Save The Post Office!!

If it can be sent priority, it can wait. If it's ok to possibly wait up to 3 days, it's obviously not time sensitive.

If it's sent priority express then you paid extra and already covered.

You missed this part:


If it's sent priority on the day, it'll be anywhere in the state within 24-48hours. Adding an extra day or two will hamper service and can lead to even more congestion in the courts.

It's clearly not, if it can be allowed to possibly take 3 days.

1) Sent monday; not delivered monday, not delivered tuesday, delivered on wednesday.

2) Sent monday; no mail delivery on tuesdays, delivered on wednesday.

absolutely no difference. If it's fine that it can arrive on wednesday, then it's fine that it will arrive no earlier than wednesday.

Sent early enough on Monday and it can be delivered Tuesday, you skipped the 24hr part of the 24-48hrs.

Instead you'd have it wait an additional day when it doesn't need to just so you aren't inconvenienced with having mail delivered daily.

Sometimes life is inconvenient. You can pay more to avoid the inconvenience... isn't that.... convenient.

"Skipping tuesdays" would save millions of dollars. It probably doesn't even have to be every tuesday, or even every tuesday for this year. Just until they're not on the verge of closing.

75,000 Mail Carriers deliver mail on "tuesdays"

8 hour day.

$20 an hour. (average)((lowballed heavily))

$12,000,000 saved, by missing one day.

$50,000,000 a month

$600,000,000 a year

And that's only pay. Not gas for 75,000 vehicles. and because hours are cut, no overtime.

Let's go really extreme. All postal workers have ONE tuesday off.
630,000 employees - $100,000,000 saved by closing one day out of the year.
$400,000,000 a month (every week)
$20 Billion for the year.

Save twenty billion dollars by not delivering on tuesdays. Only counting hourly wages.

The best case of saving money is not even in the millions. Even if there's no delivery on say Tuesday, just skipping one day will do nothing. Those carriers will simply be utilized elsewhere, or every carrier will be off Sunday and Tuesday, but still retained for a 40hr+ work week. Skip 2 days and they'll work 4 at 10hrs/day and still get over time.

So I'm not exactly sure how reducing delivery days will do anything to save money, unless you're talking about gas used and maintenance on vehicles? That would be a fraction and do nothing.

You're forgetting that USPS is also unionized, you're not going to do anything to their hours. All you'll manage to do is to give all carriers Sun and Tues off, that's it. You'd still have the same staff at the same pay and the budget wouldn't change.

Here's the simple truth: negotiate "tuesdays off" or everyone is out of a job. Easy choice.

Lose hours or lose your job. Hmm, I wonder which they'd go for.

LOL, here's an even simpler truth: they'll not lose hours or their jobs. Do you know how many times USPS has been threatened with shutting down // layoffs // reduced hours // forced retirement?

What will happen is they'll get their funding, nothing will change, and Trump supporters will extol Trump as the savior and how he masterfully maneuvered Democrats into doing his bidding again.

It's a game, you know it, I know it, everyone knows it, time to acknowledge it and move on. USPS isn't getting shut down, privatized, or reorganized. It'll not be reduced, at best there will be buy-out retirements, and those positions will be filled by entry levels at 25% less pay. That's about it.

With this idiot running things, I'm not optimistic about anything. There IS a real threat of the USPS closing.

If that happens, restructuring is viable. (and should be done honestly regardless)

This.
Pay cuts would work too. It's insane that letter carriers can make $30, $40 an hour.

The average pay for a carrier is $17.47/hr, this of course being the average you will have some higher and some lower depending upon location.

source:
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/United-States-Postal-Service/salaries/Mail-Carrier

Of the $1.9 billion paid out every two weeks, only a fraction of that is to mail carriers. You're forgetting clerks, support staff, and admin make up the majority.

Carriers make up approximately 20% of the USPS. Even if you offered early retirements you're talking a small percentage of the small percentage of the USPS work force, and even then they're replaced by a lower paid employee. Savings would be minuscule and would take decades to get back to black on the books by using just that cut.

It wouldn't be just the 75k carriers/630k total that get bought out/replaced in that scenario

btw, average wage is $25.09
https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes435052.htm

You were strictly speaking of carriers. Clerks provide a service that is needed daily, so do sorters, and inter/intrastate transporters.

Even offering a buy-out to every USPS employee that's close to retirement, you'd need to do better than a 10 year buy-out to make a dent, most USPS employees hit retirement and their gone, not much incentive to work more than maybe 2 years beyond effective retirement date.

