Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, December 18, 1994 TAG: 9412200033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Don't worry; it's not the latest fallout from Orange County's fiscal crisis. The school simply is dumping the post office in favor of electronic distribution by computer. On-time - indeed instantaneous - delivery is guaranteed, and the university expects to save $225,000 a year in postage, as well.
UCI's decision is but one sign of the unprecedented technological and competitive challenges shaking the foundations of America's postal system.
Outraged by deteriorating service or seizing upon faster, more convenient forms of communication, Americans who can afford to are firing the U.S. Postal Service for all but the most pedestrian tasks.
The post office's share of express mail - a business it invented - dropped below 9 percent this year. Electronic communications such as e-mail and fax transmissions grew by as much as 15 percent - or 10 times the growth rate of regular mail. Business-to-business mailings have plummeted, down 10 billion pieces in the last five years. Person-to-person mail, meanwhile, accounts for less than 4 percent of the postal stream, a figure that is steadily falling.
Yet even as it loses grasp of the most profitable lines of communication, the post office finds itself buried under an ever increasing volume of mail.
This week, the Postal Service's army of 782,000 mail handlers, clerks and letter carriers and supervisors - the largest civilian work force in the nation - is grappling with the end of its busiest Christmas season ever.
But it has been that kind of year: In the 12 months ended Sept. 30, the post office handled a record 177 billion pieces of mail.
It was a year, too, in which thousands of pounds of undelivered mail were discovered in trailer trucks and under roadside culverts in Chicago; a year in which service in Washington, D.C., was so bad that 10,000 of Vice President Al Gore's holiday cards were delivered up to 10 weeks' late.
For the Postal Service, restoring public confidence in its ability to deliver the mail on time while it tries to reinvent itself for the paperless society is a daunting task - one that former Postmaster General Anthony Frank once compared to ``rebuilding and remodeling an airplane while we are flying it.''
No one believes the plane is about to drop out of the sky. Indeed, current Postmaster General Marvin Runyon insists that doubts about the agency's future are overblown.
Still, there is no denying that the U.S. Postal Service is chronically, critically ailing:
Ordinary Americans are angrier than ever about the deterioration in service, with a record number of formal complaints topping 500,000 this year.
In metropolitan areas with antiquated facilities such as Chicago, New York, Washington and Baltimore, more than one-quarter of all letters fail the agency's own standard of overnight local delivery for first-class mail. Carnegie Hall in Manhattan refuses to mail out tickets for events less than eight days in advance, even if the buyer lives a few blocks away.
Rates will go up Jan. 1, with the price of a first-class letter climbing to 32 cents from 29 cents. That is expected to give the Postal Service a badly needed cash infusion of nearly $5 billion.
But it is a stopgap measure - the system is likely to plead for another rate increase in 1997 - and it comes with no assurance that customers will get better service along with the higher costs.
An automation campaign once regarded as the key to the Postal Service's ability to handle increased mail flow is at least two years behind schedule.
The lag means slower processing - at much higher cost - as hundreds of thousands of workers continue to sort letters by hand, much the way things were done when Benjamin Franklin established a post office for the American colonies 240 years ago.
In a baleful omen for an organization that spends nearly 80 percent of its budget on labor, employee morale is disastrously low. In a September report, Congress' General Accounting Office said dictatorial managers, adversarial union attitudes and a lack of programs to reward good workers and weed out bad ones all fostered a ``dysfunctional organizational culture.''
The Postal Service fails consistently to meet challenges from private competitors. Companies such as Federal Express and United Parcel Service use lower-paid workers, pricing flexibility and better service to take business away.
Despite ambitious claims of increased efficiencies, the postal payroll is growing rapidly. A generous buyout program - designed to provide $1 billion in annual savings - prompted 48,000 of the Postal Service's workers then-721,000 employees to leave in 1992 and 1993. But the departing workers included many experienced clerks and letter carriers.
Without service improvements, the agency will be hard-pressed to retain the big customers it needs to keep its huge work force busy - customers whose business constantly is being solicited by a host of private firms offering alternate delivery or attracted by the allure of electronic alternatives to the mails.
``I have to get things to the customers on time,'' said Chris Rubello of Current Inc., which mails 64 million catalogues each year.``If I can't do it through the Postal Service,'' he says, ``I will just have to find another way.''
by CNB