Hello, thank you for joining me to discuss a very important topic — the future of the United States Postal Service. It’s a conversation that that I’ve been having with our largest customers, with Congress, with the people who talk about the Postal Service on TV, on the radio, on the web and in the papers. I’ve also been talking to the leaders of the organizations that represent you — the unions and the management associations.
Today, I want to talk to you because without you, there is no Postal Service. You brought our performance to incredible levels — during one of the toughest periods we’ve ever faced. I want you to know how much I appreciate that, and how much it means to our customers.
From talking to so many of you directly, I know you have a lot of questions about the future. I want to give you some of those answers and share our plans for the future. You’re going to be hearing quite a bit about the Postal Service over the next few weeks. That’s why I wanted you to hear it straight from me. I’m telling you the same things I’m telling everybody else.
Let’s begin with a little level setting. Our business is in crisis, like so many others are these days. One of the biggest problems is the economy. With jobs disappearing and money tight, families and businesses pulled back on spending. That includes spending on the mail. I’m sure you’ve heard that things have improved a little bit in some parts of the economy. But we haven’t seen that in the mail we’re handling. Volume continues to decline.
Major advancements in technology have given people more communications choices than ever — and they keep expanding, with things like smart phones and new tablet computers. Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen a shift from hard copy communication to electronic. And its not just mail, it’s books, it’s newspapers, and magazines. Even music and movies are moving on-line. The reality is that more and more information is going to move electronically in the future.
In just four years, we’ve seen our volume fall from a record 213 billion pieces to the 168 billion we expect this year.
That means for every five pieces of mail we handled in 2006, we’ll only handle four this year. That’s a drop of 20 percent. We’ve looked at this data from every angle possible going forward and even brought in outside experts to help develop a forecast.
Their conclusions are very sobering. Mail volume is not going to come back.
Over the next ten years, volume is projected to decline gradually by over another 20 billion pieces of mail.
What makes this projection worse is the expected future mix of mail.
We expect First-Class Mail to decline by 30 billion pieces with modest growth in advertising mail.
This means that we will have less revenue per piece as the mix changes.
And after losing $11.7 billion over the last three years, if we don’t address our fundamental challenges, we’re going to see those losses continue to grow. In 2020, just ten years from now, we can lose $33 billion — and that’s just for that one year!
Obviously, we can’t go on this way. That means we have to change the way we do business now and keep changing with the times. Our health as an organization isn’t based on mail volume alone — it’s based on our ability to adapt to the changes in how our customers use the mail.
That’s going to take some focused planning and some very hard work. But I think we’re ready. I know we can do it. Here’s the plan.
We’re going to start with costs.
We’re asking Congress to restructure our payments for retiree health benefits. Right now, they cost us more than five-and-a-half billion dollars a year. That’s a payment we just can’t afford.
And we can make this change without taking a penny away from your benefits.
We’re asking Congress to change the law so we can change delivery frequency to five days. That’ll save us more than $3 billion a year. Many of our customers — from the biggest businesses to the family next door — have told us they support this change. In fact, they’d prefer it to raising prices or going back to a taxpayer subsidy for the Postal Service.
We’re going to bring new flexibility to managing our traditional retail network — focusing on expanding access and helping customers do more business with us through new and existing channels and retail partners. We can’t live with a retail network built for the 20th century. We have to construct a network that suits the 21st Century. It’s all about making it easier than ever for customers to choose the Postal Service.
We’re working to bring new pricing flexibility to all our products. Smarter pricing — pricing that makes our products more attractive — will help us grow some categories and help us manage our mail volume challenges. And we do intend to use exigent pricing as a tool to help close a portion of the gap.
We want to make sure we’ve got the right people in the right place at the right time — and have the flexibility to deal with the changes in demand in the coming years. That’ll make us more efficient, by making sure we’re serving our customers when they need us and where they need us. We’ll be focusing on this during the upcoming rounds of collective bargaining.
And finally, we want to assure that the legal and regulatory processes enable these changes — changes which are vital to the future health of the Postal Service. The law and regulation must enable us to fulfill our mission of affordable universal service to the American public.
Given the magnitude of the challenge facing the Postal Service, no single element of this plan can close the gap we are facing. The plan works because it is balanced and reasonable. Everyone must be part of the solution.
It’s a simple plan. But it makes sense and it can and will work.
Here’s what I’m asking you to do to help.
First, stay focused on the basics. You know what they are:
Keep service strong.
Help us find ways to pull costs out of the system.
Treat customers the same way you like to be treated as a customer — that’ll keep them with us.
