Postage Stamp increase denied. Rates will not rise next year.

[dixiegrrrrl]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. regulators on Thursday denied the beleaguered Postal Service an average 5.6 percent rate increase it had requested to help its financially ailing operations cope with the impact of the recession.

The Postal Service had proposed raising the price of a first-class stamp to 46 cents from 44 cents.

The Postal Regulatory Commission, the independent agency that oversees the mail service, said postal officials failed to demonstrate that the global recession was responsible for the agency's multibillion-dollar shortfalls.

http://tinyurl.com/25jzqfc ( opens to Yahoo finance story)

[Toucano]

1. Let the postal service charge what they need to break even.

I can't believe a letter can be sent from NY to CA for 44 cents (or even 46 cents).

Postal Service is not quite passé, but it is far less vital that everyone have access to it as a cheap means of communication in the electronic era.

Greatly diminish the volume of junk mail, too.

That would be a win-win.

[DCBob]

2. Excellent.. its about time to stop these rediculous increases that keep coming almost every year.

The post office is a dinosaur in need of extinction.

[KittyWampus]

5. I LOVE the USPS. They do a great job for such reasonable prices.

[nadinbrzezinski]

9. Really? You want to get rid of the ONLY service

that was detailed in the Constitution because, they like got it...

Jesus age, you are sounding like a privatizing Republican. By the way, you think UPS will deliver to the last lane of the US? NO... who do you think does? You guessed it... in fact, under contract to UPS at times.

[LiberalAndProud]

12. Because 46 cents is way too much to deliver a letter.

I mean it will only cost me 60 cents or so to drive across town to deliver my own fucking letter. And if it's going to Alaska or Hawaii, there's always FedEx and UPS right? They are FAR more efficient, right?

Do I need the sarcasm tag? Really?

[bluethruandthru]

14. +100 n/t

[LiberalAndProud]

17. Was that it then?

Because I'd really like to understand why some people believe the USPS should go away. I don't understand the hostility at all. And I would like to understand the thinking, even if I don't agree with it.

[Pab Sungenis]

3. People think the Post Office is a government bureaucracy.

The problem is, it isn't. It was spun off into a private corporation known as the United States Postal Service under Nixon, which removed almost all government regulation from it. The first great experiment in privatization.

We need to bring the Postmaster General back into the cabinet and the Post Office back under government control.

[Cerridwen]

4. Thank you.

I have family and friends who work for the PO.

What would be wonderful for the PO would be to go in and clean out the "management" who doesn't know how to manage and has never or rarely worked in the position they "manage."

That and consolidating their multiple "unions." The idea that every craft needs its own specialized union makes my teeth itch; not to mention it dilutes the power a unified union would have.

[Occulus]

15. None of the supervisors I report to have ever done the job.

And they are arrogant "little Hitlers" who insist upon doing things wrong because it's their way or the highway.

We even have one supervisor who was promoted into the Automation section... from the Mailhandler craft. By definition, he does not know what he is doing.

I was going to post an incident that occurred to me a couple days ago, but I'll generalize it (I don't trust postal managers not to read this and put together a few things). Postal managers in my facility are routinely, knowingly, and with malice of forethought ignoring rulings issued through the agreed-upon grievance process and binding arbitration. They are claiming not to know anything about the rulings, that they "have to see it", etc. They are also claiming that such rulings apply only to enployees who bring grievances, even when the union arbitrator makes clear that they are finding fault with a particular practice in general.

I am pushing my union to bring all this before the NLRB, and making clear that a substantial monetary reward, as well as demotions for all management involved, is required. There are literally hundreds of grievances that have been filed over one issue alone; I have personally read the (two that I know of) prior rulings in the union's favor. Management is choosing to completely ignore these rulings, and I was once even escorted out of the building for demanding compliance with the ruling and refusing an order to allow management to act contrary to that ruling.

IMO, there are grounds to begin building a substantial and (given my facility's current situation) devastating case against postal managers in my facility on a number of fronts. It's bad, and it's nothing like anywhere else I've ever worked, or even the facility of three years ago.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Thank you but the goal these days

is to finish it off, not reform it in a rational way and bring the post master back to the Cabinet. I am sure Franklin would lecture us these days.

[PoliticAverse]

6. Eliminating Saturday delivery

It seems only a matter of time until they eliminate Saturday delivery in order to cover their
budget shortfall.

[HereSince1628]

7. Get the junk mailers to pay another penny

and the problem pretty much goes away.

[aikoaiko]

8. Why don't they let the post office charge what they need?

It ain't rocket science.

[nadinbrzezinski]

10. The goal is privatization

like schools and other essential services. After all we all know the private sector does so swell. So if the USPS manages to make it, how you sell that?

Oh and :sarcasm: to those who need it.

[Hannah Bell]

13. did it to force them to cut employees or service.

[Occulus]

16. We're already cut as far as we can in my facility without impacting service.

We are all doing the work of two or even three employees- and I'm not talking about pushing paper here (well, literally I am, I suppose ;)), I'm talking about carts weighing hundreds of pounds, and sometimes even upward of 1500 pounds, pushed by hand over and over, for eight hours or more. Trays that sometimes weigh fifty or sixty pounds apiece, lifted by hand (and improperly most of the time, from a bent back rather than a crouch).

We work on machines forty or fifty feet long or more, machines that have several hundred parts rotating at high speed (and belts that move as fast), and clear sorted mail from stackers that fill above our heads all by ourselves, one person per machine, in direct defiance by postal managers of arbitration rulings forbidding that exact practice.

It's a nightmare, and if I wasn't in debt, I'd quit even without another job lined up. I'd rather be completely jobless than do this work even a single day more.