Tech Experts Look To Help Save the Postal Service

An anonymous reader writes "Some of the folks responsible for developing and promoting e-mail, e-commerce and social media are banding together in an attempt to save the US Postal Service, the institution arguably most threatened by the technological developments of the past few years. As mail volume continues to plummet and more Americans use the Internet to pay bills and keep in touch, Google executives, social media experts and some of the most passionate tech evangelists are planning to meet in Crystal City in mid-June to sort out how to save and remake the nation's mail delivery service. The conference, PostalVision 2020, is designed to bring together the people who understand what this technology has done, is doing and will do to digital commerce and communication in America. USPS anticipates losing about $7 billion during the fiscal year that ends in September and is in the process of eliminating 7,500 postmaster and administrative positions to save money."

here in Italy..

[gadget junkie]

Here they solved the issue in an elegant way: The Post office has been granted a banking license, [poste.it] and the banking activity is subsidizing the postal activity. Mind you, in the central post office where I live (Turin, pop. 1,000,000 more or less), there are about 20 booths, 15 for banking, two for receiving mail and two for outgoing mail, so the service is mediocre, but banking has effectively stemmed the flow of post office closures.

Mind you, I cannot but wonder....what would have happened if they auctioned off the post service altogether with the general delivery obligations? maybe large banks would have been interested? and think of the multiple conflicts of interest, since the Post is state owned.... no banking licences in the sticks where a post office is present? is there a ban on opening more post offices in rich neighborhoods? After all, banks are after assets, not post traffic...

Re:So what if it's losing money?

[GKThursday]

The USPS is actually in the very unenviable position of being required to lose money to subsidize the rest of the Federal Govt. Several examples:

Congress sets the amount of money that the USPS has to pay into its pension and healthcare funds. This money is "held is trust" by congress (i.e. was spent 5 years before it came in.). The USPS has been forced to over pay for pension and retiree healthcare costs by over $80,000,000,000.00. Most of the $7,000,000,000.00 loss this year comes from an $5,000,000,000.000 payment into the retiree health benefits fund. In fact the USPS would have been profitable in the last 8 out of 10 years if it wasn't forced to subsidize congress's spending binges.

Congress requires the USPS to give rates to Non-profits that are below cost. Theoretically, congress is supposed to pay the difference, but hasn't for 17 years.

Periodicals (Time, WSJ, People ect) get preferential rates because of the lobbying power of the press. If I mail a 2.1 oz flat at presort standard rates (after putting the data through the national change of address database, something not required of periodicals) the lowest rate I could possible get is $0.194 per piece. I only get that rate if I bring it to the Sectional Center Facility where the mail will be sorted, and I presort it to the sequence the carrier walks in, and have pieces going to 90% of the residents on the route. That same piece going periodical rate only pays $0.16 for faster service.

I'm not denying that the USPS has problems of its own making it needs to deal with. It caved to the unions far to much in the past, giving it a very expensive workforce that thinks it constantly battling the evil management.

All of this comes from many years in the mail service provider industry. I'm not Aunt Edna that mails 3 birthday cards a year, and thinks that entitles her to complain that the Post Office in town is closing, even though it is within 2 miles of other Post Offices. I do multi-million dollar postage amounts every year. I am on first name basis with several USPS VPs.

Re:So what if it's losing money?

[GKThursday]

It is former Postal Employees, however it is a very muddy situation. The United State Postal Service used to be the United State Post Office Dept. At that point the Postmaster General was a cabinet position. During the 90s and ending in 2001, Congress passed postal "reform," which made the United States Postal Service, a private company with a government monopoly on letter mail. The USPS is governed by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), who interpret the postal reform passed by congress.

I posted all that as background for this next part.
Because of all these changes, some employees are under different pensions and healthcare systems than others. The first pension system is over funded (by govt. mandate) by around $70,000,000.00. This money was put into the general govt. retiree pension fund, which was spent by congress years ago. Newer USPS employees are part of a different pension/healthcare fund. Congress mandated that this fund be fully funded before 2020. That meant the USPS had to set aside about $5,500,000.00 a year for a decade to fund retirees that won't retire until 2040. Because the money goes to congress, the budget deficit seems smaller every year the USPS pays. So the USPS has 2 pension funds (more than that really, but this is the simple explanation). One is massively over funded, but stolen by congress. The other has an unsustainable funding schedule to make congress's budget deficit seem smaller.