Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

This week, Structural Graphics presents a Web key mailer that was created for a pharmaceutical client to introduce physicians to the features and benefits of Bydureon, a Type 2 Diabetes medication.

U.S. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe now has another problem: a new cadre of employee union leaders who are more stridently opposed to his efforts than their predecessors. The American Postal Workers Union, which represents 220,000 USPS employees, said insurgent candidate Mark Dimondstein had defeated incumbent President Cliff Guffey in a race that the union itself described as “hotly contested.”

Dimondstein received 26,965 votes, Guffey 21,007. Six other members of Dimondstein’s Members First Team were elected along with their leader. Dimondstein and his running mates have called for Donahoe’s ouster, accusing him of trying to “destroy” the USPS. They have promised

Do we need six-day delivery? Do we need five? I’m not sure, but I AM sure that we do need a USPS system—including rates—that are economically sustainable and predictable. In that scenario, we lose the uncertainty; we and our mailing customers can finally make reasonable and credible projections of business volume and cash flows.

I, and other postal commentators, have spilled a lot of ink (and pixels) explaining how billions of dollars have been needlessly taken from the United States Postal Service (USPS) to overfund its pension and retiree health benefits.

Rafe Morrissey, the Greeting Card Association's vice president of Postal Affairs, will present the association's plan for reviving the Postal Service, which advocates nationwide implementation of cluster boxes and adopting a host of other changes while preserving Saturday delivery and avoiding above-inflation rate increases.

Despite all the talk about the United States Postal Service (USPS) being a business, regular people understand it has the soul of a government agency and in fact is not allowed to act in a businesslike manner. Real businesses underfund their pensions. The Postal Service overfunded its pension plan (to the benefit of the federal government, not postal employees).

When a too-big-to-fail business gets into financial trouble, the federal government often props it up with interest-free loans in the name of economic stimulus. When the Postal Service ran into financial trouble, Congress insisted that it continue lending interest-free money to the

As Monday night turned to Tuesday, the United States Postal Service defaulted on a legally required $5.6 billion payment toward health benefits for retired employees. The failure to make that payment is sure to be cited by those calling for more sacrifice from postal customers and workers—from USPS management to members of Congress.

But make no mistake: Congress, particularly Republicans, is mostly to blame for the problem.

Because of a provision in the recently announced postal rates, mailers and printers have four months to overhaul the way they prepare catalogs, magazines, and other flat mail.

The coming changes raise a variety of uncertainties for flats mailers, printers, and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) itself. And they will make it difficult for many mailers to project how much the new rates will cost them.

The higher rates slated to take effect January 26, will require something that until now has been optional—and little used: Flat mail going to ZIP codes served by the Flats Sequencing System will undergo FSS preparation.

Given the U.S. Postal Service’s dire financial condition, the 4.3 percent emergency rate increases it announced Wednesday are hardly exorbitant. That won’t prevent the move from being a disaster for the nation’s mail system.

Being part of an industry (magazine publishing) that opposes any exigent increases, I’m not supposed to say this but I will: Mail-dependent companies could probably stomach a one-time extra price increase of less than 5 percent if—and this is a big “if”—it were part of a larger move to put the Postal Service onto a sustainable path.

If the United States were to privatize the postal service like Britain has done, the government would first have to invest billions of dollars into making the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) appear as a viable, competitive business.

The Postal Service is extremely popular among American citizens, and any cuts perceived as overly drastic will not go over well. Royal Mail’s privatization will be a model worth watching, but the United States shouldn’t get any ideas too soon.

Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe told a U.S. Senate committee today that the U.S. Postal Service is in the midst of a financial disaster and that its cash liquidity remains dangerously low.

Donahoe is seeking legislation that will enable the Postal Service to act with speed and flexibility in the mailing and shipping marketplace and help it close a $20 billion budget gap by 2017.

Donahoe told the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that the Postal Service will default on another $5.6 billion retiree health benefits payment that is due Sept. 30.