Their mail on Saturdays, it is not as big a deal. Most customers at a Chicago post office at Dearborn and Illinois did agree, also saying they hoped the move could help streamline the USPS and make it more efficient. "Congress should.alter the unreasonable pre-funding of pensions that is currently required for the USPS and allow it to innovate so that it can compete with other mail delivery services," Duckworth said in a statement.īut the agency clearly thinks it has a majority of the American public on its side regarding the change. Northwest suburban Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth is one. Donahoe said the post office does not need congressional approval to stop Saturday delivery but plenty in congress disagree. It was not immediately clear how the service could eliminate Saturday mail without congressional approval. Though an independent agency, the service gets no tax dollars for its day-to-day operations but is subject to congressional control. Over the past several years, the Postal Service has advocated shifting to a five-day delivery schedule for mail and packages - and it repeatedly but unsuccessfully appealed to Congress to approve the move. Post offices now open on Saturdays would remain open on Saturdays. Under the new plan, mail would be delivered to homes and businesses only from Monday through Friday, but would still be delivered to post office boxes on Saturdays. The move accentuates one of the agency's strong points - package delivery has increased by 14 percent since 2010, officials say, while the delivery of letters and other mail has declined with the increasing use of email and other Internet services. In an announcement Wednesday, the postmaster general said the Saturday mail cutback would begin August 1. Since 2006, the Postal Service has reduced its annual costs by about $15 billion, reduced its staff by 193,000 and has consolidated more than 200 mail processing locations.The goal of the plan is to save about $2 billion annually, the financially struggling agency says. I mean you could always count on the post office to delivering Saturday mail, so I guess we’ll have to plan a little bit better.” “As a mother you want to make sure people get Saturday mail for invitations to parties and stuff. We’ve had enough of that.”Īnother customer, Lynn Porche, says she really likes getting Saturday mail and is upset about the change. “If that will help them to alleviate the problem, I’d much rather see them do that than to raise the stamp rate some more. Jewel Garrett, a customer at the downtown post office on Franklin Street, says she doesn’t mind the change because five days per week delivery is enough for her. The workforce is only being reduced by attrition, which means that retiring personnel won’t be replaced.Ī 2010 Gallup poll found that a strong majority of Americans support the reduction of mail delivery days when offered several alternatives for the Postal Service to save money. Montague says the savings will come from realigning schedules, and no staff will be laid off. In Houston, the delivery schedule change is expected to save $82 million. She says there has been a 14 percent increase in package service, however. We have reached our borrowing ceiling, so we do not have the ability to borrow any more money and we’re still being required to make these payments.” “We can no longer afford to sustain operations with these kind of losses. She says USPS has been losing $25 million per day due to the decline in First Class Mail. It will continue to deliver packages as well as mail addressed to post office boxes six days a week.ĭionne Montague is with the U.S. Postal Service will stop delivering mail to street addresses on Saturdays. It’s been in the talks for several years.
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