More than 8,000 additional full-time jobs will be cut by the Postal Service this year as the agency struggles to contain its losses in the face of declining business. Postmaster General John Potter said Tuesday that a total of 20,000 career positions are being eliminated this year, all through attrition. About 11,800 positions have been cut so far.
Read MorePostmaster General John E. Potter today said the Postal Service faces a projected net loss of approximately $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2002, with mail volume for the year expected to drop some six billion pieces below last year’s total. Despite the magnitude of this decline, Potter said cost-containment actions taken by the Postal Service have reduced this estimated net loss well below earlier projections that ranged as high as $4.5 billion.
Read MoreThe Postal Service’s Chief Technology Officer today unveiled a major Transformation Plan action item underway to upgrade, modernize, enhance, secure, and simplify the world’s largest intranet infrastructure. The initiative, known as the Advanced Computing Environment (ACE), will save up to $200 million over five years by centralizing and reducing support functions for 130,000 computer users among 28,000 postal facilities nationwide.
Read MoreFedEx Corp., by any estimation, must be classified as one of the biggest success stores in the history of American business. Yet while FedEx is often mentioned in the same breath as United Parcel Service and, increasingly, Deutsche Post World Net, it has been moving in a distinctly different direction from those companies. Today it has a portfolio that in some ways barely resembles that of its two larger rivals.
Read MoreThe U.S. Postal Service is taking its pitch for vast postal reform directly to Congress and nudging its big customers to do the same.
Already, Postal Service officials have briefed more than 150 lawmakers on their proposal to transform the agency into a profit-making enterprise.
The Postal Service strategy, which appears to bypass an appeal to the broader American public, may be the most effective available, given that the greatest interest in low postage rates and universal service comes from business.
But it may not be enough to get Congress to act, many observers say.
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