The United States Postal Service on Wednesday moved to bypass Congress by announcing that it will stop collecting and delivering mail on Saturdays in an effort to stem its staggering financial losses.
the cut in the delivery service from Monday to Friday, from August 1. 5, would result in annual savings of $2 billion for the agency, which lost $15.9 billion in the last fiscal year. packages will continue to be delivered on Saturdays and post office boxes will continue to receive mail on that day. Post offices will also be open to sell stamps and other materials. But on Saturdays, magazines, some newspapers, catalogs, and Netflix movies did not arrive at customers’ homes.
postmaster general patrick r. Donahoe, citing the decline in mail volume caused by the Internet as Americans switch to communicating and paying bills online, said the five-day service will help keep the post office solvent.
“It is irresponsible of us not to follow this path,” he said. “It’s too big a cost savings to ignore.”
The change would defy lawmakers’ ban on abolishing the six-day service, a hallmark of the 150-year-old mail system. For years, Congress has rejected the postal service’s call for five-day delivery. but donahoe saw an opportunity in the interim budget that is funding the government until march 27. by the time he wins, he believes the momentum will be on his agency’s side and Congress may be forced to relent.
since 1983, the annual appropriations bill that gives spending authority to federal agencies has included a rider requiring the postal service to deliver mail six days a week. But Donahoe said he can make the change unilaterally and bypass lawmakers.
hinted that the current interim measure, which includes a five-day service ban, may not be binding anyway. Postal officials are betting that Congress will keep it out of any future spending measures lawmakers pass.
“We think we’re on the right track with this,” Donahoe said. When asked what she would do if Congress continued to pass laws blocking delivery in five days, she said, “Let’s see what happens.”
“This isn’t like a gotcha or anything,” he said.
Postal officials’ proposal to end Saturday delivery has met with resistance from lawmakers in rural districts and from those backed by unions, who oppose the change and are avid political donors.
On Wednesday, union officials again condemned the plan. letter carriers, clerks and mail sorters would lose jobs, between 20,000 and 25,000, due to attrition, reassignments and possible acquisitions, officials said. up to 12 percent of the city’s letter carriers are paid for overtime; much of that would also go away by removing delivery on Saturdays.
“this maneuver of mr. donahoe flouts the will of congress, as expressed annually for the last 30 years in legislation requiring six-day delivery, which remains in effect today,” fredric rolando, president of the national letter carriers association, said in a statement.
On Wednesday, the executive board of the union that represents rural carriers cast a vote of “censure” on donahoe. at least one union said it plans to sue over the change.
many details of the postal plan are vague. postal officials said most short-distance letters mailed on a Friday would still arrive on a Monday and mail scheduled for delivery Tuesday after a three-day weekend would arrive on time. But some were skeptical that such a big change, with the agency closing hundreds of mail sorting centers, wouldn’t delay deliveries.
The announcement comes as the agency continues to lose money, largely due to a 2006 law that requires the postal service to set aside $5.5 billion a year for health benefits for future retirees. the agency defaulted twice last year after reaching its legal borrowing limit. has closed hundreds of mail sorting centers, reduced hours at thousands of post offices, and reduced headcount by 193,000 to cut costs.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney declined to offer a definitive opinion on the plan, saying the Obama administration only learned of the decision on Tuesday and that the postal service is independent. He said the White House prefers a comprehensive reform package and criticized the Republican-led House for lack of movement.
postal officials say they have broad public support for their plan. they cite a postal service study showing that about seven in 10 Americans support the move to five-day delivery.
but support in congress is not guaranteed, nor does the opposition fall along party lines. House and Senate leaders were unable to reach a consensus in the last Congress on legislation to staunch losses. The Senate passed a bill that would have delayed the delivery by five days for two years, among other changes. a more aggressive house bill that would have allowed the five-day service to continue did not make it to the assembly.
Republicans who supported that bill applauded Wednesday’s announcement.
“supporting the us. uu. the postal service’s plan to move forward with five-day mail delivery is one of those solutions that deserves bipartisan support,” Rep. Darrell Issa (Republican of California) and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-olakla.) said in a joint statement.
but sen. Thomas R. carper (d-del.), chairman of the committee that oversees postal operations, said he was disappointed. “For nearly three decades, it has been the clear intent of Congress that the postal service provide most communities with six days of mail delivery,” he said in a statement.
“It’s hard to condemn the Postmaster General for acting aggressively for doing what he thinks he can and should do to keep the lights on in the postal service,” Carper added. he also criticized congress for failing to agree on a broader set of reforms.
Speaker of the House of Representatives, John A. boehner (r-ohio) expressed hope that lawmakers will move forward on legislation to reform the postal service.
The change could be felt most in rural areas, where remote communities rely heavily on mail delivery.
“this is going to be very hard for vermont and rural united states, but it is an uphill challenge to reverse it”, said the representative. peter welch (d-vt.). “Our political prospects are uphill, if not uphill.”
Among postal customers, opinions were divided on Wednesday.
richard findley, 67, who lives near the manassas post office, said the only thing he gets in the mail these days are bills. business cards and notes have long since migrated to email.
“I don’t understand why a post office works on Saturdays,” he said. “nobody really needs the mail.”
but outside the district post office at 20th street and florida avenue nw, dwayne reed, an electrician who lives in brookland, said he’s worried about people relying on checks in the mail.
“If you receive a check on the first of the month from the government for social security or unemployment, the first can be on a Saturday,” he said. “Those extra two days of waiting can be critical for people who rely on those checks for food.”
Anthony Duckett, who lives in Clinton and owns a commercial cleaning business, said the plan is unfair to customers.
“The prices of the postal service are increasing but the services they offer are decreasing,” said Duckett, who added that he receives most of his bills and statements in the mail on Saturdays.
“That would delay me a day or two in receiving it. . . so it would affect me a lot, ”she said.
While first-class mail has always been the postal service’s biggest moneymaker, packages are a growing profit center. but they do not include catalogs, magazines, movies and small newspapers that depend on the post office for home delivery. many of those shippers will likely adjust their delivery days.
About a third of the 4,000 newspapers represented by the National Association of Newspapers rely on the Post Office for home delivery.
“Newspapers can be delivered by contracted carriers, but that requires setting up and managing routes, not to mention monitoring contractors to make sure they’re doing the job right,” spokesman Stan Schwartz said. “Some newspapers just aren’t prepared to handle it.”
netflix, the online movie rental service, said in a statement that ending saturday delivery could make the company more profitable by lowering costs as subscribers switch from dvds to watching videos transmitted over the internet.
the annual loss of postal service for the fiscal year ending September 1. 30 was the largest in the agency’s history. is scheduled to release financial results for October through December, typically its most profitable quarter, on Friday.
Josh Hicks, Jeremy Borden, Alex Rudansky, and Ovetta Wiggins contributed to this report.