Knee-Jerk Reaction
By Larry Riggs
First it was thinking of giving private couriers access to mailboxes. Now we hear the U.S. Postal Service might want to privatize some bulk mail centers it’s not planning to close.
According to the Jersey Journal, local politicians and union leaders plan to protest the USPS’s plans to privatize the bulk mail center in Jersey City.
This facility, one of the nation’s largest, employs 2,400 people and has NOT been slated for closure.
I guess the USPS’s longstanding woes of declining mail volume coupled with the general economic meltdown that seems to get worse by the minute is leading postal management to grasp at straws for ways to raise money.
Privatization seems like a knee-jerk reaction.
In his recent letter to Postmaster General Jack Potter, William Burrus, president of the American Postal Workers Union urged the PMG, among other things, to make the most of the postal service’s strengths, which include its monopoly status and well developed delivery systems and, of course, its army of postal workers.
Granted, the USPS’s financial problems aren’t simple and even the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 didn’t fix them all.
But it’s uncertain if further diluting the postal service’s strengths will contribute to the good of mailers let alone the public at large.
