USPS Five-Year Plan: Doomed to Fail

The Postal Service’s latest five-year plan, which it announced with great fanfare on Feb. 16, is “a warmed-over menu of proposals that are doomed to fail,” said APWU President Cliff Guffey. “The Postal Service cannot cut its way to financial health. The USPS must modernize, improve service, and offer new products in order to succeed,” he said.

The USPS reiterated its request for relief from the obligation to pre-fund healthcare benefits for future retirees, a burden no other government agency or private company bears. “But none of the other proposals will help the Postal Service thrive in the 21 st Century,” Guffey said.

The broad outlines of the plan are familiar — slow mail delivery, close 252 mail processing centers, shut 3,600 post offices, end Saturday delivery, eliminate 155,000 jobs, and create a USPS-sponsored healthcare plan in place of the current program. Cut service, cut jobs, cut benefits.

“That’s a plan to bury the Postal Service, not to save it,” the union president said.

There is one new idea: Increase the price of a stamp for individual customers — while leaving postage rates alone for big mailers!