The "Same Ole, Same Ole" Just Won't Do!

The following is a postal commentary by RadioShack executive Fred Brussow prepared for Gravure magazine. Brussow also serves on the PostCom Board of Directors. The views expressed, however, are the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of the Association.

"And in this corner...." That's very much the way I felt as I left the most recent National Postal Forum. Despite all United States Postal Service officials might say, and no matter how many "Good Customer" awards they give out, it still boils down to a situation of the "mailing industry vs the USPS."

For years they've talked about partnerships, but quite frankly their definition of a partnership and mine are quite different. As long as you do what they want you’re a partner, but as soon as you ask for something that deviates from their "norm," and, all of a sudden, other words come to mind.

And how about the statement from the Postmaster General? "We [the USPS] need to support postal reform." Duh!

Where were they when there was still some life left in the House postal subcommittee bill for postal legislative reform (H.R. 22)? They were in the same place they usually are when issues surface they don't want to deal with, i.e., no where to be found.

Everyone agreed that H.R. 22 had it’s shortcomings, but it could have been a step in the right direction. Things aren't working the way they should for damn sure they way they are. John McHugh (R NY) should be commended for his efforts to pull together a compromise postal reform bill, but as so often happens, politics got in the way of needed legislation.

Unfortunately, it may be too late to do anything meaningful with the USPS. As I talked with attendees at this year's Forum, two issues kept coming up; the increased arrogance of USPS officials, and how, with service declining, the Postal Service can justify any postal increase at all at this time.

Of course, it's we who allow them to get away with this. Early in my life I was told, "Nobody can do anything to you, you don’t allow them to do it." I have heard that statement many times since then and it's so true. As an industry, we haven't done a very good job of clearly identifying to the USPS what we as an industry want and need from a postal system. We have consistently asked for a usable tracking system, but postal officials are not interested in anything that would hold them accountable for any kind of delivery standards. They give us what they want us to have, and we take it and gripe and complain to each other to no avail.

We have a regulatory mechanism that would not be tolerated in any business other than a government bureaucracy. How can people that know little or nothing about your business approve rational regulations and rates? It’s totally ridiculous!

You have no control or little say so about how a major player in your business plan can or should function. As an industry we have to accept part of the responsibility for the shape we are in. We have simply not acted in a unified manner and made our position unmistakably clear.

Maybe it is time to stand up and say, "I’m sick and tired of this and I’m not going to take it any more." The only thing that Washington seems to understand is a constituency that simply has had enough.

Use the avenues that are open to you. Tell your elected officials that enough is enough. Of course it might be nice if we knew what we really wanted and stated the issues clearly. I believe that associations such as PostCom could help us identify those issues and put them in the kind of language that Washington can understand. Then we need to as individuals and as companies make ourselves heard where it counts… in Congress.

Politics, industry apathy and just plain mismanagement on the part of the USPS have brought us to this point in time. Maybe we can use politics to get some attention on the real issues here.

According to many people to whom I have talked, the USPS is pricing itself out of the marketplace. Can we afford to let this happen? I think we need to give it one more unified shot and see if we can get Congress to understand that there is a real problem here that needs attention. If not, I can only hope that the last person who leaves Postal Service headquarters at L’Enfant Plaza will remember to turn out the lights.