Opinion: Is it management's mission to lose money now?

[DB.Cooper]

You would be correct. 99% of the time when a route is split, it screws up the RRECS data. Many RCAs take their part with them and then go from their assigned route to do their part of the split route which IS NOT the line of travel which would be from the office. There are many other issues / collateral damage that occur most of the time when a route is split. And this is NOT a knock on any RCAs , it's just a byproduct of what occurs when RRECS is involved.

And the NRLCA is all over this (NOT... )...

 

[DB.Cooper]

Imagine that! Flushing millions of dollars down the toilet to try to reinvent the wheel.

How many untold BILLIONS of dollars did they flush on FSS.... USPS has a LONG history of wasting BILLIONS...

 

[really]

Rumor mill is saying they are finding the SD&C are actually adding to our costs and not saving any money at all.

Of course it is, the savings always come from labor hours. THAT NEVER HAPPEN.
The FFS FLATS is prime example. Remember all the clerk hours that were going to be cut. Never happened
And remember at first we couldn't case it had to go to the street ..... still don't get the logic on that

 

[Shannonboy]

Rumor mill is saying they are finding the SD&C are actually adding to our costs and not saving any money at all.

I'm not surprised one bit...

 

[neciat]

And remember at first we couldn't case it had to go to the street ..... still don't get the logic on that

Well, their "logic" on that was because they THINK that ANY time in the office is wasted time. They want us out on the street dealing with holds, forwards, FOE ( UTF ) , etc. , inverted mail , mis-sequenced mail. Just like they really push the "take DPS to the street". They WANT you out on the street as long as possible in 120 degree plus temps. or freezing temps. dealing with all of that garbage in the mail. It's the city side mindset from which many EAS employees came. DPS and FSS were really about ONE thing and ONE thing only ; cutting salaries. That's why I have said that your route doesn't go up because you prevailed in a DPS review, your route WENT DOWN because of DPS.

 

[EthelAnne]

Rumor mill is saying they are finding the SD&C are actually adding to our costs and not saving any money at all.

Anyone could have seen this coming. These facilities are massive and require an enormous supervisory staff (who do nothing, but they're needed because these operations are huge and you need a body around just to monitor what's going on over in that very far corner) very impressive to look at but how do you justify this sort of massive investment in an organization with declining mail volume and an uncertain future (who knows what Amazon is going to do)? But this was DeJoy's pet project and facts didn't matter. They were something new and shiny to focus on instead of looking at what we had and how to maximize efficiency within the existing system.

We'll never know because everything the USPS does is cloaked in secrecy, under the excuse of "trade secrets" and "proprietary information."

 

[EthelAnne]

First off we are only "running out of money" once again to influence votes and because all union contracts are starting new negotiations. It's a complete lie.

If we were truly almost out of money they stop spending money on building SD&C's, cut back on supplies and fire a ton of useless management/departments. That's not happening. We aren't running out of money. The huge negative number you hear every quarter comes from the congressional mandates not put on ANY other federal budget. Look at the quarterly reports yourself. USPS makes enough money to cover all its operating expenses every quarter.

If USPS went to a pay-as-you-go health and pension mandate instead of prefunding the budget would be balanced again. Think about it. If you bought a car and they forced you to prefund every possible event that might happen to the car. Tire changes, brakes, transmissions, oil changes, wiper fluid, etc. your budget for the car would look horrible and most people could never afford the car. If you paid for those as you needed them it's a completely different story. We can afford pay-as-you-go.

USPS and Congress want a budget that looks bad so our union members concede to crappy contracts. Plain and simple.

The prefunding mandate was rescinded in the 2022 Postal Service Reform Act (which is BS on many other levels, but did remove the prefunding stuff).

But I agree with you 100% on the S & DC boondoggle and the rest of your post. We'll never know how much money is being lost every day on these disasters, but they were DeJoy's pet project and no amount of facts and logic was going to stop them. Congress demands the USPS be run like a business, but puts pressure on the USPS to keep costs low for parcel delivery and the mass mailers, who have political organizations behind them donating millions to Congressional campaigns.

And the USPS is a convenient whipping boy for the government haters out there. "See how bad government is? They're losing millions!" Never mind the fact that we move millions of pieces of mail every single day and still play a huge role in the success of the US economy.