Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is reaching out across the aisle for suggestions on his new discussion draft to revamp the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).

Some Democrats working on postal reform initially cast a skeptical note on Issa’s discussion draft, with the ranking member at Oversight, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), saying he had “serious reservations.” But both Cummings and Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security panel, also applauded Issa for moving the ball forward on postal reform.

ABM, through its parent organization the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), has once again joined the Affordable Mail Alliance to contest the future rate increase proposals. “We are members of the reinvigorated Affordable Mail Alliance, and we are lobbying Congress regarding 'underwater' products and postal reform, and have engaged with USPS senior leadership to explain the impact these increases will have on mailers,” said Mark MacCarthy, vice president, public policy with SIIA. 

Representative Darrell Issa of California and Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, are overseeing efforts in the Senate and the House to come up with bipartisan postal legislation, an effort that failed in the 112th Congress.

Issa made a compromise last week in a draft version of a Postal Service overhaul bill, the Postal Reform Act of 2013. The draft from the House Oversight Committee would greatly reduce a financially crippling annual requirement to prefund health costs for future retirees.

In Issa’s draft bill, there would be an end to Saturday mail delivery while package delivery remains in place on Saturdays.

In order to solicit broad stakeholder input on the Postal Reform Act of 2013 prior to introduction, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is posting a discussion draft of new legislation.

"The release of Chairman Issa's discussion draft on the Postal Reform Act is the first step in a long process to achieve a new law—but it is a very important step," said Lisbeth A. Lyons, vice president, government affairs, Printing Industries of America. "We're pleased to see the draft discussion out now and hope to see actual legislation introduced and considered sooner than later."

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit dismissed an attempt by USPS to overturn orders from the Postal Regulatory Commission to correct over-large discounts offered for presorted mail.

The regulator had said the discount being offered by USPS was greater than the cost-savings that the presorting activity provided it—thereby breaking US postal law.

Arguing its case, the Postal Service attempted to suggest that its legal restrictions on mail-sorting (workshare) discounts only apply to single-piece First Class Mail, and that presorted First Class Mail is a different product.

One scenario being discussed among mailers is an exigent increase of 5 percent to 7 percent for all market-dominant classes plus an additional 3 percent for the unprofitable classes. That's on top of the usual inflation-based increase, which could be close to 2 percent in January.

Annual rate hikes for the market-dominant classes are generally capped by changes in the Consumer Price Index. But the law also has a provision “whereby rates may be adjusted on an expedited basis due to either extraordinary or exceptional circumstances.”

The law, however, does not provide the Postal Regulatory Commission clear guidelines as to what constitutes

The Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund is bankrupting USPS. It is currently sitting at roughly $46 billion reserved for future retirees, or so we thought. The USPS puts roughly $5 billion into this fund every year, which it must do by law. Now Treasury just wants to step in and take it, which amounts to robbery.

I’m perplexed as to how the U.S. government can justify stealing money from both retirement accounts while the USPS, a private entity of the federal government, is on the verge of bankruptcy. The USPS is running out of options to remain a viable business.

The study carried out by Massachusetts-based consultancy InfoTrends and commissioned by the USPS Inspector General, polled 5,000 American Internet users aged 18 and above.

The results excluded the views of 20 percent of Americans who are not Internet-connected, potentially skewing results toward urban-based and higher income groups.

The InfoTrends survey still found healthy support for the Postal Service’s traditional role delivering the physical mail, and the concept of the universal service, although a sizable 77 percent of those surveyed incorrectly believe that USPS is funded by the taxpayer, rather than postal service income.

A new study released today by a non-partisan Washington think tank recommends a radical departure for the struggling United States Postal Service: a public-private partnership that would open up much of the service’s back-end logistics to outside competition.

But the study released today by The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation adds a bit more to the discussion.

The government on Wednesday said it had appointed Goldman Sachs and UBS to manage an initial public offering for the Royal Mail later this year, The New York Times reports.

The sale would be the biggest privatization in the country since the railroads in the 1990s, The New York Times reports. Michael Fallon, the minister for business, said the sale was a “practical, logical and commercial decision.”

“Unless Royal Mail has the capability in the future to access equity markets, every £1 that it borrows is another £1 on the national debt,” he