Getting the Mail to Sail
Mail service is becoming slower, more expensive and less reliable. No matter what the outcome of the current contract standoff between postal management and unions, the Postal Service wants to raise the first-class rate to 23 cents early next year -- up 53% since 1981 and 666% since 1958, far faster than the inflation rate. First-class mail delivery is 10% slower than it was 15 years ago, and Postmaster General William Bolger concedes that postal delivery may have been more reliable in the 1920s.</br></br>Even if politicians insist on preserving the government's mail monopoly, there are far cheaper ways to deliver mail. The Postal Service already contracts out 4,800 delivery routes to private carriers, thereby saving up to two-thirds of its usual costs, according to John C. Maraney of the National Star Route Mail Carriers Association. Postal Rate Commissioner John Crutcher says that had postal wage increases since 1970 not been so excessive, a first-class stamp would now cost only 15 cents or 16 cents. Since 84% of the Postal Service's costs are labor, contracting out would save a large portion of its $25 billion budget.</br></br>The current system is forcing people to pay more and more for less and less service. Negotiations between the Postal Service and the unions on a new labor contract have broken down, and arbitration is likely. A strike is feared. The only certainty is that the government mail monopoly will still be a public nuisance.</br></br>For 20 years, one postal reform after another has failed to produce good service at stable prices. The Post Office was a national embarrassment in the 1960s. In 1970 it was changed from a cabinet department to a quasi-government corporation, and renamed the Postal Service. But as a bureaucracy it is still sluggish.</br></br>The Postmaster General and his army of aides work overtime to obscure the Postal Service's meager performance. Mr. Bolger says that postal productivity is up 34% since 1970, and is still rising at a 3% to 4% annual clip. To put it kindly, Mr. Bolger has yet to corner the market on veracity.