Recent Posts


	May 18, 2012 Revised Network Rationalization: Map & user-friendly list Yesterday the Postal Service released a revision of its Network Rationalization plan to consolidate over two hundred mail processing facilities. When the plan was originally announced on December 5, there were 252 facilities on...
	May 15, 2012 What are people — and the Post Office — for? BY MARK JAMISON It’s likely that I will be the last postmaster to serve the town of Webster, North Carolina. The first postmaster, Allen Fisher, began his term in 1857, shortly after Jackson County was founded and Webster...
	May 14, 2012 POStPlan: Map, Charts, & More On May 9, the Postal Service released POStPlan, its new plan for small rural post offices. The plan will impact 13,000 post offices. Over the coming months, the Postal Service will begin holding community meetings to...
	May 12, 2012 POStPlan by the numbers The Postal Service's POStPlan initiative announced on May 9, 2012, would reduce hours at 13,000 post offices from eight hours a day to six, four, and in some cases, two. Here's how the list provided by the Postal Service...
	May 10, 2012 Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse: The Postal Service has a new plan for the post office After a year and a half spent threatening to close thousands of rural post offices, the Postal Service has suddenly changed course. Instead of closing small post offices, the Postal Service has come up with a way to make them...
	May 9, 2012 Avalanche averted: Postal Service backs off plan to close thousands of post offices The Postal Service has decided not to announce mass post office closures on May 16, when the moratorium ends, and it will instead proceed with the closings in a more gradual way. How many, how slowly, remains to be seen. ...
	May 3, 2012 Revised Estimates for Network Rationalization: Where have all the savings gone? The Network Rationalization plan to consolidate some 260 mail processing plants may be running into problems. Not all the plants were approved for consolidation, so this week the Postal Service submitted revised estimates to the...
	May 2, 2012 The moratorium clock is ticking: Over 200 post offices set to close Yesterday, leaders of postal reform in the Senate sent a letter to Postmaster General Donahoe asking him to extend the moratorium on closing post offices and processing plants while Congress works on postal reform legislation. ...
	April 29, 2012 The Case Against Consolidation: Rebuttal testimony challenges Network Rationalization While the week’s postal news was dominated by the Senate vote on postal reform, something else important was going on. Opponents of the Postal Service’s plan to consolidate the processing network submitted their...
	April 27, 2012 The Nine Towns Study: The economic impact of post office closings on small places How do post office closings affect the economic life of small towns? The Postal Service has not done any studies about the question, but a consulting firm has just released a report analyzing how closing the post offices in...
	April 25, 2012 Why Postal Reform Will Fail BY MARK JAMISON By any meaningful measure, whatever postal reform bill emerges from the current legislative process, it will be insufficient to staunch the flow of blood draining from the Postal Service. More likely than...
	April 24, 2012 The GAO report on post office closings: Congress gets what it asks for—more misinformation Last week the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued its second report this month about the Postal Service. This one is about post office closings (GAO-12-433), and it’s apparently intended to give lawmakers...
	April 22, 2012 The Senate does postal reform: An overview of S.1789 If all goes according to plan, Senate bill S.1789 will come to the floor for a vote this week, perhaps as early as Tuesday. The “21st Century Postal Service Act of 2012" is sponsored by Senators Lieberman, Carper,...
	April 18, 2012 How Network Rationalization speeds up Standard Mail and hastens the demise of First-Class Sometime over the next few days, the Postal Service is expected to publish the final rule implementing the service standard changes that are the foundation for the Network Rationalization plan to consolidate over 220 mail processing...
	April 14, 2012 It was sad when that great ship went down: The Postal Service heads for an iceberg A hundred years ago this Sunday, the Titanic collided with an iceberg and sank in the icy waters of the North Atlantic, causing the deaths of over 1500 people. Researchers have recently announced a new theory on the cause:...
	April 9, 2012 Appeals in vain: The long odds on success at the PRC Over the past fifteen months, more than two hundred communities have tried to save their post office from being closed by appealing to the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). For nearly all of them, the effort was in vain....
	March 31, 2012 Satisfaction Guaranteed (not!): Redefining "service" — the Postal Way A POSTMASTER'S STORY by Mark Jamison I want to tell you a story about the state of customer service in today’s Postal Service. It’s about a solitary incident, a small incident really, but it holds a larger...
