of post offices, and keep customers informed about planned service changes. USPS is less than two weeks away from the end of its self-imposed six-month moratorium on closing area mail processing plants and under-used post offices.
It has targeted more than 233 of its 461 mail plants with potential consolidation, and wants to close 3,700 post offices as part of plans to cut operating costs and improve profitability.
Plans also call for much of the First Class Mail service to lose its overnight delivery, becoming a two-to-three day service.
But with Congress yet to finalise postal reform legislation that could have a significant impact on the USPS consolidation plans and service standards, postal customers and workers have little idea of what exactly is to come this summer, nor when it will happen.
Today, USPS Board of Governors Chairman Thurgood Marshall Jr said talking to the US Senate and House of Representatives, the Postal Service has been amending its plans regarding post offices.
“In the coming weeks, the Postal Service will provide detailed plans describing the steps that it intends to take regarding rural Post Offices,” he said at a meeting of the Board of Governors. “We believe these announcements will lay to rest many of the concerns about our path going forward.”
Thurgood did not comment on changes to plans to close hundreds of mail processing plants.
Speaking at the meeting, US Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe conceded that talking with customers, “everyone wants clarity”, and promised to keep them informed about changes to services.
Donahoe said: “They know we need to make changes because they can literally see the decline in mail volume. We’ll listen to our customers and make sure we’re providing what they need. We will work with our employees, as we have always done, to provide the information they need so they can make informed decisions about their options within the Postal Service.”
The Postmaster General said he was “very confident” about the Postal Service’s current plan to eliminate excess mail processing capacity in a network that has seen more than 20% loss of mail volume over the past five years.
Congress
Congress is currently waiting on the House of Representatives to take forward the issue of postal reform, after the Senate passed its version of a reform bill last week. Suspicions are that Republicans controlling the House are not looking to rush on the issue, since they see a USPS rescue package as potentially adding to the federal budget deficit.
The bill waiting for a floor debate in the House is quite different from that passed by the Senate last week, requiring much tougher cutbacks and an immediate end to Saturday delivery, proposing an appointed commision to take charge of USPS restructuring, while pension and healthcare reforms would be more limited.
If the House does pass its bill, the bill and its Senate counterpart would go before a conference commission in Congress to be turned into a compromise proposal, to be voted on by both chambers of Congress before going to the President for a final sign-off.
Meanwhile, the eyes of Congress are on what the Postal Service will do at the end of its postal facility closure moratorium on 15 May.
“We believe it is very unlikely the House and Senate will agree postal reforms anytime soon”
The Senate passed a non-binding resolution as part of its postal reform bill last week pressuring the Postal Service to continue its consolidation moratorium until Congress as a whole has passed a reform bill.
Leading postal reform senators also wrote to the Postmaster General after passing the bill to urge him to respect the resolution and continue the moratorium.
Yesterday, however, a group of Republican Senators who failed last week to get the Senate to agree to adopt the House version of postal reform wrote to Donahoe urging him to move forward with planned facility closures now.
Senators John McCain, Bob Corker and Tom Coburn said they believed it was “unlikely” that the House and Senate would be able to agree on postal reforms “anytime soon”.
Critical of the Senate’s bill for creating new requirements preventing USPS from reducing its costs, by halting facility closures and preventing changes to First Class Mail standards, the Republican Senators said they supported Donahoe’s current plan to put the Postal Service “on a sustainable financial path”.
“We believe it is very unlikely that both the House and Senate will come to agreement on legislation that reforms the postal system anytime soon and strongly encourage you to move forward with the cost-saving changes you have previously outlined,” the Senators wrote.
