Tag: Mail Services

US Postal Service reports second quarter loss.

Posted by | May 7, 2008 | |

Despite cost-cutting measures, the U.S. Postal Service ended the second quarter with a net loss of USD 707 million, driven by a continued decline in mail volume resulting from the current national economic climate. Meanwhile, the on-time delivery of First-Class Mail continued at record levels in the second quarter.

The second quarter results were presented during today’s meeting of the Postal Service Board of Governors. For the first six months of the fiscal year, the Postal Service has essentially broken even, reporting a net loss of USD 35 million on revenue of USD 39.3 billion.

Mail volume for the quarter ending March 31 totaled 51.3 billion pieces, a 3.3 percent drop from the previous second quarter. First-Class Mail volume decreased by 3.1 percent and Standard Mail volume was down 3 percent.

Year-to-date total mail volume is down by 3.1 percent compared to the same period last year. If the trend continues, this will be only the seventh year total mail volume has decreased in the last 50 years and could be the largest decline since 2002.

Revenue was USD 18.9 billion in the second quarter, an increase of USD 584 million, or 3.2 percent, over the same period last year reflecting last year’s price adjustments, but well below expectations. Expenses in the second quarter totaled USD 19.6 billion, an increase of USD 52 million, or 0.3 percent, from the previous year. The slight increase was driven by an increase in transportation expenses, particularly fuel costs.

The Postal Service also continues to focus on reducing costs and increasing efficiency. For example, workhours have been reduced by more than 18 million in the first two quarters of the year compared to similar periods in 2007.

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Dutch to discuss opening up of postal market

Posted by | May 7, 2008 | |

The Dutch government will brief Parliament in a fortnight on whether it will open up the domestic postal market to full competition on July 1, as previously envisioned.

Dutch Junior Economy Minister Frank Heemskerk said in March he hoped to open the market in July depending on developments in Germany and labour talks between Dutch postal companies and trade unions.

TNT has the remaining monopoly for letters of up to 50 grammes, with the market estimated to be worth about 1 billion euros (USD 1.55 billion) in 2007.

The Netherlands postponed the full opening of the market, due in January, partly because of the introduction of a minimum wage for postal workers in Germany, which it said impedes competition and where TNT had hoped to expand its operations.

The economy ministry has commissioned a report by a research firm on the impact of the German minimum wage, which it will present to parliament on May 20, Heemskerk wrote in a letter to lawmakers on Tuesday.

He will also present a report by EU Internal Markets Commissioner Charlie McCreevy on mail market liberalisation.

Heemskerk cited an agreement struck by trade unions and TNT’s rivals, privately owned Sandd and Deutsche Post’s Dutch unit Selekt Mail, last month regarding labour conditions for postal workers. “Based on these documents, Parliament and I expect to have a comprehensive picture and can judge if the legislative proposal for July 1, 2008 can be implemented,” Heemskerk wrote in the letter.

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Forever stamps a hot item as postal rate increase looms

Posted by | May 7, 2008 | |

On Monday 12th May, the forever stamp will go up a penny to 42 cents, as will the cost of sending a first-class letter.

So customers are flocking to post offices across the country to buy forever stamps at the going rate of 41 cents.

Forever stamps allow customers to lock in their postage rate regardless of how much a stamp costs in the future.

Nationwide, more than 60 million forever stamps are being sold daily, up from 30 million a day just a few weeks ago, the U.S. Postal Service said.

Postage rates last went up in May 2007, with a first-class stamp jumping 2 cents to the current 41-cent rate.

the past, raising postage rates was a complex process involving hearings before the independent Postal Regulatory Commission, a process that could take nearly a year.

But under the new law regulating the post office that took effect in late 2006, the agency can increase rates with 45-days notice as long as changes are within the rate of inflation for the previous 12 months. The Postal Regulatory Commission calculated that at 2.9 percent through January. That limited the first-class rate to an increase of just over a penny.

Under the new law, postal prices will be adjusted each May, the Postal Service said. Officials said they plan to give 90 days notice of future changes, twice what is required by law.

While the charge for the first ounce of a first-class letter rises to 42 cents, the price of each added ounce will remain 17 cents, so a two-ounce letter will go up a penny to 59 cents.

Sales of forever stamps are expected to increase throughout the week. More than 6 billion forever stamps have been sold since they were first offered in April 2007.

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Return to vendor

Posted by | May 7, 2008 | |

The privatisation of the Post Office was bound to fail. Like New Labour, it was a triumph of free-market dogma over common sense
Is this a red letter day for Royal Mail? The independent report commissioned by business minister John (“let’s celebrate the rich”) Hutton concluded that privatisation threatens services and brings no benefit to customers.
The creeping commercialisation of postal services is an example of free market dogma triumphing over common sense, creating disillusionment in politics and a growing sense of the loss of social fabric in our communities. It is hitting and hurting Labour in elections as the most vulnerable are left more isolated by closures. And what is more, it makes Gordon Brown’s job of establishing a clear sense of Britishness that much harder, when his policies undermine the status and standing of an institutions that goes a long way to deterring what it means to belong to this nation. So what has the last 10 years been all about?
What has happened to the Royal Mail serves as a symbol for all that is wrong with New Labour. Once you decide that economic efficiency is the means by which you deliver social justice, then the market become master of society. Blairism was built on the notion that the private sector is always more efficient than its public counterpart. To thrive in a global economy and reap the rewards required, the walls between what is private and what is public have to be knocked down. And with big business like TNT lobbying like mad to get into the profits, modernisation only meant the market.
The Tories wanted to privatise the Post Office and were stopped in their tracks for the only time by a clever union campaign that chimed with public concern. New Labour has deftly sidestepped a full-on confrontation and has instead bled the Royal Mail dry of funds while salami slicing the public ethos of this important institution.
The Post Office and our communities are now paying the price in under-investment, closures and the break-up of the service. But there is resistance and it’s not just from the good campaigning work of the post office union the CWU. Campaigns are being run across the country to save services with councils getting in on the act to prop them up. And it’s not even as if going into a post office is any fun. My local office is a misery of long queues and shelves of tatty stationery and cheap DVDs that never made it to general release. The management should be taken to task. But still we hanker for it. Because largely it works. Because it is a point of connection in our communities. Because letters and parcels are precious and we know from our experience of the like of the banks and BT that service in the private sector is often infuriatingly terrible.
Social institutions like the post office matter. They are the places in which values reside and can thrive. The Royal Mail is no bastion of socialism. But it is about universalism, equality, access and public ethos.
As such it serves a purpose to bind our society together. In these fractious and anxious times we should be celebrating such an important institution that builds society – unlike the market that weakens it.
Gordon Brown has said he is in listening mode. Perhaps we should all send him a letter calling on him to keep the Post Office public and invest in it – making its sustainability a litmus test of his ability to change.

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