Congress Needs to Amend Postal Reform
By the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service and The Financial Services RoundtableThe U.S. Postal Service operates under a severely outdated 30-year-old model and suffers from weak mail volumes, rising labor and infrastructure-related costs, significant debt loads, network inefficiencies and rigid statutes.
If postal reform legislation is not passed this year, mail volumes will continue to decrease while rates increase, and American jobs will be at risk. Postmaster general John E. Potter recently reported that in the past two years, the volume of First-Class mail has decreased more than 3.5 billion pieces, while 1.7 million new addresses have been added annually during the same period -- pushing up delivery costs at a time revenue was declining. To compensate, the USPS has had to raise rates four times over the past five years.
Comprehensive postal reform legislation has been approved by the authorizing committees in both chambers of Congress for the first time in 34 years.
However, several issues need to be resolved, including: Civil Service Retirement System, rate index, competitive products, work sharing, factor 3 -- cost floor requirement, negotiated service agreements and service standards.
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