The Postal Regulatory Commission announced its decision rejecting the requested price hike at a news conference Thursday.
“After careful consideration, the Commission agreed with the Postal Service that the recent severe recession, and the decline in mail volume experienced during the recession, do qualify as an extraordinary or exceptional circumstance under the law. However, the Commission finds that the requested exigent rate adjustments are not due to the recent recession, or its impact on mail volume. Rather, they represent an attempt to address long-term structural problems not caused by the recent recession. The Commission finds, therefore, that the Postal Service has failed to meet its burden under the law and the Commission is unanimous in denying its request for an exigent rate increase..”
The new rates would have taken effect next Jan. 2.
Text of the Postal Regulatory Commission’s press release:
Washington, DC – The Postal Regulatory Commission today issued Order No. 547 in Docket
R2010-4 denying a Postal Service request for an average 5.6 percent rate increase. The Commission
found that the Postal Service failed to justiff rate increases in excess of its statutory CPI price cap.
“The Commission finds that the Postal Service has shown the recent recession to be an exigent
circumstance but it has failed both to quantifo the impact of the recession on its finances and to show
how its rate request relates to the resulting loss of mailvolume; therefore, we unanimously deny its
exigent rate request,” said Chairman Ruth Y. Goldway.
The law requires the Postal Service to demonstrate that any exigent rate adjustments are due to the
identified exceptional circumstances. This prevents a bona fide extraordinary or exceptional
circumstance from being used as a general rate increase mechanism that would circumvent the price
cap system.
The Postal Service’s recent volume losses and multi-billion dollar shortfalls are recognized. However,
Commission analysis confirms that the Postal Service’s cash flow problem is not a result of the
recession and would have occurred whether or not the recession took place. lt is the result of other,
unrelated structural problems and the proposed exigent rate adjustments would neither solve nor
delay those problems.
The Postal Service may be unable to continue to meet a statutory 1O-year payment schedule –
averaging roughly $5.5 billion per year – to create a fund to pay future retiree health benefit
premiums. lt has been unable to fund this obligation from operations, and has instead used up all of
its retained earnings and drawn down from its $15 billion borrowing authority. Even with the
requested increase, the Postal Service would be unable to meet this annual obligation either in 2011,
or in succeeding years.
The Postal Service achieved over $6 billion in cost reductions in 2009. While volume declines
outstripped cost reductions during the actual recession, Postal Service cost containment programs
are producing results and work hours have declined faster than volumes in 2010.
Goldway also said that the USPS could implement a 1.6-2% increase under the normal price cap process.
Management was never touched with all this going on with the PO. Closing offices telling people that now the have to drive hours and many miles to get to work.
While management is still going strong they have more supervisors than you can shake a stick at 204B’s that don’t have a clue they just got into the program so they can stand around with the rest of the dummies, and even supervisors and higher ups that that don’t have a clue. All these high tech machines mail volume down and they still can’t get the amil out on time go figure. I got an idea lets get some more supervisors and 204B’s
Thanks
Instead of rate increases to gain more revenue, US Postal Service can retain millions of dollars CURRENTLY SQUANDERED by lost worker time CUSTOMER DISSATISFACTION, AND RUINED PUBLIC GOODWILL when mail carriers take cigarette breaks and other time off at apartment complexes, where they use their influence to obtain keys to gated and locked private facilities, such as recreation rooms and swimming pools.
Here is a complaint recently submitted to USPS online:
“On June 11, 2010 hold mail was requested by me to end June 16, 2010,and I arranged to be at home all day on June 16, 2010 to receive the volume of mail expected to exceed the capacity of my mailbox. The day before, when I returned home from travel, staff in the apartment complex office knew I had been gone because the mail carrier had told them of the hold mail.
On June 16, 2010 at about 1:45 p.m. as I left my apartment I saw the regular mail carrier for my address driving away from the mail box cluster where my mailbox is located but when I opened it there was no mail at all. The mail carrier was at the next cluster and when I walked to that one and asked him where my hold mail was he reached to his left without needing to look, picked up a folded 8 ½ X 11 printed sheet, removed 4 pieces of mail from the fold, and handed it to me. He kept the sheet of paper and didn’t mention my hold mail but when I did he said “You got a lot of mail!”
His tone of voice, facial expression, and body language conveyed annoyance and resentment.
I replied that I stayed home to receive all that mail and asked him why he didn’t bring it but he refused to answer.
About 15 minutes later I was at the recreation center of the apartment complex when I saw the same mail carrier with a large quantity of mail under his arm open the locked swimming pool gate with a key attached to a chain with all of his other keys, then unlock the recreation room door with that key and enter. There was no one in the room and it is not the address for any postal customer. He emerged several minutes later and left the way he came in, again with his own key unlocking the pool gate to exit. The key is not needed to access any mailbox on the property or to access the path to any mailbox, including the apartment manager office.
This complaint, for which there photographic evidence of the mail carrier at the recreation center with a large quantity of mail, seeks an end to willful misconduct by this USPS employee who:
Violated postal rules by knowingly and deliberately failing to deliver hold mail after the hold ended. He knew all about the volume of mail which had accumulated and there were no events or conditions preventing delivery of the mail.