Look for new ways to grow the business — no matter where you work or what you do. No one knows our customers better than you do. We all have a role in this. The more we do, the more stability we can bring to mail volume, and the more we can influence our bottom line.
And most important of all, don’t get discouraged. We have a lot to offer. And 168 billion pieces is still a lot of mail. Customers trust us. They appreciate our value. With a positive attitude, with the determination I know you have, we can get ahead of this. And we will succeed.
The trend to pay bills on-line will eventually put the post office in the same place as Fuller Brush. The need to decrease expenses so postage stays affordable is essential. Need to run it like a business, not a government function. “Junk mail” pays less to mail something than I do. That doesn’t make sense. This mail clogs the system and causes your expenses to rise every year. Make them pay the same or close to the same.
I have been with the P.O. 11 years. I am Currently on Mandatory O.T. until further notice. I am not on the OTDL so that means 2 extra hours a day…4 for everyone else. The Mail Volume in My Building Has been steady but unable 2 keep up with because the shifts have been restructured. Currently the entire building is receiving Night Time Differential because of this restructuring. Tour 2 is being phased out. SDO’s in My Building are working 6 & 7 days a week and staying 12 & 14 hours a day. No Doubt Being Compensated. The restructuring of the Tour hours no doubt is costing tremendously in my building alone so I can imagine its excessive if its happenig nationwide. Its forcing each tour to either have not enough people available to handle the volume of mail @ the time or too many people staffed to handle the mail available. Most of the drop shipments arrive between Tours 2 & 3. Tour 1 costs the most money. If the manpower was concentrated on Tours 2 & 3 it could accommodate a skeleton crew on Tour 1 for Late Arriving mail to make the morning trucks & head to the stations for delivery on time. Decisions or Rarely made by visiting the facilities and surveying the workforce for ideas in cutting costs. Thank You for your time.
I agree that mgmt has made decisions to destroy the Postal Service to give
Congress a reason to privatize, harassment of senior carriers, a union that
sits back and says mgmt can do what whatever it wants as long as it doesn’t
violate the contract, using MSP scans to track carriers on their route so they
can adjust routes, flow chart that changes when it benefits mgmt. Maybe the
solution would be to sell the USPS to the employees. I think we could do a better
job of running it as a for profit organization, making sure all routes are truly
8 hrs and everyone pitching in to help out as needed. All carriers would be held accountable for doing an honest day’s work, finish early go home early.Right now
there’s no incentive to work hard. You’re rewarded by getting your route added to
if you’re fast and efficient. Anybody feel the union is not doing their job in
protecting our rights on the workroom floor? I made a couple of calls to my
local branch, left a voicemail and got no return call. If they’re not going to help if we have a legitimate beef, I might as well get out and keep my union dues
Think about the next contract if the union dosen’t do all it can to help the postal service return to profitability those that are left will pay ahigh price for their job. every carrier knows that volumes are WAY DOWN Ssturday delivery is a total waste of time and money. The rank and file want 5day delivery we know that allowing the postal service to cut cost whereever possible will only help all of us in the long run. The union should ask the rank and what they know is right instead of telling us . I’m sure that if therew were a vote held today the result would be overwhelming GO TO 5 DAY DELIVERY.
They are not going to get rid of your mean supervisors. Those that wish that, I have some ocean front property for sale in Ohio that I would like to sell you. But what will happen is, say bye bye to 18% of your peers. TEs will go first, but they don’t equal 18%.
They will also need less CS clerks and less plant clerks, they will need less HCR/TTO drivers. Wow, a lot of you are gone. I wonder if there is a Wal-Mart board for you to complain on… Oh, my boss is so mean mean………..LOL
It is kind of funny , the first paragraph of his BS lists all these people he has talked too ? no real employees are mentioned, do not say speaking to the union leaders covers talking to me because it certainley does not ! After all these years, it only took Mr. Potter how long to destroy the USPS ? Awsome, lets give him and his sidekick thieves another bonus…how much last year 40 k ? did he break a million in 2009 ? 2008 was 8 – 900 thousand he made if I remember right. How about all the MILLIONS he and they have squandered, or the millions they are wasting on FSS that will have no mail to run on them anyway. How about his total lack of insight, is he a fortune teller now too ? (volumes will never return).
Second paragraph : “without YOU there is no Postal Service”, hey Potter you got one right, but you left out that without YOU ther still is one, in fact a much better one. I yes I could get this organization (not company) moving in a much better direction than you ever could. Lastly, you (Potter) are incompitent, and just so there is no doubt…I would say conservitively 98 % of the workforce (including EAS) has ZERO yes ZERO confidence in your ability to take The USPS anywhere. You (Potter) are just a boss, as are all around you, but sadly…we need LEADERS.
