Mailing/Fulfillment - Postal Trends

The U.S. Postal Service announced that it will end preferential treatment for time-sensitive Periodicals mail this Friday, a move that could delay delivery of some daily and weekly publications by a day. “All Periodicals will be processed efficiently on automated or mechanized equipment where postal facilities have this type of equipment,” says a letter USPS officials sent to “Periodicals mailers” and members of the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee. “Since all Periodicals (daily, weekly, quarterly and monthly) have the same processing expectations and service standards, they will be processed based upon arrival times and service standards, not publication titles.”

A U.S. Postal Service decision to suspend employer contributions to a postal worker retirement account is causing alarm among its employees. “It was sheer chaos on the work floor when everybody found out about it this morning,” said Clarice Torrence, who has worked for the Postal Service for 32 years. “How long is this going to go on? Are they going to play catch-up?”

While the Postal Service has said this is a temporary measure, the president of the American Postal Workers Union said he is not assured that employees will not be negatively affected.

“We will take every step necessary to

Mail delivery of many newspapers and magazines could soon be delayed a day because of a new U.S. Postal Service program to streamline processing of flat mail. Postal officials believe the changes will significantly reduce the costs attributed to the Periodicals class, which the Postal Service has targeted for rate increases because the class is supposedly not profitable.

Included in the plan is the end of “Hot 2C” processing that provides expedited—and expensive—manual handling of such time-sensitive publications as The Wall Street Journal and other daily and weekly publications. Another aspect of the plan is nationwide Critical Entry Times—deadlines for drop-shipped

The ongoing realignment of postal facilities to better fit the changing needs of customers is saving the Postal Service millions of dollars, but it and other cost-cutting measures are not enough to stave off a fast-approaching liquidity crisis, a House subcommittee was told Wednesday.

With each passing day, it is more obvious that the U.S. Postal Service’s business model is “not viable,” as a Government Accountability Office report put it last year. USPS, in short, could be unable to make payroll in the near term unless Congress acts. Yet the likeliest answer from Capitol Hill is to extend more aid, enabling USPS to limp along for a few more years, without attacking the Postal Service’s dysfunction at the roots...we can’t help noting that these service cuts are necessary, in part, because the Postal Service has not done more to cut other still-unreasonable costs:

[Kinston (NC) Republican Rep. Stephen] LaRoque is pushing a measure that would require lawyers to wait 30 days before they begin filling victims’ mailboxes with solicitations. The bill is modeled on a Florida rule and is partly inspired by his family’s experience after a stepdaughter and her three children were in an accident.

“The children all got these solicitations. She got them,” LaRoque said. “We didn’t need all this stuff. It was stacked up 2 feet tall.”

LaRoque’s bill has drawn instant skepticism from lawyers and insurers.

“The reason lawyers send letters in the mail is that people want information and they respond

The Postal Service’s proportion of over-50 employees is 10 percentage points higher than any Fortune 500 company and nearly double the average, according to a recent study. American Airlines leads the big companies, with a workforce that is 39.1 percent over 50, estimates the RetirementJobs.com study, based on public records.

More than 49 percent of USPS employees are over 50. Fifty-something postal workers outnumber the 40-and-under crowd by more than 2 to 1. More than 1 in 10 Postal Service employees is over 60.

“Over the next 10 years, over 300,000 employees—more than half the current workforce—will be eligible to retire.”

Canada looks set to face its first postal strike since 1997 starting at 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Daylight Time) on Thursday, June 2nd. The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) issued its legally-required 72-hours notice of an intention to strike yesterday, aiming to put pressure on Canada Post to accept its final offer for a new four-year collective bargaining agreement up to January 2015.

The union said striking was the “only real bargaining lever” it had with Canada Post, as it continued to seek reward for its members for 16 consecutive years of profitability at the Crown Corporation.

When a respected magazine’s cover story cited a statistic, I used to assume the number had at least some connection to reality. Not any more—not after reading Bloomberg Businessweek’s recent piece on the U.S. Postal Service. Here’s the stat that really stumped me: “In the last quarter of 2010, junk revenue climbed 7.1 percent,” with the added statement, “Unfortunately for the USPS, junk volume has since plateaued.”

Nowhere does the article define “junk mail,” though it uses the phrase liberally. It’s certainly a term you won't find in any USPS reports.

Businessweek’s definition of “junk mail,” however, is apparently Standard-class mail

The U.S. Postal Service has been rocked by a surprising slump in mail volumes in the last few months, and is now on track for a full shut-down in 2012—a Presidential election year. The three months up to March 2011 saw a 7.6 percent drop in overall U.S. mail volumes—double the expected drop—with April and May continuing the “disappointing” run.

Speaking to the Mailers’ Technical Advisory Committee meeting yesterday at USPS headquarters in Washington DC, USPS Chief Financial Officer Corbett said there was now “no question” that the Postal Service would refuse to pay the federal government a required $5.5B