Year: 2003

The U.S. Postal Service violated federal regulations and undermined management’s credibility when it failed to disclose anthrax test results promptly to workers at a contaminated Connecticut mail facility, the General Accounting Office charged in a report released yesterday. The GAO said postal officials did not comply with Occupational Safety and Health Administration rules in early 2002 when they did not fulfill a request for test results from union representatives at the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford.

The U.S. Postal Service is readying a test to let mailers of small-circulation periodicals achieve the work-sharing discounts enjoyed by large mailers. The experiment was supposed to start yesterday but was delayed. In the experiment, publishers, printers and consolidators can combine bundles/packages of different periodicals on the same pallet and drop ship them to an area distribution center or sectional center facility. The proposed discount is 0.7 cents per piece on combined bundles sent to area distribution centers and 1 cent per piece on bundles sent to sectional center facilities.