USPS Changing Due to Financial Crisis

The United States Postal Service is in the midst of tumult nationwide and here in Gainesville. Slated to run out of money sometime this month, drastic measures are currently being taken to dramatically consolidate processing, reduce the amount of employees by more than 200,000, and save money by closing hundreds of offices nationwide and severely reducing delivery standards. Those proposed standards reductions include ending the overnight delivery standard for first class mail within a specified area and changing from a six-day-a-week delivery system to only five days...or maybe even four...for mail delivery. The entire outgoing mail processing in the Gainesville plant will be transferred to Jacksonville at the end of this year, and the remainder of the processing here may close in about a year and a half (or sooner) due to consolidation plans. So someone mailing a letter in Gainesville to another location in Gainesville may soon see their letter taking several days to reach its destination! Might as well just drive across town and hand it in person...

We'll see what kind of staffing reductions will take place in Gainesville. With the loss of outgoing mail operations several employees will be excessed to other facilities at the close of the year (or sooner). Others will see their schedules and assignments changed. It looks like a very bumpy road ahead during the next couple of years for postal employees here in Gainesville and nationwide. And, I might say, for postal customers as well!

One of the causes for the financial trouble is self-evident: with the Internet's convenient online billing and payment, e-mail, and social networking sites, the volume of first class letters has plummeted. And with that drop in volume has come a drop in revenue. Also, Congress passed into law a few years ago a special provision, applying only to the Postal Service, that compels it to pre-fund its retirees' health care accounts each year, giving it automatic massive multi-billion-dollar deficits to overcome. To top this off, about $50 billion in past overpayments by the USPS to the federal government for its pension funds have yet to be compensated for. Leaving the USPS currently in a crisis of liquidity...