Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

The Postal Service’s proportion of over-50 employees is 10 percentage points higher than any Fortune 500 company and nearly double the average, according to a recent study. American Airlines leads the big companies, with a workforce that is 39.1 percent over 50, estimates the RetirementJobs.com study, based on public records.

More than 49 percent of USPS employees are over 50. Fifty-something postal workers outnumber the 40-and-under crowd by more than 2 to 1. More than 1 in 10 Postal Service employees is over 60.

“Over the next 10 years, over 300,000 employees—more than half the current workforce—will be eligible to retire.”

Canada looks set to face its first postal strike since 1997 starting at 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) on Thursday, June 2nd. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) issued its legally-required 72-hours notice of an intention to strike yesterday, aiming to put pressure on Canada Post to accept its final offer for a new four-year collective bargaining agreement up to January 2015.

The union said striking was the “only real bargaining lever” it had with Canada Post, as it continued to seek reward for its members for 16 consecutive years of profitability at the Crown Corporation.

When a respected magazine’s cover story cited a statistic, I used to assume the number had at least some connection to reality. Not any more—not after reading Bloomberg Businessweek’s recent piece on the U.S. Postal Service. Here’s the stat that really stumped me: “In the last quarter of 2010, junk revenue climbed 7.1 percent,” with the added statement, “Unfortunately for the USPS, junk volume has since plateaued.”

Nowhere does the article define “junk mail,” though it uses the phrase liberally. It’s certainly a term you won't find in any USPS reports.

Businessweek’s definition of “junk mail,” however, is apparently Standard-class mail

The U.S. Postal Service has been rocked by a surprising slump in mail volumes in the last few months, and is now on track for a full shut-down in 2012—a Presidential election year. The three months up to March 2011 saw a 7.6 percent drop in overall U.S. mail volumes—double the expected drop—with April and May continuing the “disappointing” run.

Speaking to the Mailers’ Technical Advisory Committee meeting yesterday at USPS headquarters in Washington DC, USPS Chief Financial Officer Corbett said there was now “no question” that the Postal Service would refuse to pay the federal government a required $5.5B

Matt Swain, associate director of InfoTrends’ Document Outsourcing service, will be a featured speaker at the inaugural PostalVision 2020 conference on June 15, 2011. The event—themed “Catching the Wave to the Postal Ecosystem of the Future”—is designed to address the relevance of the current U.S. Postal Service (USPS) model in a digital age, and provide actionable direction for how it can evolve to a sustainable business model.

During July and August, mailers launching campaigns incorporating two-dimensional, smartphone-friendly barcodes will qualify for an upfront 3 percent postage discount. As for the labor contract that becomes effective today, it is projected to save $3.8 billion over its duration.

In an error-filled editorial, The Wall Street Journal chided the U.S. Postal Service Saturday for not acting more like a business and for being too slow to cut costs. Be careful what you wish for. “If this were a private business, the obvious response to these losses would be urgent cost-cutting to avoid insolvency,” the editorial said in response to USPS’s latest quarterly numbers. Good point. Let’s start with cutting the Postal Service’s subsidization of the Journal.

“(The) Wall Street Journal gives the USPS all of the addresses that they can’t service with alternate delivery and then expects to receive next-day

The watchdogs that keep an eye on the U.S. Postal Service have taken on an unusual role—dreaming up new products and other innovations for the Postal Service. The trend is highlighted by the USPS Office of Inspector General’s release yesterday of a request for proposals to determine how the Postal Service can innovate. The selected consulting company would “benchmark the Postal Service against ten successful companies” to identify best practices and processes in “innovation management” that can be adopted by USPS.

Just last month, the OIG suggested the Postal Service consider such new lines of business as electronic mailboxes, financial services

The Postmaster General didn’t just tell major customers this week that the U.S. Postal Service is a business and not a government agency. He followed up with a move right out of the corporate playbook—announcing plans to stiff a major creditor. Pat Donahoe’s revelations at the National Postal Forum about what the Postal Service planned to do got most of the media attention. But at least as significant was what he said about what the Postal Service will not do.

It won’t offer banking services. It won’t sell cell phones. And it might not make a controversial payment to the federal

At the National Postal Forum in San Diego, Multichannel Merchant sat down with Joseph Corbett, CFO of the U.S. Postal Service to discuss issues relevant to catalogers. MCM: Many catalogers fear their postage rates could increase by as much as 22 percent. How did this come about?

Corbett: The cost coverage report we are required to file annually was reviewed and the Postal Regulatory Commission issued a report. One finding was that they expect us to bring the cost coverages back in line with the standards for complete cost coverage.

MCM: Are other classes of mail complying with these standards?