The US Postal Service has shelved plans to abandon Saturday delivery for regular mail, and will now seek to re-negotiate union deals and raise postal rates to find other ways of balancing its books.
The Postal Service had intended to implement the new delivery frequency plan from the week of 5th August, 2013, although package delivery would have continued to be six-days-a-week.
Today USPS bowed to pressure from Congress to continue delivering regular letters on Saturdays.
The Postal Service issued a statement from its Board of Governors, following its meeting today, conceding that legislation passed by Congress to fund government operations until the end of September 2013 “has prohibited implementation of a new national delivery schedule for mail and packages”.
The move was a plan to offer financial relief to a service that has been suffering severe bankruptcy pressures for years.
8bitian says: “Bad” and “worse” should be flipped. Somehow I think losing 250 mail-processing centers and 100,000 employees across the board is worse than MY NETFLIX IS SLOW.
» SFB says: Disagree, because, well, think about it this way — if that Netflix is getting to you a day slower, that also means bills will get to people who owe money (and payments will get back) more slowly, paychecks will get to workers more slowly (not everyone has direct deposit), and so on. That Netflix is the tip of the iceberg. It’s a ripple effect that will be felt across the entire economy — especially among older or less tech-savvy Americans. Basically, we’re talking about the difference between infrastructure and engine. A damaged infrastructure is bad, as is the job loss. However, if the engine gets damaged, it has the effect of hurting a lot of other infrastructures far beyond the U.S. Postal Service. And that’s a heck of a lot more dangerous. — Ernie @ SFB
(Source: shortformblog)
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