That buy-out would also be an upfront cost that would need to come from someplace, and they're in the red already.

Edit: source on USPS and government retirement - my MIL is a USPS clerk, my mother and uncle are both retired from federal service. Working more than 2~3 years beyond the effective date yields about an extra $20/pay period on retirement.

One scenario, (regular) carriers don't deliver on 1-2 days a week.

Another scenario, totally closes post offices 1-2 days a week.

Your posted scenario buys out all the highest/longest and replaces with cheapest. (which like you just said, I don't know IF they can actually do that right now) so... option 1 or 2 might be the best options. And they're not really losing anything by doing it. Plus they would make more on expedited services.

Multiple levels/options

Except for the fact that sorters on location still work daily. You'd actually have to completely restructure the USPS's method of sorting, transporting, and delivering mail in order to close down for 1-2 days.

Having carriers not deliver 2 days a week will do nothing. The same carriers will be retained and deliver the other 5 days a week at 8+ hrs/day or 4 days a week at 10+hrs a day.

As for buy-outs you're looking at spending more money now to save virtually no money later, it makes no sense. Iirc last buy-out each employee was offered 90% of their salary for opting out 3 years early, then they would switch to their retirement. You'd be saving 10% for each person that chose to accept it (not forced), then replace them with an entry level at best 25% less pay, but that pay increases yearly. Eventually yeah, even by my own argument you'd save money, but you'd spend it up front to save it, and that's the issue, there's nothing to spend up front.

Better automation for sorting (the eventuality of all things) those people who sort become carriers/clerks etc

Cut delivery days = cut hours(and/or cut pay), not having them do something else

Restructure the raise policy, enough people would still do it for less than they pay now

Better automation = more upfront money, of which there is none, they're in the red.

Cutting delivery days = cut hours:

Good luck pushing that through the postal union, won't happen. At best, and as I've said a few times, you'll only give all employees set days off, that's it.

Restructuring the raise policy again falls under union, you have to get past them first, and no you're not going to bully it through, that'll end in lawsuits costing even more money.

If it comes to a reality where closing is a real possibility, none of the union statements are going to matter.

I'll concede that, but barring closing, everything I said stands as is. Closing is the only (pun intended) Trump card there is to play, everything else would die at the feet of the unions or be too much up front cost.

(it's so infuriating that saying "trump card" is basically taboo now)

I could always say ace in the hole, but it doesn't have the same ring to it.

No, that solves nothing, as you need the original, notarized document.

Is there any change you would support? Is there a limit to the amount of tax dollars you think it's acceptable to waste on a broken process?

Can you imagine if having your email hacked meant you got locked out of what would be your only way to get mail?
It's like someone just steals your mail box from your house... but mail still gets delivered to it.

Sure its a federal crime, but it already was, now its just more lucrative and scalable. Just imagine stealing millions of peoples mail with the stroke of a few keys.

Stealing mail on a scale of millions of homes is incredibly high risk, someone could see you not to mention the hours of time to do the collection, you're basically rolling the dice every time you move to the next set of mail boxes. Now doing the same thing for emails reduces the risk considerably.

It could open an avenue of extortion, "pay me to get your mail box back". I mean what are you going to do? go to the DMV to register a change of email address? Already takes FOREVER for a change of living address to propagate.

Do you use online banking? Pay bills online? Shop online with a credit card? Submit taxes online? apply for jobs online and submit photo ID and SSN to employers online?

Do you do any of those things VIA snail mail? Gee it’s almost as if people already perform all of their riskiest transactions VIA the internet and not VIA traditional mail nowadays.

Imagine if anyone could walk up to your mailbox and steal your physical mail anytime they wanted. What a world that would be.

I hate that I'm on this side of the argument but it's true.

"the mail" is a novelty. It's out dated.

It doesn't mean that some important things don't and/or can't come in "the mail".

It's that things naturally progress overtime and the post office is in the paper-age and we're in the electronic-age. "change" is going to have to happen organically eventually. You look at the entire history of the USPS and what have they done to evolve/grow? Nothing!?... other than using horseless carriages... anything? mildly improved sorting that still relies largely on human presence is about it.

Perfect example, they still run vehicles designed in 1982 for *** sake. That run roughly equal efficiency to modern tractor-trailers. I mean, damn.

Hey, a thing I mentioned happened. (happening)

Mildly political, trigger warning!
They should've hired me 2 years ago. Obvious problems taking years for obvious solutions.

Hiring you wouldn't have gotten the money appropriated any faster.