(Stephanie Bouvia)
Need to mail a bill in on time? Waiting about your college acceptance letter? Have to send out flyers for your charity organization?
The way you do all those things is going to change under the United States Postal Service’s proposal to end Saturday mail delivery.
“America is changing the way it uses the mailbox,” said Maureen Marion, spokesperson for the U.S. Postal Service. More and more, she said, Americans send financial documents, greeting cards and banking material through the Internet. That means the postal service’s workload has shrunk dramatically. Among the declines in mail volume:
- Since 2006, overall mail volume has dropped by 25 percent.
- Letter mail volume has dropped by more than one-third.
- In the last two years, package volume has grown by 14 percent.
Because of those changes, the U.S. Postal Service is facing almost $16 billion in debt.
But the cutback in Saturday service has raised concerns among postal service employees. Many fear potential job losses. And some businesses are concerned about the possible effect on their work.
To keep the postal service customer-friendly, packages will continue to be delivered on Saturday because that service is still in demand from the customers, said postal service spokesperson Marion. And post offices will remain open on Saturdays.
The no-Saturday delivery proposal could save around $2 billion, said Marion., through cutting overtime pay and eliminating up to 25,000 jobs. Those include letter carriers, support and supervisory positions.
Mike Landry, president of the Central New York area American Postal Workers Union, predicts the cut-backs will affect more than just postal workers’ jobs. In the Syracuse area, about 23,000 jobs are connected to the postal service, Landry said. These include printers, mailers and packagers.
Instead of cutting postal service jobs and Saturday delivery, Landry suggests that Congress change the way it requires the postal service to fund it retiree benefits. Now, the postal service must pre-fund retiree benefits for the next 75 years. Since 2006, It has had to make payments of around $5.5 billion a year.
“That’s where all our money problems stem from,” said Landry. Without the pre-funding, he said, “We would actually be making money.”
Businesses will have to change their mailing schedules around the new five-day delivery service. For example, Wendy Colucci, a customer service representative at KinaneCo graphic communications, said the change will affect its scheduling for mailers — especially for politicians during election season.
“If somebody has three mailers they want to get out,” said Colucci, “they’re going to have to push it way up earlier now to not miss election day.”
(Samantha Sonner is a junior majoring in broadcast and digital journalism.)
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