	March 27, 2012 Modern Times at the Postal Service: Network Rationalization gives more work to idle machines Last Tuesday, David Williams, USPS VP of Network Operations and the man running the Network Rationalization plan, was cross-examined before the Postal Regulatory Commission, which is working on its Advisory Opinion about the mail...
	March 24, 2012 The USPS press release on the secret survey: They still can’t get their story straight Yesterday, the Postal Service issued a press release responding to revelations about a market research survey it commissioned last summer but chose not to tell anyone about. The press release contains several misleading...
	March 21, 2012 Secret market survey reveals USPS plans would cost over $5 billion in lost revenue While hearings before the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) are usually pretty mundane events, something totally unexpected happened today. The Postal Service revealed something it’s been hiding for months — the...
	March 19, 2012 "Because we said so": The unassailable logic of postal managers and their salaries BY MARK JAMISON Last week Kathy Hochul, Representative of New York’s 24th district, where Buffalo stands to lose a mail processing plant employing 700 workers, made a modest proposal — legislation to limit the salaries of...
	March 17, 2012 It was a very good year: The salaries of USPS executives The Gannett 2012 salary finder for USPS employees came out this week, and it contains a wealth of information. You can find the salary, job title, workplace, and year of hire for any postal employee. That includes...
	March 15, 2012 If at first you don’t succeed, try revising the survey Last summer the Postal Service hired Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) to do market research on how customers might respond to changes in service standards (slowing down the mail), as well as plans to close thousands...
	March 13, 2012 The Case of the Missing Market Research Study The Postal Service’s Big Hurry to consolidate 223 mail processing plants may be running into serious speed bumps. The AMP studies don’t add up to anything like what the Postal Service says it will save nor do they...
	March 12, 2012 Great minds think alike, and so do USPS District Managers Over the past few days, Postal Service District Managers across the country have submitted “opinion” pieces to their local news media, and somehow they all stumbled upon the same words. At least thirteen DMs have...
	March 9, 2012 More AMP Studies Released: Network Rationalization not looking very rational Yesterday the Postal Service released more AMP studies, and we’re getting a clearer picture how much the Network Rationalization plan to consolidate about 230 mail processing plants will save and where the eliminated positions...
	March 8, 2012 "We must not be rushed into false choices": Two Congressmen call for sanity The leaders of the Postal Service are in a big hurry to dismantle the postal system, and there are plenty of people in Congress ready to help. Fortunately, there are a few lawmakers who recognize the value of a robust Postal...
	March 7, 2012 More numbers on the AMP studies, and they still don’t add up, not even close When the Postal Service announced the Network Rationalization plan to consolidate 250 area mail processing plants (AMPs) back in September, they said it would save $3 billion a year. When the Postal Service presented its case...
	March 5, 2012 Questions for Mr. Hammond: The Senate considers a nomination to the PRC Tomorrow the Senate’s Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs will hold a hearing on the nomination of Tony Hammond as a Commissioner on the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). The senators are likely...
	March 4, 2012 The numbers on Network Rationalization just don't add up The Postal Service says closing about 250 processing facilities will eliminate 34,000 positions and save $2.1 billion a year. But the numbers on cost savings and affected positions that postal managers presented at the public...
	March 2, 2012 Congressman Connolly Defends PRC Chairman Goldway as Advocate of Innovation A GUEST POST BY CONGRESSMAN GERALD E. CONNOLLY The Washington Post recently published an article about the travel expenses of Postal Regulatory Chairman Ruth Goldway. The author of the article seems to have missed that the...
	March 2, 2012 Postal workers give management a vote of "No Confidence" on VOE survey, but who's listening? The results of the Voice of the Employee (VOE) survey for FY 2011 were made public this week, and there's some bad news for postal headquarters. Two-thirds of the employees responding to the survey could not say they trusted...
	February 28, 2012 The Clock Nears Twelve: The Approach of Postal Doomsday BY MARK JAMISON "These men combine to bring about as much financial stress as possible, in order to discredit the policy of government and thereby secure a reversal of that policy, so they may enjoy unmolested the fruits of their...
