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