Postal services privatization in Japan was a total failure. As you may know, Japan Post operates three services under the roof of nation-wide post offices as universal services in the field of postal savings, postal life insurance and traditional delivery services. Around 70% of the supporting cost of the couters of the post offices, most of them are scattered in non-profitable area of the country. After the privatization morale of the employees was sharply degraded while the management who came from the private banking industry were quickly selling around the assetts such as the Kampo Inns and other facilities and even the credit cards branding as a sing of corruption. Now new government passed a bill to prohibit the sale of the stocks of the privatized postal company and in a few months new bill to reorganaize the public services will be refered to the Diet(equivalet to American Congress) deliberations
Think in terms of the shape of a triangle; little management at the climax, lots of those being managed at the bottom. The U.S.P.S. is upside down! Bring back Runyon!
How about a mandatory retirement age for all postal employees!
maybe our post master general should reduce his 800,000 salary if he wants to save money instead of eliminating a day of delivery
For starters, the PMG needs to be replaced with a forward thinking individual, man or woman. I’m sick of the “doom and gloom” speeches because after the first time those words fall on deaf ears. Potter failed to mention the Dec. profit. Potter has 42 VPs. Here is some logic…when one of your VPs retire, wait until two do, and then hire ONE to replace BOTH of them, if that’s even necessary.
As long as we’re throwing money away, why don’t we give CSRS employees $20,000 buyout and eliminate the 2% penalty provision for those wanting to retire!
Put the majority of 204b temp supervisors back into the craft as mail processing mailhandlers and clerks, instead of wasting their time walking around talking and fighting with each other. It would help increase the productivity and cut some costs. The management has to start thinking in a different way instead of just saying ‘oh well we always do it that way’. Get out away from that thought process. In our facility at the Rochester L&DC we haven’t cut out any costs really. Start now by looking at your whole compliment of management and ask the hard questions. ‘Do I really need all these people’. The craft employees fo the most part are dedicated people; they don’t need so many supervisors walking around doing ???
Our office just went through yet more route adjustments and will be going through them every 6 months now. Changing territories takes time to learn, which means you’re paying out overtime to all those employees. Not to mention the fact that now you’re paying a “team” to enter input into a computer and look over what the computer says we should carry. All this time wasting is needless, and costing you money AND customers-who are not happy with losing their carriers all the time!
And why exactly do we need supervisors, micro-managing us, showing up on the street “to make sure we’re doing our job”-you spent billions on new scanners for us so that we’d make sure to hit our scan spots at the correct time.
Sometimes I wonder how the post office has stayed in business as long as it has, with people behind a desk saying we’re losing money-yet they’re wasting money worse than any politician!
I suggest selecting a “team” of regular, every day, clerks, carriers, union and management and actually LISTENING to our cost saving ideas, and how your decisions are affecting the HARD WORK people that go out ever day, in bad weather, with bad office conditions, and ever changing routes to supply your bonuses.
(I doubt Jack Potter will even read this-seems the higher ups don’t really care what the peons working for them think)
I HAVE WORKED FOR THE POST OFFICE 30+ YEARS. NO ONE KNOWS BETTER HOW TO RUN THE POST OFFICE THAN THE HARDWORKING EMPLOYEES, CLERKS, MAIL HANDLERS, CARRIERS AND ALL OTHER CRAFTS. IF THE POSTAL SERVICE DOWNSIZE THEIR MANAGEMENT SUCH AS SUPERVISORS AND MANAGERS THAT DO NOTHING BUT HARRASS THEIR EMPLOYEES ALL DAY, THEY WILL FIND A WEALTH OF IDLE MONEY THAT SHOULD BE PASSED ON TO CONSUMERS. THESE MANAGERS MICRO MANAGE US TO THE EXTREME. THE WAY THEY TREAT EMPLOYEE’S IS DISGRACEFUL, CAUSING A LOT OF GRIEVANCES AND EEO COMPLAINTS. IN THE EARLY OUT THAT WAS JUST OFFERED TO THE CLERKS, OVER 18000 CLERKS WENT INTO RETIREMENT, HOWEVER THE USPS DID NOT DOWNSIZE THEIR SUPERVISORS. SO WHERE IS THE MONEY GOING TO? DONT CHANGE THE POSTAGE RATES…DOWNSIZE AND ELIMINATE SUPERVISORS AND IDLE MANAGERS WHO SIT ON THEIR ### AND GET PAID FOR DOING NOTHING !!!!!!
