USPS have issued a statement on Operational Excellence and Financial Stability that details how the Postal Service are in a financially unsustainable position due to declines in mail volume, and a broken business model.
“We are currently unable to balance our costs with available funding sources to fulfill both our universal service mission and other legal obligations. Because of this, the Postal Service has experienced over a decade of financial losses, with no end in sight, and we face an impending liquidity crisis.”
The statement details that Congress and the Postal Regulatory Commission should enact legislative and regulatory reforms to help address the situation whilst USPS work on the efficiency of their operations.
On the day that I was sworn in as Postmaster General by our Board of Governors, the Postal Service Inspector General issued a report entitled “U.S. Postal Service’s Processing Network Optimization and Service Impacts.” In that report our Inspector General indicated that the Postal Service spent $1.1 billion in mail processing overtime and penalty overtime, $280 million in late and extra transportation, and $2.9 billion in delivery overtime and penalty overtime costs in FY 2019. Yet, even after incurring these additional costs, the Postal Service has not seen material improvement in our service performance scores.”
The US Postal Service have recognized the need for improvement and state they have spent years unsuccessfully trying to obtain certain reform legislation from Congress. They remain focused on providing the US with a universal service and remain part of the critical logistics infastructure.
“We are highly focused on our public service mission to provide prompt, reliable, and efficient service to every person and business in this country, and to remain a part of the nation’s critical infrastructure. However, changes must be made, and we will refocus on all of the items within our control, and propose changes to some that are not, in order to ensure that we will be able to continue to fulfill our universal service obligation to all of America.”