ONLY SERIOUS PLAYERS NEEDED IN THE POSTAL REFORM SANDBOX
By
Gene A. Del Polito, President
Advertising Mail Marketing Association
for Direct magazineThe House Subcommittee on the Postal Service has completed its hearings on subcommittee chairman John McHugh's Postal Modernization Act of 1999, also known as H.R. 22. This is a bill that's been five years in the making. The only question is: Will H.R. 22 ever become law?
The answer is: It depends. It depends on whether the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) can be satisfied with the version of the bill that makes its way to the House floor. It depends on whether companies such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service can be satisfied by the "safeguards" the marked up bill will provide against any alleged USPS "unfairness." It depends on whether any of the postal unions who hold a position other than the "just say 'no'" malarkey propounded by the American Postal Workers Union will have the guts to take an active and public stand.
The Postmaster General has acknowledged that without some measure of legislative reform, the U.S. Postal Service's days may be numbered. Those numbered days represent nothing more than a count-down to a crisis that could result in a reform that will make all affected constituencies hunger for the kind of thoughtful and deliberate approach John McHugh has given his measure. Maybe the Postal Service's adversaries believe that an angry Republican-dominated legislature will produce a reform measure that is more radically tailored to their liking. Maybe the postal unions believe that a Democratic sweep of the year 2000's elections will bring an administration and Congress more favorably disposed to recasting the Postal Service into a bastion of socialism in America--a worker's paradise, so to speak.
Mailers, of course, have a responsibility here as well. As a group, the views expressed by mailer representatives have been marked more by disharmony and discord rather than by a commonly-held and clearly expressed vision of business' future needs. While some within the business community believe electronic alternatives may provide a safe harbor, the simple truth is that mail is so important a part of the American communication and economic infrastructure that no alternative will provide complete shelter from the storm that will engulf businesses if the Postal Service suffers a precipitous decline in life-sustaining revenue.
The tick-tick-tick of Congress' legislative clock is beginning to sound like the tick-tick-tick of a postal time-bomb. The 106th Congress may well be our last best chance of shepherding in a postal reform measure that can provide a glide-path to the future. Whether that glide-path ends in a soft or a crash landing is a fate that's now within our hands.
It's time for the people within our industry to speak up for and get involved in the process of legislative reform. Right now in this legislative game there's a critical need for players, not bystanders. Either get into the game, or get out of the way.