Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe talks with Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe about the challenge of bringing cuts, change and fresh ideas to the nation’s second-largest civilian employer.
3 thoughts on “Video: Postmaster General On Leadership – Delivering A New Package”
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Dont forget the Postal Inspection service is the biggest waste of money in the Postal Service. With their take home cars and super high saleries they are a NON REVENUE producing drain on Postal funds. Local police and the federal govt can intervene for crimes committed against the Postal Service, they already do respond in fact and the Inspectors stand around and duplicate their investigations. Mr Donahue should consider eliminating them completely, soon.
The comment by M. Jamison is probably the most intelligent and insightful I have ever read on these forums. I would only add that if 36 cents out of every dollar of postage is spent on managerial overhead there is plenty of room for cutting non-production, non-service oriented expenses. Add to that a reversal of our penalizing retirement overpayments, and this organization could be saved. Service could be expanded and we could evolve and grow. It beats rolling into the fetal position and screaming like a stuck pig.
Mr. Donahoe makes the analogy to GM and Chrysler and in doing so he describes the failure of vision encompassed in his plans.
The auto companies are businesses engaged in selling a product. They build plants and outlets as a function of furthering their profit making. If they build too much capacity then logically it should be reduced.
The Postal Service was founded on a much different rationale. The Founders understood that for the country and democracy to succeed we had to build infrastructure, internal improvements. The network the Postal Service has created is not akin to a manufacturing plant, rather it is a national asset like the interstate highway system. The postal network – it’s delivery network, it’s retail network, it’s data handling and intellectual property networks – is part of the national infrastructure.
Yes, first class mail is shrinking but the network we have created has myriad capabilities for delivering services, collecting data, facilitating and extending the capacities of state and local governments to complete their tasks. As electronic diversion and the internet shrink the need for first class mail they also offer opportunities for last mile delivery.
For the last twenty years or more headquarters and senior management have been enamored with a vision of the Postal Service as a company, a competitor in the communications field. It is a suit of clothes that never fit well. We are a communications and delivery highway, a network that has the capability to have a presence at every address every day. That network has allowed the direct mail and marketing industries to flourish by providing infrastructure that they could never have built. It has allowed small publishers to survive. It has offered opportunity to package delivery companies to have a reach they otherwise could not have. It has been and should be a service that benefits the American public.
The fiscal problems the Postal Service faces today are twofold. First, Congress has allowed demonstrable inequities to proliferate in the payment of obligations for retiree pension and health benefits. These inequities have continued because they mask other deficits, the Postal Service has been a cash cow, an ATM for the treasury. The second problem is a fundamental failure of vision. The attempts to define a role for the Postal Service as simply another form of corporate enterprise overlook the foresight of the Founders and the value of the postal network as an integral piece of the national infrastructure.
The strategy articulated by Mr. Donahue is the strategy of a failing industry. It will lead to the dismantling of the network and the crippling of an important national asset. The saddest part is that absent the excessive payments mandated by Congress, postal jobs are entirely paid for, a fact that is unique in both government and business. The end game of the current strategy is more unemployment, a network with decreased capability and a crippled and privatized postal service.