Contrary to rumor, the U.S. Post Office in its day-to-day operations is not running in the red. It’s only hard up at the moment because in 2006, Congress passed a rule that forced it to pay decades ahead into a retirement health care fund for its workers—much further ahead than any other business pays—and a $5.5 billion payment is due November 18. Otherwise the Post Office would be $611 million in the black even after more than three years of recession.
The PO’s operations aren’t paid for with taxpayer money; that’s a fact that needs to be clearly understood in any discussion of its financial viability. Except for a subsidy for the mailing of voting materials to the disabled and to American citizens overseas, the PO stands on its own.
In an age when conservative influences are pushing for the privatization of everything, it’s not difficult to find studies and recommendations that advocate privatizing the Post Office. The touting of the “business model” to which the PO should conform, and the “efficiencies” that could be realized if it did so, leaves unanswered questions such as what rates would be like if the affordability mandate, with roots going back to the U.S. Constitution, were abandoned. As Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, put it in an interview on CNBC, “Try asking a private carrier to send a letter from Miami to Anchorage for 44 cents.”
Massachusetts Congressman Stephen Lynch (D-Boston), a former ironworker whose mother was a postal clerk, has filed legislation that would recalculate the PO’s contributions to its pension system and move an estimated $6.9 billion in overpayments into the health fund.
The Post Office is something we take for granted without thinking much about what it does, apart from the obvious: delivering what for many of us is a dwindling pile of mail—or at least wanted mail—now that we stay in touch with the people who matter most by e-mail. It seems obvious that e-mail and social media are taking the place of letters sent by “snail mail” (though social media don’t offer the privacy of mail sent through the PO). It seems obvious that things we want to send, including serious documents, can be sent by private carriers like UPS or FedEx.
But what seems obvious may not be the case. Things we buy online, for example, are delivered by the PO as well as by private carriers. And UPS and FedEx don’t go everywhere; even they depend on the PO for so-called “last mile” service to locations beyond their reach. What they would charge if the PO’s truly universal network weren’t there is unknown.
And the PO may not be using all its potential. One example: at present, beer and wine can’t be handled by the Postal Service; new lines of business would no doubt open if that prohibition were eliminated. And there are possibilities on the digital side. The Swiss post office lets customers choose between having their mail delivered the traditional way or having it scanned and sent to them via Internet on computers or cell phones.
In the meantime, the PO is pursuing efficiencies on its own. Some 3,700 post offices and branches are slated for closure in January, 2012. On the list of those to be closed in the Valley are, in the Upper Valley: Lake Pleasant (01347) and Wendell Depot (01380), and in Springfield: Indian Orchard (01151), Brightwood (01107), Colonial Station (01103), Springfield Mason Square (01109) and Springfield Tower Square (01115).