Violated postal rules by knowingly and deliberately confiscating mail in his possession in the USPS vehicle instead of delivering it to my mailbox, handing it over to me in person only after I asked for it. Again, there were no events or conditions preventing delivery of the mail.
Violated postal rules by carrying mail into a building which is not the home or business address of a postal customer.
Violated postal rules by telling an unauthorized third party when my mail was on hold, a violation of the federal Privacy Act.”
The week after the events described above, in which the mail carrier saw me photographing him engaged in misconduct, the same mail carrier entered the gated and locked areas again and used his camera to photograph me seated next to the pool, accompanied by his verbal taunts.
Clearly, one reason FedEx and United Parcel Service are beating USPS is that they don’t coddle employees who engage in such pathological frolics.
The water meter reader doesn’t roam about the gated and locked swimming pool and recreation room. Neither do United Parcel Service or FedEx drivers. Millions of workers all over the planet do their jobs every day without disturbing their customers at their homes in order to perform their bodily functions.
The legal and peaceful actions I have taken in response to these problems have resulted in an ominous but lame letter from US Postal Inspector Alan A. Anderson alluding to “intimidation” of a letter carrier. They just don’t get it.
THE POSTAL REGULATORY COMMISSION MUST IMMEDIATELY DRAFT, APPROVE AND ENFORCE RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR THE US POSTAL SERVICE TO PROHIBIT MAIL CARRIERS FROM OBTAINING KEYS TO ACCESS ANY PRIVATE PROPERTY ALONG THEIR ROUTE WHICH IS NOT THE LOCATION OF A MAILBOX, OR THE PATH NECESSARY TO TAKE TO REACH A MAILBOX; PROHIBIT MAIL CARRIERS FROM TAKING MAIL INTO ANY BUILDING WHICH IS NOT THE LOCATION OF A MAILBOX; AND REQUIRE MAIL CARRIERS TO MAKE ARRANGEMENTS ON THEIR OWN, USING THEIR OWN MEANS TO TAKE THEIR BREAKS AND LUNCH AT LOCATIONS WHICH ARE USUAL AND CUSTOMARY FOR WORKERS OF ANY OTHER COMPANY OR AGENCY TO USE FOR THAT PURPOSE, INSTEAD OF DISTURBING THE PEACE AND PRIVACY OF RESIDENTS AT LOCKED AND GATED AREAS OF MULTIFAMILY HOUSING.
It’s all a part of the “MASTER PLAN” to drive the P.O. into insolvency. The P.O. will be privatized! The only question is how much time do we have left? The media, congressmen & women, the PMG, etcetera, have their propoganda machine fine tuned and well oiled. They are increasingly gaining momentum in brain washing everyone into believing that TAX payers are footing the bill to keep the USPS afloat, and a USPS bailout is on the horizon. All they have to do now is financially destroy the USPS so that the American people will swallow the “Privatization Pill” when it’s proposed. We should all be brainwashed by the time the Privatization Pill is ready to be eaten.
repairing a elevator continuously for 20 years and it still breakdown is cost wasting!
what else is new!!!
you have 204b’s walking around making over $69,000.00 a year doing what, i can tell you they do nothing that a computer savy 18 year could do not do. in my station we do not even need a supervisor. we the city letter carriers can supervisor ourself’s.
Well, Mr. Potter. For whom do the bells toll? Too much information has made it’s way to the forefront. Collins tells you to quit blaming your employees. OIG tells you to close those lard laden management offices. Now the PRC is evidently telling you that fat and waste have to go. Better management is required. Oh, and the 5.5 Billion dollar tab is due. See you at the negotiating table. Want to try your luck in arbitration? Think not!
Well, look what I done now, given all my cronies big bonus’s and letting them spend like drunken sailors.
What a helluva job I have done, but remember one thing, when the ship goes down, I will not be on there.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha
If we were allowed to run the USPS like a business and make the changes as needed we would be way better off. We are not allowed to be flexible and we are not allowed to lay people off. Hell, we cannot even fire an employee that does a poor job.
Why is everyone shocked ?…..didn’t you see the writing on the wall a longtime ago…Just look at the waste…I have been with the Postal Service 33 years and see waste everyday…Too many supervisors, too many Managers, too many people not doing any work….. It’s not rocket science……any company losing 5-7 billion a year would have been out of business years ago……
The postal service should offer an early retirement to downsize its
workforce further. You do not need to offer an incentive just let people
who are 50 with 20 years of service retire without a penalty.
Well, maybe, just maybe they’re finally waking up and are going to force the USPS to trim all the fat at the top. Start with Potter’s fat ass and keep cutting all the way down to the PM’s at branch level, and we will see some real savings.
Well, all I’ve got to say is let the layoffs and consolidations begin. A shame it will be all the laborers and not management!
ARE THEY KIDDING! All other companies can raise the price of their product to
meet customer demand. The Post Office has been held to an unattainable standard not required by any other agency. What do they recommed? They need to STEP UP NOW. The Post Office is at the end of its rope. I do not see any
Life Support!