Under a law passed in 2006 the US Postal Service was forced to pre-fund its retiree health benefits through 2016. Most organisations pay for health care as when the bills come in. Not USPS. The postal service had to find over $5.5 billion a year to pay up-front for the healthcare of employees who were not even retired, but might be before 2016.
This political requirement put a strain of the cash flow, estimated to be $50 billion. In 2009 Congress gave the USPS a breather, allowing them to pay just $1bn. But not since. Every year since 2009 they have had to find $5.5billion.
The result of this has been a reduction in service, even as demand has dropped for conventional mail. As service suffered, so came the call (surprise, surprise!) to privatize the postal service. The beneficiaries? FEDEX and commercial services. Did they lobby the Republican Party to cripple a major American institution in this manner. I don’t know, but the whole business has the nasty reek. “Shrinking government until it is small enough to drown in a bath” is the stated aim of the extreme Right. In return for campaign contributions, one is justified in assuming. Neat. Meanwhile, no one has stood up for the US Postal Service.
All Western governments have wanted to have ultimate control of the mails and critical methods of communication. I suppose it is logical to hand over these functions of government to the corporations that now run the country, but to neuter a fine postal service and quite deliberately make the public fed up with it, is an act of cynicism beyond my comprehension.
Thank you for this post–I hadn’t carefully followed the situation and what you describe is of a piece, isn’t it? Destroy and privatize.