In regard to Tad Clarke’s editorial on the U.S. Postal Service (“Hard Decisions,” Dec. 3), those of us who work with it every day realize many of the problems. Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes because of the politics and the unions involved.
The USPS must undergo major surgery to start fixing the problems. You cannot compare the rate increases with UPS and FedEx with the postal service. Do either UPS or FedEx deliver a letter for 34 cents with no pickups and miscellaneous charges? No, they don’t, because they can’t make money doing that. They could not break even and would be in the same losing proposition that the USPS is in.
Overall, the USPS does a great job with what it has to work with, salary limitations, keeping offices open that do not pay their way, paying hourly wages on nonproductive employees. Until Congress gets its hands out of it, the USPS will never be able to make correct business decisions, as its major competitors can do.
A price increase every six months is killing the industry. Nobody can plan or schedule projects based on response versus cost. I, for one, vote for a large bath and get the prices and reductions that are needed to make the business stable.
The answers are not easy, and I do not have them. But if I did, would the politicians let them happen?
Oliver Emmert
Alpha Mailing Service Inc.
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Tad Clarke’s editorial could also have included another major reason for the postal service’s declining efficient operation: the gross mismanagement and incredibly poor decisions by upper management of the daily operation of the carrier craft.
They have made our job much more difficult and made us less able to efficiently move as much mail as we have in recent years with the militaristic style and uninformed decision-making processes in the management of the operation.
Take a poll anytime of any sampling of the hundreds of thousands of carriers anywhere in America, and you will surely see a common thread. A major reason for the shortcomings of the postal service is the poor, uninformed decisions by folks on the Board of Governors who are inexperienced and not at all in touch with the realities of everyday life in the delivery of mail across the country.
Robert Giordano
Letter carrier
