{"id":5240,"date":"2012-10-02T21:51:02","date_gmt":"2012-10-03T02:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=5240"},"modified":"2012-10-02T21:51:02","modified_gmt":"2012-10-03T02:51:02","slug":"prc-urges-usps-to-preserve-overnight-delivery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2012\/10\/02\/prc-urges-usps-to-preserve-overnight-delivery\/","title":{"rendered":"PRC Urges USPS To Preserve Overnight Delivery"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In an advisory opinion on the Postal Service\u2019s \u201cNetwork Rationalization\u201d plan<\/a> [PDF] issued Sept. 28, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) urged the Postal Service to preserve overnight mail delivery and concluded that \u201dthere is a point in the Postal Service\u2019s cost curve beyond which the additional savings captured are too small to justify the additional reduction of service that would result.\u201d<\/p>\n

The advisory opinion is the commission\u2019s response to the Postal Service\u2019s plan to close or consolidate half of the nation\u2019s mail processing plants and to reduce delivery service standards for first-class mail, standard mail, periodicals and package services. The changes to service standards would ultimately eliminate all overnight delivery service for single-piece first-class mail, and delay much of current first-class two-day delivery to three-day delivery.<\/p>\n

The PRC concluded that \u201cthe benefits of eliminating most overnight delivery of First-Class Mail\u201d cannot be shown \u201cto outweigh the risks of exacerbating declining mail volume trends or harm to the Postal Service brand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are pleased that the PRC recognized the importance of maintaining service standards,\u201d said APWU President Cliff Guffey. \u201cWe\u2019ve said all along that the Postal Service cannot cut its way to profitability. The PRC clearly shares our concern that cutting service will accelerate revenue and volume losses,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Postal Service asserts that the savings would be approximately $2 billion a year, but the PRC\u2019s analysis found that \u201cin order to capture the anticipated cost savings upon full implementation \u2026 the Postal Service would have to improve average system-wide productivity by over 20%. The commission found this \u201cremarkably ambitious\u201d and risky.<\/p>\n

In fact, according to the PRC, the savings could be as little as $46 million per year \u201cassuming mail processing productivities remain at current levels.\u201d In addition, the commission found that \u201cthese cost savings may be offset by volume losses and resulting contribution losses from mailers who believe the service levels no longer meet their postal needs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The commission was also critical of the way the Postal Service used network modeling tools to justify its decision. The advisory opinion says, \u201cthe Postal Service uses modeling to develop an initial list of facilities to be consolidated,\u201d then \u201crejected much of the model results; more than half of the plants identified using modeling tools were replaced based on management insight before local studies were performed.\u201d<\/p>\n

The PRC wrote that the phased implementation of network consolidation announced by the Postal Service on May 17, 2012, provides an opportunity for the Postal Service to study the effects of service standard changes to better inform its decisions on how to preserve as much of the current services as possible.<\/p>\n

The commission advised the Postal Service to delay its implementation plans until it considers the report\u2019s recommendations \u2014 including alternatives that would avoid cutting back services such as overnight mail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an advisory opinion on the Postal Service\u2019s \u201cNetwork Rationalization\u201d plan [PDF] issued Sept. 28, the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) urged the Postal Service to preserve overnight mail delivery and concluded that \u201dthere is a point in the Postal Service\u2019s cost curve beyond which the additional savings captured are too small to justify the additional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apwu-news","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5240"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5244,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240\/revisions\/5244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}