You've Got Less Mail: The Postal Service Is Suffering Amid Coronavirus
Last edited Wed Apr 8, 2020, 02:32 PM - Edit history (1)
'You've Got Less Mail. The Postal Service Is Suffering Amid The Coronavirus.' NPR, April 8, 2020.
The U.S. Postal Service could be another casualty of the coronavirus pandemic. "A lot of businesses have ceased to do advertising through the mail," says Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., "and as a result, mail volume has collapsed." He says the decline could be as much as 60% by the end of the year, which he says would be "catastrophic" for the agency.
The $2 trillion emergency bill approved by Congress last month included a $10 billion loan for the Postal Service, but Connolly, who chairs the House Subcommittee on Government Operations, says that's not what the agency needs.
(Postal Workers Say They Lack Supplies, Training To Protect Themselves From Virus, Read More)
"The Postal Service is insolvent," he says. "It needs debt forgiveness, not debt extension. And it needs an infusion of capital right now." The Postal Service's finances have long been in sorry shape, in part because of a requirement that the agency pre-fund the future retirement benefits of its employees. The agency says it lost $8.8 billion last fiscal year.
Yet during the coronavirus pandemic, its services, which have been deemed essential, are more vital than ever, says Mark Dimondstein, president of the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union. "Just think about: In this pandemic, information is going into people's homes on health. Medicines are going into people's homes through the post office," he says. "Even in ordinary times, there's 1.2 billion packages of medicine," and "just about all" of the VA's medicines go through the Postal Service.
The terms of the loan included in the last funding bill could give control of large parts of the agency to the Treasury Department, and Dimondstein says the Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to eventually privatize the Postal Service. "It's in writing," he says. "That's their plan."
He says the "small-'d' democratic right to have postal services, no matter who you are and where we live," would disappear or be severely diminished under the plan. President Trump has been critical of the service's management.
In a statement, U.S. Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer said: "The Postal Service appreciates the inclusion of limited emergency borrowing authority during this COVID-19 pandemic. However, the Postal Service remains concerned that this measure will be insufficient to enable the Postal Service to withstand the significant downturn in our business that could directly result from the pandemic. Under a worst case scenario, such downturn could result in the Postal Service having insufficient liquidity to continue operations."
In other words, the post office could soon run out of money.
Congressman Connolly says the next coronavirus rescue bill should provide a cash infusion of $25 billion to the Postal Service and forgive the agency's debts...
More, https://www.npr.org/2020/04/08/828949609/youve-got-less-mail-the-postal-service-is-suffering-amid-the-coronavirus
*ALSO: Lost in the Mail in the Coronavirus Era: Pandemic threatens letter carriers, their customers, the US Postal Service itself – & even the November election. https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/04/07/lost-mail-coronavirus-era
..Right now, nationwide, as with my own local post office, the US Postal Service is trying to deal with the overwhelming magnitude of the COVID-19 pandemic. Workers are performing heroically but are desperately shorthanded and succumbing to sickness. And while in many areas of the country postal management is trying to serve customers and protect both them and employees, the quality of care greatly varies.
An article last month from investigative journalists at Pro Publica reported postal carriers saying they were “being pressed into service against medical advice and with insufficient protection against the novel coronavirus… postal workers said the USPS has long pushed employees to avoid taking sick days and managers are still sticking to that.” And Jake Bittle at The Nation wrote, “Many post offices have long been understaffed, and the coronavirus is poised to push an already overworked labor force to a breaking point. Without drastic action, the virus could soon threaten the Postal Service just when it’s needed most.”...
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