The state of the U.S. Postal Service “is not good,” Deputy Postmaster General John Nolan said Wednesday.
Volume and revenue are “significantly down” this year and the prognosis is poor for the rest of the year, with many postal districts cutting work hours by 6% to 8% over last year, Nolan reported during the Mailers Technical Advisory Committee meeting in Washington.
Field budgets have been cut by close to $1.2 billion.
The USPS is working on a “detailed” plan to distribute the $675 million in emergency funding it is receiving from Congress to deal with the events of Sept. 11 and the anthrax attacks. Much of the money will be spent on gloves, new vehicles, and to clean up the Church Street postal facility near the World Trade Center site in New York, Nolan said.
“We’ll let Congress know in the next few weeks how we’ll spend that money,” he continued.
Nolan added that the only mail currently being irradiated is for Zip codes in Washington beginning with the numbers 202 and 205–mail destined for federal government agencies. “We don’t see a dramatic expansion on irradiation at this time,” he said.
“We’re pushing hard on detection, and the right way to go to protect postal employees, the general public, and the mailing industry, Nolan added. “Our number one objective is to find any bio attack as soon as possible, as it’s entering our system or before, so we can appropriately deal with it.”
Despite some early negative reviews, Nolan said that management is committed to the postal service’s transformation plan,” and will submit its final version on March 31. “We’re trying to understand all things that need to get us the structure we need, and what the right way is to present that,” he noted.
Despite the early implementation of the current rate case on June 30, the USPS could come up $4 billion short in volume this year. This would, with other factors, prevent the USPS from proceeding with capital investments, according to Nolan. “We’re only spending money now on things that will generate savings,” he said. “The rate increase won’t change that. As of this point, there will be no lifting of the moratorium on any post office construction.”
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