Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

About the last source from which you’d expect to promote a shift to digital delivery is a company with a rich history of putting pages in envelopes and into the mailstream. But that just what Pitney Bowes is doing with Volly, a new service offering launching in the middle of this year.

The nation’s largest postal union has summoned its top leaders this week to Washington as negotiations for a new multi-year contract with the U.S. Postal Service appear close to an impasse. Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said Monday that he is “increasingly frustrated by the lack of progress” in contract negotiations with USPS.

Guffey, in a message posted on the union’s Website, said talks on a labor agreement that was set to expire Nov. 20 have continued, but “six weeks later, management negotiators seem unwilling to make the commitment necessary to reach a negotiated settlement.”

A recent Office of Inspector General report cited unofficial “Hot 2C” (or “Hot Periodicals”) programs as a major reason for the extensive—and expensive—manual processing of magazines and newspapers that supposedly help make periodicals a money-loser for the USPS. “Periodicals publishers have repeatedly made clear that they do not desire and are not willing to pay for ‘hot’ processing," Jim O’Brien, Vice President, Distribution & Postal Affairs for Time Inc., responded yesterday in a letter (full text is below) to the OIG. “Every publisher that we at Time Inc. have spoken with is quite willing to live within the USPS’ published

The latest example of the Postal Service’s regulatory two-step came Friday with the announcement of indefinite delays to “Full-Service eDoc postage corrections”—that is, denial of Full-Service Intelligent Mail barcode discounts because of alleged errors—which were supposed to be implemented on Jan. 2. The ostensible reason was “to give mailers more time to use information from a new report to help correct errors in their electronic documentation,” but there’s more to the story than that.

“The USPS needs more time just as much as, if not more so, than the mailers,” wrote Lisa Bowes, who has reported extensively on Intelligent

The maximum 2011 price increase on most types of mail dropped a bit this morning because the U.S. Postal Service did not submit price increases before the Consumer Price Index for November was released. The price cap on such market-dominant classes as First-Class, Standard and Periodicals dropped to 1.741%, down from 1.799% if USPS had announced price increases before today. The cap is likely to drop below 1.65% if the Postal Service waits for the December CPI to be released on Jan. 14 before submitting 2011 price increases.

The Postal Service didn’t know how inflation-based price caps

The whole “God helps those...” phrase came to mind when I saw the press release put out by the U.S. Postal Service. Seems Mr. ZIP is now hawking ancillary products to boost the ol‘ coffers. Just in time for Christmas, the USPS is offering a pair of last-minute stocking stuffers

Postal rates for the majority of mail are likely to rise about 1.8% early next year because the Postal Regulatory Commission has sided mostly with the U.S. Postal Service in a dispute over price caps. Determining exactly what will happen to First-Class, Standard, and Periodicals rates as a result of the PRC’s complex ruling, issued late Friday, is a bit difficult to discern.

The PRC ruled that the inflation-based price cap for the next round of price increases would be based on comparing the average Consumer Price Index for the most recent 12 months to that of the previous

Those who are urging Congress to reform the Postal Service's pension and retiree-benefits overpayments would do well to drop the word “give” and instead learn a new one: “invest.” The suspicion in Congress is that money given to the Postal Service (even if, as in these cases, it's money that rightfully belongs to USPS) would just be poured down a rathole. What Congressman will stick his neck out for something that could be mislabeled a “Postal Service bailout” if he’s afraid of having to explain in a few years why USPS is in trouble again?

From 2008 through 2010, work hours fell 14 percent to about 1.2 billion. But pay raises and other expenses cut into the savings, and total personnel costs fell only 6 percent, to $49 billion. USPS spokesman Greg Frey noted cost-of-living adjustments are required by union contracts. He also said payments aimed at encouraging employees to resign or retire early reduced savings.

“It’s very clear that addressing costs and labor costs and getting them in line with revenues are going to have to be part of fixing the deficit problem,” said Frederick Hill, spokesman for Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

Senator Susan Collins, R-ME, introduced a new bill aimed at helping the Postal Service regain its financial footing and upped the ante that some sort of bill to fix the Postal Service's legacy costs might pass in the New Year. The Senate now has two bills to reform the Postal Service to consider. Collins’ bill comes on the heels of a comprehensive postal reform bill introduced by Senator Thomas Carper (D-DE), and chairman of the the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information, Federal Services and Information Technology.

The subcommittee held a hearing today to consider