The man who wants to end Saturday mail delivery is pressed for time. The way Postmaster General John E. Potter sees it, he has less than six months to convince Congress and the nation of the urgent need to retool the U.S. Postal Service for the 21st century. By fall, the Postal Service won't have enough money to make payroll, Potter predicts. But big customers, regulators, lawmakers and organized labor still have to be won over. Which might help explain Potter's stark assessment. He wants Congress to roll back a law requiring the Postal Service to prepay retiree health benefits. But he also wants the flexibility to change the business model -- by dropping Saturday deliveries, replacing post offices with outposts in suburban supermarkets and cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs through attrition.
John E.
A majority of Americans support ending Saturday mail delivery to help the U.S. Postal Service solve its financial problems, but most oppose shuttering local branches, according to a new Washington Post poll. The public support for moving to five-day delivery might bolster a proposal to end six-day delivery as the mail agency faces declining mail volume and expects at least $238 billion in losses by 2020. Cutting Saturday delivery would save $3.3 billion in the first year and about $5.1 billion by 2020, Postmaster General John E. Potter said Monday. But the changes would mean cutting the equivalent of 40,000 full- and part-time jobs through layoffs and attrition.
The Postal Service will not increase prices for market dominant products in calendar year 2010. Simply stated, there will not be a price increase for market dominant products including First-Class Mail, Standard Mail, periodicals, and single-piece Parcel Post. There will be no exigent price increase for these products.
