The Demise of the Postal Service: Poppycock!

The following is a perspective by postal commentator Gene Del Polito for Direct magazine.

In the days of Augustus, no one could ever envision a world without the Roman Empire. In the days of Justinian, a world without the Byzantine Empire was inconceivable. In the days of Admiral Nelson, a vision of Brittania not ruling the waves was beyond the pale. Yet despite the inability of visionaries within their times to perceive the imperceptible, all these things came to pass.

Today, there are those who cannot envision an America without the U.S. Postal Service. Want to lay odds on this one?

Simply because something has never been doesn't mean it could never be. In fact, there's more than ample information these days that presages the demise of a Postal Service--at least as we know it today.

For the last two postal accounting periods (each approximately four weeks in length), the Postal Service's figures show a pattern of virtually zero growth in First-Class Mail volume and barely more than three percent annualized growth in Standard A advertising mail volume. For an organization that's still some 800,000 people strong with a payroll that grows as the workforce busts at the seams, the prospect of zero, or barely more than zero, overall mail volume growth is a recipe for disaster.

Despite this, there is still a preponderant belief within the U.S. Postal Service that the demise of the USPS is no more likely then...well...then the demise of communism. (Oh dear! That's already happened too!) Disbelief in the Postal Service's vulnerability is pervasive within its workforce. Letter carriers, postal clerks, and mail handlers aplenty think that all this talk of the loss of mail to the Internet is just a ruse by postal management or wild-eyed idealogues to put the screws to postal workers.

Of course, the people who should know better haven't been doing a whole lot to make sure their constituents are better informed. The leadership of several of the postal employee organizations (labor and management alike) have done less than a sterling job in explaining to their dues-paying members the realities of a changing technological and communication marketplace. Instead, they continue to pander with the sloganeering of yesteryear: "More! More!"

But, hey, why listen to me? I'm just a screwball that wears a hairshirt and eats locusts and honey in the desert--a "voice crying in the wilderness." A harbinger of a time of uncertainty and trouble that can be dismissed just as easily as the prediction of the fall of Rome, the Turks taking Constantinople, and Britain being relegated to merely a supportive role in overseeing the high seas. Such poppycock!