The post office in Tamms, Illinois, is on the POStPlan list, and it was supposed to have its hours reduced to six a day. But this week the people in Tamms learned that instead of having its hours cut, their post office will be closing completely. It’s another case of an emergency suspension over a lease issue. There are nearly … Read More
One arrested as postal hunger strikers occupy Issa’s congressional office
[Press release from Communities and Postal Workers United www.cpwunited.com] Five postal hunger strikers occupied the office of Representative Darrell Issa Thursday afternoon. “Issa needs to back off his campaign to wreck the postal service. We demand that he immediately declare his commitment to preserve six day mail delivery,” said Dave Welsh, hunger striker and retired letter carrier from San Francisco. Four of the strikers were … Read More
Our post offices are not for sale: Radio interview with New Deal scholar Gray Brechin
Gray Brechin, a UC-Berkeley professor and founder and project scholar of the Living New Deal, was on the WNUR radio show “This Is Hell” yesterday to talk about the selling off of historic post offices and the push to privatize the Postal Service. Gray is one of the organizers of the effort to stop the sale of the 1914 Berkeley … Read More
A Complaint gives the PRC another crack at POStPlan
The post office in Great Cacapon, West Virginia, is on the POStPlan list, and in January its hours will be reduced to six a day. A nonprofit organization named AdvoCare has filed a formal Complaint with the Postal Regulatory Commission challenging the Postal Service’s decision to cut the hours. The Complaint finds several faults with how POStPlan is being implemented, … Read More
Manufacturing Emergencies: An open letter to the PRC on post office suspensions
BY MARK JAMISON [The following letter was recently sent to the Postal Regulatory Commission and Chairman Goldway in response to issues arising from the implementation of POStPlan.] Dear Chairman Goldway, I am writing to you directly but I hope you will share these comments with the other commissioners. As you are aware, I was very critical of the decision in … Read More
Nothing stays these couriers: Postal workers deliver during Sandy
While nearly everything was shut down by Superstorm Sandy — airports, trains, subways, schools, businesses, and most of the federal government — the Postal Service was still up and running. Postal workers were still out there delivering the mail, even on Monday, the day the storm hit. The Postal Service’s unofficial creed — “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom … Read More
Network Rationalization Update, with detailed schedule of changes
The Postal Service has published an updated list of the processing facilities that will be impacted by Phase 1-B of the Network Rationalization plan, which begins after the New Year. Phase 1-A was implemented this past summer. Though it was originally planned to include 48 plants, about 40 ended up being consolidated. The Postal Service took a break from the … Read More
POStPlan becomes a reality: Hours cut at hundreds of offices today, thousands more after the holidays
After nearly two years of planning — going back to early 2011, when the Postal Service first proposed changing the rules about staffing post offices without postmasters and redefining “consolidation” — today POStPlan became a reality. November 17 is the official implementation date for the first group of 500 post offices on the list. Starting Monday, they’ll be open six, four, … Read More
Holler for help: There’s no stopping emergency suspensions
According to a USPS service disruption report issued on November 10, over 330 post offices were impacted by Hurricane Sandy. About 120 were completely shut down, and another 30 had the retail operations suspended. Many of these offices remain closed, but it’s likely they will all eventually reopen once power is restored. The same cannot be said for several other post offices … Read More
POStPlan Implementation: 5,600 offices under review, hours to be reduced at 500 on November 17
The Postal Service has provided NAPUS with a list of post offices impacted by the first phase of the implementation of POStPlan. Some 13,000 post offices will be reviewed under POStPlan for reduced hours or discontinuance. The list provided to NAPUS contains the first group of 5,742 post offices. The NAPUS list is here; a Google table version is here; … Read More
How the Postal Service foundered: Parceling out the responsibility
BY MARK JAMISON Over the last several months the situation surrounding the fate of the Postal Service has become increasingly clear. How can that possibly be the case, when Congress has utterly failed in its efforts to pass postal reform legislation, when mail volumes continue to drop, when troubling news about financial losses continue to appear, and when the agency … Read More
Ignorance, incompetence, favoritism, bullying, and obsession: Just another day at the Post Office
BY MARK JAMISON On September 30, 2001, the management of the Postal Service published a document entitled Outline for Discussion: Concepts for Postal Transformation. As the title suggests, this document described the terms of future discussions about what the Postal Service was and what it should become. In April of 2002, the Postal Service issued another document, this one entitled … Read More
POST Plan meetings: Over 1500 scheduled already, more coming
In order to implement POST Plan — the plan to reduce hours at 13,000 post offices — the Postal Service will be holding a public meeting at each impacted post office. The Postal Service has already scheduled 1,518 public meetings for the two-week period October 8 through October 19. Around 600 are scheduled for the week of October 8, and … Read More
The PRC’s Advisory Opinion on Network Rationalization: Death Knell for the Postal Service?
When the Postal Regulatory Commission issued its advisory opinion on the Retail Access Optimization Initiative (RAOI) last year, it said the plan to close 3,700 post offices wouldn’t optimize anything. On Friday of last week, the PRC issued its advisory opinion on Mail Processing Network Rationalization (MPNR), and while it doesn’t come right out and say so, the Commission suggests that … Read More
The incredible shrinking Postal Service: More tales of suspensions, reductions, relocations, and sell-offs
While the United Parcel Service is busy looking for innovative ways to make its retail stores more profitable, the Postal Service can only think about more junk mail. Rather than seeing value in its own network of brick-and-mortar post offices, the Postal Service is cutting the hours at 13,000 small offices, replacing historic downtown post offices with retail counters in … Read More