	February 23, 2012 It hits the fan: The Postal Service can't wait to close the plants The Postal Service has announced its decisions on the mail processing plants it's been studying for consolidation. The APWU has the list of which plants are closing and which will remain open here. The list...
	February 21, 2012 A Civil Action: The People of the United States vs. The U.S. Postal Service The Postal Service juggernaut keeps rolling on with its downsizing plans, and it seems prepared to crush whatever stands in its way — postal workers, post offices, communities, history. There doesn’t seem to be...
	February 20, 2012 A Mess in Maryland: Mail delayed and workers call for an investigation Last year, when the Postal Service was studying the Processing and Distribution Center in Frederick, Maryland, for consolidation, postal officials said customers could expect the same level of service as before. It doesn't...
	February 19, 2012 The Postal Service Unrolls Its Five-Year Plan The former Soviet Union was famous for five-year plans. Between 1928 and 1991, it announced thirteen of them. The plans were designed to increase economic production, achieve efficiencies through centralized planning, and...
	February 16, 2012 The plant consolidation plan: 35,000 jobs lost, and "no significant impact"? In order to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Postal Service has prepared a Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) for the Mail Processing Network Rationalization Initiative. Although 250...
	February 15, 2012 The Selling of the Venice Post Office: More than a touch of evil BY GRETA COBAR Venice Beach, California, is an idyllic, bohemian, beach-side community that was once home to The Doors, Jimmy Hendrix, Janice Joplin, and Beat generation poets Stuart Perkoff and John Haag. Today it still...
	February 14, 2012 Reuters gets it right: "Special Report: Towns go dark with post office closings" There’s an excellent article on post office closings in Reuters today, by Cezary Podkul and Emily Stephenson. One of its main themes is that while the Postal Service is claiming that the Internet is driving people away...
	February 10, 2012 The spin doctors examine Post Office financials for Q1: “The patient is a goner” This week the Postal Service released its financial report on the first quarter of fiscal year 2012 (Form 10-Q). As you might have expected, it’s all bad news — that is, according to the Postal Service, the...
	February 7, 2012 And the winner is . . . Trump selected to redevelop DC’s Old Post Office The General Services Administration has selected Donald Trump to redevelop the Old Post Office building in downtown D.C. The grand old icon is going to be converted into a luxury hotel, complete with “world renowned...
	February 6, 2012 Postal politics gets ugly: The Post attacks the PRC Chair There’s a lot at stake in the battle over postal reform — billions of dollars of corporate profits, the power of unions, the very existence of post offices — so one can’t be surprised that the politics got a...
	February 4, 2012 What’s to hide? The Postal Service turns over some closing lists Getting closing lists out of the Postal Service is like, well, pulling teeth. Over the past several months, hundreds of post offices have closed, gone into emergency suspension, or received a Final Determination notice...
	February 2, 2012 Where's the emergency? Suspended post offices in 2011 & a list of leases ending soon There’s a moratorium on closing post offices until May 15, but it doesn’t apply to “emergency suspensions,” as we learned at a meeting of the Postal Regulatory Commission earlier this week. That means any post...
	January 31, 2012 The synergy of losses: How much will downsizing really save? Imagine it’s Wednesday and you want to mail something, and you’re used to seeing that mail delivered the next day. But things have changed. You can’t get to the post office until Thursday because yours...
	January 29, 2012 Contract post offices, closing faster than they open Contract post offices look like a cheap and easy way for the Postal Service to outsource its retail postal business. Just put the post office in a private business or community center, and don't worry about paying rent or...
	January 28, 2012 Congressman Hinchey calls for a moratorium on the closing studies New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey has written a letter to Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe asking him “to place a moratorium on the USPS's current discontinuance studies until the USPS resolves the numerous problems the...
	January 24, 2012 Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Campaign to Dismantle the Post Office The leaders of the Postal Service have made no secret of their plans for reforming the postal system. They have issued white papers, given speeches, presented “optimization” programs, and appeared before...
	January 18, 2012 A post office worth preserving BY MARK JAMISON [Mr. Jamison serves the town of Webster in the mountains of North Carolina as its postmaster. He has written extensively on postal issues. In keeping with the USPS Administrative Support Manual, Mr....