News Alert from Business Mailers Review
In a surprise move the Postal Service announced it will appeal the Postal Regulatory Commission’s (PRC’s) Sept. 30 decision rejecting a request for a 5.6% rate hike – the first such request under the 2006 postal reform law’s exigent rate clause.
The PRC found the deep recession and resulting drop in mail volume represented the type of exception to the annual CPI-based cap on rate hikes the 2006 law envisioned. However, the commission said, USPS failed to show a direct link between its specific request and the exceptional circumstance.
In its appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the Postal Service will argue that the PRC misread the statute and applied an incorrect standard in evaluating the request for an exigent price increase.
USPS said it is hoping for a quick result and is also asking the court to affirm that it has the right to pursue the exigent rate increase as originally filed with the PRC.
USPS says this appeal is independent of any decision to increase prices at the rate of inflation within the CPI cap.
From USPS Government Relations:
On October 22, 2010, the Postal Service filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit regarding the September 30, 2010 ruling of the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) denying the Postal Service exigent price request.
The Postal Service is requesting a review of the PRC’s interpretation of the law that governs how prices can be set under “extraordinary and exceptional” circumstances –an exigent” price increase. The Postal Service is also requesting that the Court of Appeals confirm that the Postal Service has the right to the exigent price increase, as
originally filed with the PRC.The Postal Service disagrees with the PRC’s interpretation of the statutory language and believes that the PRC applied an incorrect standard in evaluating the request for an exigent price increase.
The Postal Service believes we need clarity regarding the exigent price increase rules under current law should the Postal Service find itself in a similar situation in the future. The Court of Appeals will ask for briefs from both the Postal Service and the PRC. Oral arguments also may be scheduled by the court.
The Postal Service continues to evaluate other options to address the PRC’s ruling. The exigent price request would have generated about $2.3 billion in much needed revenue for the first nine months of calendar year 2011.
As laid out in the Postal Service’s March 2nd Action plan, requesting an exigent price increase was the one option the Postal Service could exercise under current law to help address its current dire financial situation.
Increasing revenue is only one part of the solution. The long-term financial viability of the Postal Service will remain questionable unless the actions recommended on March 2nd are implemented. These include:
– Addressing the statutory retiree health benefit pre-funding requirement, averaging $5.5 billion;
– Allowing the Postal Board of Governors to direct the Postal Service to move to five day delivery;
-Requiring an arbitrator to consider the financial health of the Postal Service when making a determination;
– Allowing the Postal Service greater freedom to close Post Offices;
– Permitting the Postal Service to offer new products and services; and
– Giving the Postal Service greater pricing flexibility
source: Postcom.org
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 is 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 to observe and document 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.
How can the Post Office appeal but yet the customer has no appeal process when rates go up? The Post Office will wake up when mail volume tanks again. Do less work for more money, the new motto of the post office.
potter must think he owns the postal service and he can do what he wants to in potter’s mind ” I answer to no one”