Problem Postal Proposals
In a recent article, Newsweek magazine polled some management consultants and business futurists on how to improve the U.S. Postal Service and make it run more like a business www.newsweek.com/id/216741. This assumes that “running like a business” is the ideal goal instead of providing probably the only government service that people still trust.
Granted, some of their ideas were not bad and may deserve serious consideration. But many others revealed a lack of understanding about why the USPS is in the mess it’s in, the legal obstacles it faces and how much the $9 billion direct marketing industry depends on it.
For one thing, the consultants ignore the $5.4 billion the USPS is legally obligated to prepay every year to cover retiree healthcare costs.
And they showed a bit of the top-down free-market myopia that’s contributed to the general economic downturn.
Here’s a look at what those consultants are saying and why they may or may not work:
Suggestion number one: The Newsweek article urges the USPS to get into e-commerce.
Not a bad idea. Already, postal customers can track the movement of packages through the www.usps.com Web site. Additionally, for at least the past five years, the USPS has been working with EBay to ship product purchases through priority mail.
Suggestion number two: Increase, don’t decrease mail service to five days because less service will further hurt the USPS’s reputation.
Duh, mailers have been saying that all along. Plus, as we all know, a service decrease can’t happen without Congress’s say-so and that ain’t too likely despite Postmaster General Jack Potter’s continual lobbying.
Suggestion number three: Advertise the USPS through coupons.
Also worth thinking about, but where and how much would it cost to get such a program going?
Suggestion number four: Make a play for control of government broadband to make the USPS the government’s official communications delivery service.
At a time when large telecommunications companies are coming under increased public scrutiny for privacy violations and the like it’s improbable Congress is gonna want to empower another government agency that too easily could be accused of being like “Big Brother.”
Suggestion number five: Rebrand the USPS because people don’t know what the USPS stands for.
Huh? What planet do these consultants come from? Since before the founding of this country people have known where they can mail letters and packages. And this is true despite the growth of e-communications and e-commerce.
Suggestion number six: Close branches strategically and franchise by region.
If by franchise the article means privatize that, too, this totally misses the point of what the USPS is all about. That same consultant also said the postal service doesn’t need full services branches every few blocks in New York.
Funny, but I’ve never gone into a post office that isn’t totally crowded on most days.
Again, this would have a hard time getting through Congress.
Suggestion number seven: Put employee contracts out to bid and try to work around the unions.
It’s easy to make these suggestions from a distance and not have take into account business and political realities.
What about the idea of providing universal service? That’s not always so profitable.
Many of these ideas might make good sense if applied just to a business. But there’s a lot more to the postal service. And just applying these textbook measures to the USPS won’t really solve its problems.
October 13th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
the usps is in trouble because of management. the supervisors are untrained and lazy. management gets ahead by politics not knowledge. they have no people skills and no more then a highschool education. they ignore the employees who do not want to work and push the workers with threats.the usps should riff the managers and hire college educated supervisors who have fresh ideas to save the postal service
October 15th, 2009 at 5:19 pm
Was just reading on the PBBI site that the USPS has announced there will be zero increase in postage for 2010. This advance notice seems pretty customer-oriented to me! (Link to full article at: http://postalupdates.pbbiblogs.com/)