Cutbacks on mail delivery

The U.S. Postal Service needs to restructure and cut costs to avoid bankruptcy.

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.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Explore More
To continue reading this article...
Continue reading this article and get limited website access each month.
Get unlimited website access, exclusive newsletters plus much more.
Cancel or pause at any time.
Already a subscriber to The Week?
Not sure which email you used for your subscription? Contact us