Reprinted from New York Times, April 25, 2012

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Wednesday overcame opposition from several Republicans and passed legislation that would overhaul the financially ailing Postal Service, voting weeks before the agency plans to begin closing thousands of post offices and consolidating hundreds of processing centers to cut costs.

The measure was passed 62 to 37, despite a warning from Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, that it would add to the national debt.

Senators who sponsored the bill said it would provide needed relief for the Postal Service, which said it would run out of cash if Congress did not act.

“This is a bipartisan bill that will bring necessary change to the Postal Service in order to save it,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, who sponsored the bill with Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Scott P. Brown of Massachusetts, both Republicans, and Thomas R. Carper, Democrat of Delaware.

Postal worker unions gave the bill a mixed reaction. The National Association of Letter Carriers called it flawed because, among other things, it would cut services and jobs. The American Postal Workers Union agreed but said the bill would provide short-term relief to the Postal Service.

“There are some things that we don’t like in the bill, but it’s far better that something has passed rather than nothing,” said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union.

The Postal Service, which objected to parts of the bill because it would limit the agency’s ability to close facilities and cut services, expressed disappointment in the vote. “If this bill were to become law, we would be back before the Congress within a few years requesting additional legislative reform,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in a written statement.

The bill would provide retirement incentives for nearly 100,000 of the post office’s 547,000 workers. It also would allow the agency to study the elimination of Saturday deliveries if it could not cut costs in the next two years, and it would free up the agency to offer a broader range of revenue sources like delivering beer and wine for retailers. The agency would also recoup more than $11 billion that it had overpaid into one of its pension funds.

Perhaps most significant, the bill would restructure the payments the agency makes into a health benefits fund for future retirees. Under a 2006 law, the agency has to pay $5.5 billion annually into the fund, which the Postal Service said had added $20 billion in debt to its balance sheet since 2007.

The bill would lower the amount of the prepayments and allow the agency to stretch them out over 40 years. The Postal Service is the only federal agency that prepays its future retiree health obligations.

Before the Senate began voting on the bill on Tuesday, Mr. Corker and three other Republicans — Senators Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Dan Coats of Indiana — raised a point of order. They argued that it would add $34 billion to the national debt, including the overpayment to the pension fund.

But one of the Republican co-sponsors, Ms. Collins, argued that the bill would not add to the debt because any spending would come from revenue generated by the Postal Service, not from federal coffers.

The bill also would create a chief innovation officer for the Postal Service to help it come up with new products and an advisory commission to help it revamp its business model.

Lawmakers added provisions that would give citizens a greater say in the closing of post offices and cap bonuses and pay for Postal Service executives.

Mr. Coburn also added a provision that would limit federal agency spending on conferences, in response to a spending scandal by officials at the General Services Administration.

The Postal Service’s financial woes have increased as mail volume, particularly first-class mail, has dropped sharply because of electronic messaging, to 168 billion pieces last year from a peak of 213 billion in 2006. The Postal Service said volume could fall to 118 billion by 2020.

As a result, the service is losing $36 million a day, after having generated an annual profit as recently as 2006.

A group representing large delivery companies like FedEx and UPS, which rely on the Postal Service for some of their deliveries, applauded the Senate vote.

“This bill is a vital first step in pulling the Postal Service back from the edge of a fiscal abyss,” said Art Sackler, co-coordinator of a group called the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service. “That is good news for the Postal Service and the eight million private sector workers whose jobs rely on it.”

Fredric V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said the unions would turn their attention to the House, where postal legislation is pending.

“We are very disappointed that the Senate approved such a flawed bill, but we are determined to continue the fight for legislation that will provide a path to long-term viability for the Postal Service,” Mr. Rolando said in a statement.

The House bill differs substantially from the Senate version. It would create a commission much like the one that studied and recommended military base closings to oversee the shutting down of post offices and processing centers. It would also allow the Postal Service to end Saturday mail delivery without a two-year delay.

Ali M. Ahmad, a spokesman for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Postal Service, said the committee had not set a time to began working on the bill.

Building upon last summer’s mobile barcode promotion success, the USPS is offering it again from July 1, 2012, through August 31, 2012. Once again, TC Delivers can help you attain the additional discounts for this promotion.

Here is information to help you take advantage of this revised special offering:

· Qualifying mailings are Presorted and automation mailings of First-Class Mail cards, letters, and flats and Standard Mail (including Nonprofit Standard Mail) letters and flats with a mobile barcode inside or on the mailpiece.

· The mobile barcode must lead the recipient of the mailpiece either to a web page that allows the recipient to purchase a product or service on a mobile device, or to a personalized URL, which leads to a web page that is unique to an individual recipient.

· Qualifying mailings may receive an upfront price reduction of 2 percent of the eligible postage.

· Participation requires electronic documentation.

· Commingled, combined and co-mail mailings are allowed, but a separate postage statement is required for pieces with mobile barcodes.

Using mobile barcodes is a great way to integrate direct mail with mobile technology. Get more information, including updated FAQs, on the RIBBS website or by emailing mobilebarcode@usps.gov .

The U.S. Postal Service is the most efficient in the world, according to a British study.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Despite its financial difficulties and relatively heavy work load, the U.S. Postal Service has been declared the finest in the world by a British study.

The USPS was declared number one for efficiency among the Group of Twenty major global economies, according to findings from England’s Oxford Strategic Consulting.

“We’re the world’s leading postal service,” said USPS spokesman Roy Betts. “This report validates that fact.”

The U.S. Postal Service scored the highest for efficiency, even as it delivers far more letters per employee — 268,894 in 2010 — than other services in the G20. Japan Post, which came in second, delivers 103,149 letters per employee, and Australia Post, which placed third, delivers 166,776.

But delivering letters is not the way of the future, according to Scott Jackson, author of the study and visiting professor of management psychology at Oxford University.

“The key thing about the U.S. Postal Service is [that] it’s extremely efficient compared to its colleagues around the world,” he said. “But unfortunately, it’s very efficient on the sort of the thing that’s going to be the least important in the future: delivering letters.”

Jackson said that postal services in other countries have branched out to provide other services, but those applications wouldn’t necessarily work in the U.S. For example, he said Siberian post offices sometimes sell groceries because there are no other grocery stores available. But such a model would probably flop in the U.S., where grocery stores abound.

For years, email has been siphoning away the prevalence of so-called snail mail, and this has hit the U.S. Postal Service in the pocket book.

The USPS, which does not receive taxpayer support, lost $5 billion last year. A main problem is the requirement to make multi-billion dollar payments to pre-fund healthcare retirement benefits, though Congress has shown some leniency by allowing that payment to be postponed.

Postal Service makeover

The USPS has flirted with the idea of scaling back to five-day delivery from the current six-day system. But this is unpopular with Congress, which has the final authority. The U.S. Postal Service has also been considering a plan to slow down next-day service.

In its effort to cut some $20 billion in costs, the USPS plans to close post offices around the country. But it has delayed the closures until May 15, allowing Congress some time to devise a plan to save it.

The U.S. Postal Service serves more citizens per post office — 8,409 — than the next seven countries below it. Brazil, which placed ninth, has 10,278 citizens per post office, but its postal service only delivers 72,364 letters per employee.

The one area where the U.S. Postal Service lagged behind other nations was in the number of parcels delivered. It delivers 2,633 parcels per employee, compared to 7,975 in Japan and 6,633 in Australia.