Bipartisan bill in Senate would allow Postal Service to eliminate Saturday delivery

Tom Carper

UPDATE, Aug. 6: The presidents of four unions sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Monday expressing “utter dismay” with the Senate bill, saying it would downsize the service to pay for the pre-funding requirement, among other complaints, Josh Hicks reports for The Washington Post. Jim Sauber, chief of staff to the president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, said “The legislation on both sides of the Hill is likely to lead to a death spiral for the Postal Service.” (Read more)

Saturday mail may soon be a thing of the past. The long-awaited, bipartisan Postal Service reform bill announced Friday by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) "would permit five or fewer delivery days per week after a year," Nicole Guadiano reports for the Wilmington News-Journal. "The intention is to allow for the elimination of Saturday mail and give the postal service flexibility for extra days around long weekends and holiday." A similar bill is pending in the House.

"The bill also would require centralized or curbside delivery of mail for new addresses and existing addresses could lose door delivery. But it would ban for two years changes to delivery speed — such as overnight delivery of mail — and plant closings," Guadiano reports. "Other reforms proposed in the bill would allow the service to sell non-postal products and ship beer and wine and would give the service more authority to set prices on its own." (Read more)

"Ending Saturday delivery and changing the mode of delivery for tens of millions of customers may save $5 or $6 billion, but it will also mean cutting 40,000 to 60,000 jobs," Save the Post Office reports. " The Postal Service’s five-year plan calls for reducing the career workforce to 400,000 by 2017. A 100,000 more jobs remain to be cut." The service wants to limit Saturday delivery to packages, a service on which it makes money.

Two key sections were cut from the earlier Senate bill, Save the Post Office reports. One "maintained overnight delivery standards for three years, which would have prevented the closure of many processing plants," and the other "established retail service standards to help guarantee access to a post office. One such standard, for example, would have put a limit on how far and how long you should need to travel to your post office." (Read more)

Bernie Sanders

In response to the proposal, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) issued a statement saying it makes no sense and is weaker than legislation the Senate passed last year. That included a two-year guarantee of full Saturday delivery. Sanders wrote, “This bill would lead to the elimination of tens of thousands of decent-paying jobs – many of them held by military veterans. That is why I have introduced the Postal Service Protection Act with 28 co-sponsors." To read his full statement click here.

In the Daily Yonder, Donna Kallner writes about mail as "rural America's communications lifeline."