Jimscomments4_6

So, there's all this talk about possibly ending Saturday mail delivery. It figures, with this being a contract arbitration time, and traditionally whenever we are in the middle of contract negotiations/arbitrations, the public is treated to an endless flow of propaganda blaming the "postal deficits" on the "wages rising faster than the rate of inflation". So, in an attempt to curtail "expenses", the Postal Board of Governors is doing this study regarding dropping service on Saturday.

   I think the key word they need to look at is "service". Without it, we have no customers. Without customers, we have no revenue. We'd be out of business, which would please many in our Republican-controlled House and Senate, who would love turning the whole shebang over to the private sector. If that happens, yea, I'd possibly be looking for another line of work, but more importantly, at least in regards to the impact on our communities, since it would not be PROFITABLE to provide excellent mail service to anywhere but the largest cities, smaller, rural communties (such as Guthrie Center Iowa, where I live) would be at the mercy of whichever entity took the "service" over. We'd all, at the very least, be looking at driving to a local delivery point to claim our mail...door to door delivery would be a thing of the past. Not profitable to have a carrier go out to do that!

There are many areas which could be addressed in an effort to reduce postal operating costs. In my facility, we have just got new bar-code printers for the primary parcel sort area. I don't believe there was anything wrong with the old ones: they were reasonably reliable, and printed clear and legible bar-codes for the parcels. But we got new ones anyway, as every other Bulk Mail Center in the country will or has already got. Somebody's brother-in-law or something must have done quite well by selling the USPS on these new pieces of junk. About 40 to 50 percent of the new bar-code labels are not scannable by scanners in our facility.

   Overpaid postal workers? We've been getting about 1 percent a year for our increase. Yea, I know, it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, but when you look at what postal management gets: yearly bonuses of anywhere from $1500 to $3000 for entry-level supervisors, and, so I've been told, up to about $20K for plant managers, it really does a lot for morale. Yea, we're reportedly the "#1" Bulk Mail Center in the whole system. If that is true, we did it IN SPITE of the way we're mismanaged!

   I'm starting to ramble a bit too much. I made a promise to myself to keep the work frustrations off my site. So I apologize, not only to everyone else, but mostly to MYSELF!

                       I REALLY DO LIKE MY JOB!!!!        6 April 2001