ENOUGH!

Postmaster General Pat Donahoe proposes to layoff 120,000 employees, in addition to the 100,000 who will leave through normal retirements, by 2015.

A few short months after ratification of the APWU contract, the PMG suggests the time has come to eliminate the long-held tradition of a no layoff guarantee for six year employees.

The Vice President of Networks floats the idea of closing 300 of the 508 mail processing centers across the country in the next 16 months.

Joe Corbett, the chief financial officer, announces that the deficit for the fiscal year won’t be $8.2 billion after all, it has been revised –up, of course – to $9 billion, thus speeding up the estimated insolvency doomsday to June or July 2012 instead of August.

Then the Postmaster General goes before the entire workforce and confirms most of the preceding.

All in a single week.

Apparently there’s no shame in leading an organization as it painfully swirls down the drain; otherwise, these postal ‘executives’ would have quietly slipped out the back door some years ago. And while we assumed the news couldn’t possibly get any worse, Deputy Postmaster General Ron Stroman announced that the cash flow stops in August 2012, even if the retiree healthcare payment is sidestepped this September.

All of which begs the question, “Aside from pure ego, exactly what makes these people think they have any capacity for running a business”?

They’ve managed to offend every constituency, from the employee unions, management associations, small-town customers, large and small mailers, and members of Congress. They’ve taken a 230 year old organization begun by Ben Franklin, and are running it into the ground at breakneck speed. In the real world, those who can’t cut it are themselves cut, but the Postal world is far from the real world.

They love to blame everyone but themselves: the Unions, Congress, the Recession, fuel prices, the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, small offices that don’t pay their own way, six day delivery, even bad parcel scanning. Anything but their poor decisions, a record of squandering financial resources, excessive dependence on questionable technology, and a culture of mistreatment of employees that would put Machiavelli to shame.

Few managers in the Postal Service have a college education, yet they seem to have a sense of entitlement which is reinforced by the postal culture and the infamously adversarial relationship with the unions. And perhaps most unfortunately, they are almost never held accountable for their actions, in fact in many circumstances they are protected by law.

So the poor decisions continue, the workforce becomes frantic at the prospect of losing 300 plants along with their livelihoods, and many will lose their dignity and self-worth, because we’ve got a top heavy management structure which should have been ‘realigned’ years ago.

And while the blame is spread around to everyone but postal management, the most significant aspect of how this all happened is mostly forgotten:

The Postal Accountability and Efficiency Act was intended to provide the USPS with much needed flexibility in running the Postal Service, in exchange for a few compromises, including the annual payment for retiree health care. At the time, the legislation was supported by PMG Jack Potter, and employees were asked to write their congressional representatives to encourage a vote for the PAEA.

In PMG Jack Potter’s statement to the Congressional Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, on Feb. 28, 2008, he reported that “I am pleased to report to you today on the Postal Service’s first year of operation under the Postal Act of 2006. The new law creates welcome pricing flexibilities that can and will benefit the Nation by keeping now a welcome, efficient and effective method to link every household and every business in America…We are entering a period of profound change. Through the new postal law, you have provided us with a new ability to navigate that change.”

“Our entire team is ready to make the new law work for us and for our nation. We are acting quickly to use its new approaches to produce the revenue that can close the remaining $1 billion of our budget gap.”

“The law requires the Postal Service to operate in a more businesslike way than had been possible under the restrictive provisions of the old law. We recognize that pricing innovation – even within the limits of a well-defined rate cap – is a key business driver. With that in mind, we are taking full advantage of our new pricing flexibility to grow business.”

“We have just scratched the surface of the advantages the new law offers through its new approach to price setting."

“The market in which we operate continues to grow more competitive. This means that the Postal Service must become more flexible if it is to remain competitive and successfully meet its obligations to the nation. The Postal Act of 2006 provides us with new tools that are intended to help us do this. This includes new approaches to pricing, intended to foster revenue growth.”

Postal management likes to place much of the blame on Congress, as if there was no postal input or support during the legislative process. The record shows that inept management at the highest level vigorously encouraged what is now believed to be contributing to the destruction of the organization.

But there are plenty of other scapegoats:

The Unions. Postal management supposedly negotiated “in good faith” on the APWU contract, then followed with pronouncements of management’s pleasure over the successful outcome. Within a few months of the APWU membership’s ratification of the contract, PMG Donahoe began a disreputable campaign to go back on his word and remove negotiated agreements on layoff limitations for employees with six years of service.

Rural Post Offices. PMG Donahoe has made every attempt to demonize small post offices across the country, as if anyone ever expected the rural offices to pay their own way. Universal service demands that the urban centers subsidize the rural offices, a long held tradition. The Post Office loves to support universal service, as long as it doesn’t cost any money, when in fact many believe this to be the service’s constitutional responsibility.

The Internet. Perhaps the one area which is truly beyond postal management’s control is what has become known as “electronic diversion of the mail”, or email to non-bureaucrats. Some did see it coming, particularly in Europe, where the response has been far more effective than in the United States. But USPS management, always on the cutting edge of the latest innovation, completely missed this one.

Six day delivery. Perhaps the quickest way to save the most money in the shortest time would be to eliminate Saturday mail delivery. What hasn’t been considered is the effect this will have on further devaluing the mail as more customers are driven away to the alternative forms of hard copy and electronic communication. In times of declining business, reducing customer service is hardly the most logical approach to growing the enterprise.

And now, in a desperate attempt to add to the list of excuses, the USPS is grasping for “world class parcel scanning” on its optional tracking service, Delivery Confirmation. Sorry to say but the true world class scanning is done by those organizations that scan every parcel, namely FedEx and UPS.

The storm is fast approaching.

In the search for solutions, here's a good place to start:

Billions could be saved by eliminating more than the topmost layer of management. This is never considered.

Drastically revise the current methods for management selection. It is fraught with nepotism, favoritism, and advancement of people with little or no qualifications, experience or education.

Take a lesson from any real business and train managers with contemporary university level management education. Very few postal supervisiors and managers have acquired a college degree, and the results are obvious. Autocratic styles are alive and well, resulting demoralized employees. In the eyes of postal management, the employees aren’t our most valuable asset, they’re often the enemy.

Seriously review the factors which result in management’s sense of entitlement. The sources range from elaborate meetings at distant hotels, flying around the country to discuss the service’s poor financial condition, excessive catered meals, personnel policies for management that encourage abuse and cheating (such as four hour workdays and no monitoring of rampant time theft), even reserved parking spaces. All of these send the wrong message to the employees, that managers are somehow better than the employees and that it is not a team effort.

And this is only the beginning. The approaching storm will require Postal leadership to develop an ability to innovate, and that’s never been part of the USPS’s DNA. But in the meantime, management of the Postal Service can begin to salvage the organization by placing the blame where it really belongs, and take responsibility for bad decisions and poor planning that have gotten us where we are today. Only then will it have the credibility to regain the full support of the employees and postal customers.