If you believe Democratic politicians and their allies in the labor movement, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe has a barely concealed agenda to privatize the U.S. Postal Service. Donahoe “can say whatever he wants,” Montana Senator Jon Tester told The Washington Post, “but I think he wants to privatize.”
Why else would Donahoe be so eager to cut costs at the USPS? He’s trying to push the post office to the brink of collapse so there will be no choice but to sell the 238-year-old government mail service. Or so goes the theory.
But this line of thinking doesn’t make sense.
Business Management - Government/Governmental
Chief Human Resources Officer and Executive Vice President Jeffrey Williamson testified before the United States House of Representatives Subcommittee yesterday on Federal Workforce, U.S. Postal Service and the Census during a hearing titled "At a Crossroads: The Postal Service’s $100 Billion in Unfunded Liabilities." "The enactment of comprehensive postal reform legislation cannot wait," said Williamson. "The Postal Service has exhausted its borrowing authority, faces unnecessary and artificial costs that it cannot afford, and is constrained by law from correcting the problem...
The USPS is broken, and there are so many selfish motives permeating the committee rooms that have been tasked with devising a going-forward blueprint. Although the last postal reform effort is only seven years old, it already seems antiquated and unsustainable (the understatement of the century). And the odds of Congress enacting an encore during 2014 are not favorable.
Resolute Forest Products announced a five-year renewal of the master collective agreement covering four unionized U.S. pulp and paper mills in Augusta, GA, Calhoun, TN, Catawba, SC, and Coosa Pines, AL. The agreement covers about 1,500 employees, and improves wages in each of its five years and continues the partnership with all unions on employee safety and efficiency.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) offered an amendment to a bill (H.R 4011) going through committee that would ease restrictions on private carriers bidding to carry postal service deliveries to certain parts of Alaska.
Cummings withdrew his proposal for lack of support. Cumming's amendment would create new officer charged with leading the development of products and services that would enable the Postal Service to meet changing customer demands. It would also authorize the Postal Service to offer a range of non-postal products including check cashing services.
Though the Postal Service has been able to grow revenue by capitalizing on opportunities in Shipping and Package Services and has aggressively reduced operating costs, losses continue to mount due to the persistent decline of higher-margin First-Class Mail, stifling legal mandates, and its inflexible business and governance models.
On Thursday, the Senate committee on homeland security and government affairs voted 9-1 to advance to the Senate floor the Postal Reform Act, a bill sponsored by chairman and ranking member Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.). In its current form, the bill would make permanent the emergency rate increase and give the U.S. Postal Service carte blanche the authority to set future rates.
The number of options for the mailing industry to fight the postal hike are dwindling. Last month the mailing industry filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals, a process that could take months.
Unions representing U.S. Postal Service employees offered a stark rebuke of an updated, bipartisan postal reform measure, which now includes a provision to remove USPS workers from the federal employee health care system.
Sens. Tom Carper, D-Del., and Tom Coburn, R-Okla., the respective chairman and ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, introduced a substitute amendment to replace the 2013 Postal Reform Act they originally put forward in August, ahead of a committee markup scheduled for Wednesday.
The revised language would require the Office of Personnel Management to create a Postal Service Health Benefits Program, and to
There’s always next year. Such has become the refrain for the often discussed, much sought after prize of overhauling the U.S. Postal Service. Lawmakers were again set to deliver postal reform in 2013, and at various points of the year set goals of March, August and Thanksgiving for passage.
But after the latest in a series of setbacks, the window for acting on legislation in 2013 has closed, and reformers will have to renew their fight after New Year’s.
Legislation to overhaul the Postal Service has hit yet another roadblock, with the agency’s oversight committee once again delaying its markup of the reform bill.
The markup—which gives Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members an opportunity to offer and vote on amendments to the bill, and ultimately decide whether to move it to the full Senate—was originally scheduled for November 6, but was delayed indefinitely due to a lack of support from Democrats.
Aides said the committee would vote on the bill—the 2013 Postal Reform Act—before Thanksgiving, and Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., rescheduled a markup for Wednesday. But Carper, who