[kortilla]

Because the post office doesn’t care about doing it efficiently or with a profit.

Government employees don’t (and can’t legally) get bonuses for doing well or beating expectations.

The entire post office org gets no bonus (or punishment for that matter) by impacting the cost to revenue ratio.

Both of these are the reasons it never works to throw a pile of money at a government org and expect something sustainable monetarily and good to come out of it.

[kwertyoowiyop]

The post office should be run efficiently. But I don’t require it to make a profit. It is a service, for our collective benefit. Just like the Army. I don’t expect the Army to make a profit.

[kortilla]

As long as it’s not operating at a loss or using taxpayer money, then that’s fine. Otherwise it’s using taxpayer money to destroy competing businesses.

We don’t really care about businesses operating private militaries so the army isn’t a good comparison.

[morpheos137]

These comments threads are fascinating for their display of confidently proclaimed ignorance.

Postal supervisors, including local supervisors at your local office can and do get performance bonuses.

Mailmen and clerks can not due to their union contracts.

[kortilla]

Getting performance bonuses while not having the ability to change anything is the same thing. If you can’t see why tying the incentives to the ability to affect outcomes is important, I don’t know what to tell you.

[1123581321]

What goes wrong at those branches, then? Are the supervisors prevented from making drastic changes?

[morpheos137]

Yeah basically by the union and dysfunction at higher levels like sorting plants.

If supervisors could hire and fire mail carriers for performance and pay them market rate wages then the service would be drastically different.

How it is now supervisors have very little control over local branches. They can not control who to hire, in my district interviews for hourly workers were not even a thing, they can not control what to pay staff or what staffing level they need. They can not control the volume of mail they receive. While FedEx or UPS can refuse work if they lack capacity USPS has to accept the over flow.

Almost all new hire mailmen are hired "part time" with no set schedule for a low nationally uniform annual wage. The entry level wage for a mailman is the same in both small towns and big cities.

The union contract sets a certain percentage quota for "part time" workforce so under-staffing is the norm.

The senior mailman gets a solid middle class wage, while the entry level barely makes enough to live on in some cases or in others gets absurd mandatory overtime.

[1123581321]

Thanks. That is all unfortunate. I really hope the USPS can get an administrator with enough political clout to let employees at all levels make good changes.