cut saturday is a horrible business move!!!!!!! i’ve read the newly hired woman who stated that this is a great business move, she would be the first to go!!!! the 21 year vet who says it would be great to have saturdays off for my last 4years, selfish. am i the only person who has seen the fedex truck out doing delivery on saturdays?
the problem is the board of govenors who allowed the potters and his mini-mes spend money like drunken sailors at the bar, with zero accountability.
how about stopping saturday delivery of letter and flat mail but deliver parcels and accountable mail on saturdays and sundays?
remember, if we lose saturdays we lose twenty percent of the workforce. the oldtimers may not care now, but when management starts to push, you will not have that young runner to take the heat, just you trying to deliver six days of mail in five!!!!! bye bye to anyone with less than ten years in, article 6 & section 365 of the elm sets that up!!!!!
how about better tracking for delivery confirmation? gps and letters to customers to track letter carriers but we are terrible at tracking a parcel!!!
the people in charge are horrible businessmen, maybe be runyon was right!!!!
There are currently one manager for every eight craft employees. This is excessive. This MUST change for this organization to continue. However,
long ago I came to the conclusion that postal management is directing the
privatization of the postal service. Therefore, they are destroying it so they can
reorganize it under a private industry model-low wages, few benefits, use of
temporary employees, etc.
I echoe the sentiments of those who say to cut back on management. We have at our plant those managers and 204bs who stand around on the backs of the workers (who have been cut back so drastically that they are using overtime at an alarming rate) threatening discipline it they do not do more with way less. Instead of threatening corrective action on discipline cases by the supervisor, how about the manager creating an environment for the laborer to excel in. A happy worker is a content worker, a content worker is a productive, a productive worker CAN and WILL do more with less because he/she has a supervisor that they respect because they in turn are respected. A novel idea, what??? I believe in turn that this will help with cutting down on costs and maybe we won’t misspend $7.5 Billion dollars????!!???? How about it PMG Potter???
There are dozens of EAS employees at my P & DC that do nothing every day for 8 hours. They walk around, they talk, they eat and party, but they do zero work. We could reduce out EAS staffing by 90% and the mail would still get out every day.
CUT SATURDAY WOULD BE GREAT FOR ME.AS A 21 YEAR EMPLOYEE I WOULD ENJOY MY LAST 4 YEARS WITH SATURDAY OFF.SECOND NO WORD ON CUTTING USELESS MANAGEMENT&OTHER JOBS THAT THE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT TOUCH THE MAIL.THE CARRIER CRAFT CAN NOT DO ALL THE COST SAVINGS.BY THE TIME THIS DOES PASS CONGRESS I WILL BE RETIRED.
Jack, not one mention of cutting costs by reducing the level of Management and Supervisor staffing. Let me see if I got this right. A lot less mail volume, a lot less craft employees and the same or added Management & Supervisors sitting around and threatening corrective action for calling in sick? This organization is doomed!
4.8 million was spent to do a job headquarters should have done in 2008. Mr Potter has 33 vice presidents and we still have to spend 4.8 million to their job. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out we have too many people on payroll.
Here is the key phrase from the Washington Post article: “The agency’s business model is so poor, consultants concluded, that privatizing it is untenable.” Accountability needs to start from the top down. It isn’t labor that sets the business model, it’s management, and at the Postal service they are not now, never have been, and never will be, held accountable. When the team is failing they don’t lay-off the team, they fire the coaches. The Postal Service will crash and burn to the ground before management perks, bonuses, and their bad ideas are ever stopped.
we in the postal service realize the enormous hurdles we face. layoffs are inevitable. we see to many managers not contributing enough and wonder if layoffs are inevitable, why managers and supervisors aren’t shifted back to carrier positions instead of hiring TE’S.
the light duty personnel should be the first removed. they can apply for disability.
thePFP program should be eliminated.
the special perks given to managers has to stop.
if your serious about saving the postal service, these items i mentioned are a step toward your sincerity.
standardizing the size and shape of mail, especially BBM, might go a long way towards controling costs. In my experience, we hemorage revenue by running slimjim mail on flat sorters. This practice must stop.
I want to thank you for all that you are doing to try and save this company. I have only been with the USPS for 3 1/2 years but it has supported my family for 39 years. My mom is a recent retiree. I too have spoken with local business’s along with residential customers and they too feel a Saturday delivery can be lived without. Please keep fighting and trying to save this company, we are all behind you in your decisions for our future.