The U.S. Postal Service announced this week that it would dramatically scale back services in a bid to save itself from bankruptcy. The post office said it would seek Congress’s approval to eliminate next-day delivery for first-class mail and to slow down other mail service. Letters and postcards would take at least two days to deliver, and commercial mail such as periodicals up to nine days. The USPS also wants to shut over half of its 487 mail processing centers starting in March and to eliminate around 28,000 jobs. The postal service lost $5.1 billion last year because of large pension obligations and rapidly shrinking postal volumes, and faces bankruptcy if it does not restructure and cut costs. “You can’t continue to run red ink and not make changes,” said Patrick Donahoe, the postmaster general.
The USPS is committing suicide by a thousand cuts, said John Nichols in TheNation.com. Downgrading service will only hasten its demise, not save it. Cutting next-day delivery will push even more customers over to the Internet, and presents private companies with an “open invitation” to take away even more of the postal service’s business. “Americans are almost being pushed into the arms of UPS and FedEx.”
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