I retired from the USPS about three years ago, but I still like to hear how my former colleagues are doing. From a recent private e-mail [my own comments in italics in square brackets]:
… I fear the following:
1) A unilateral override of our remote work MOU [Memo of Understanding—a kind of addendum to the union contract]. Trump has recently declared that ONLY HE has the right to interpret the law for the executive branch, and this includes all labor laws. The department of labor won’t matter, and he can just order the post office to ignore arbitration. He’s made a power play to eliminate the independence of any agency. This still has to be challenged in court, and I expect it will. But he’s challenging the system in ways it has not been challenged before, and anything is possible.
2) A unilateral decision to ARBITRARILY FIRE all Probationary Employees. This could involve those across all crafts, as well as those who recently promoted into management (and are going through their EAS [first level of management] probation).
3) A unilateral action by management to start using extreme productivity tracking to try and terminate us. In the federal agencies, all computers are being ordered to be installed with key loggers to track productivity, as if the only method of tracking productivity is how many characters per minute you type, or how many mouse clicks you make. These are not productivity trackers, but metrics designed to terminate people.
4) And if all 3 of these things are on the table, then everything else is as well – such as replacing postal IT with GSA IT. He could try to replace our internal HR with OPM. Anything is possible. After all, he’s the sole arbitrator of the law in his estimation.
The USPS is required by law to deliver, at a uniform price and service level, to all locations in the United States and its territories. How long will that continue if the Muskrats fire all the probationary rural carriers1? And what about delivering mail in Alaska where there are no roads2? Does anybody seriously think that a private for-profit company will do that?
Trump can claim correctly, and probably will, that the Postal Service loses billions annually; but IIUC, that’s almost all due to a legal requirement to fully fund the retirement system for decades, something that no other company does. My understanding is that they at least break even, on average, on actual services rendered; and IIRC, priority mail3 is actually quite profitable.
This is blantantly illegal; but Trump doesn’t care about the law. Republican congresscritters won’t do anything to stop it (they’re all scared of getting primaried, and I’ve read that some of them have even gotten death threats); and SCOTUS’ Gang of Six have shown themselves to be utterly shameless; so we don’t have an effective separation of powers anymore. I’m beginning to lose all hope.
1”Letter carrier” is the official term for the person who delivers mail to your home or P.O. box.
2Mail moves to and from small town post offices in Alaska in small aircraft. Yes, really. I was a programmer on a system that connects desired movements of the mail with available transportation, and “Alaska Contract” is one of the air transportation types.
3The marketeers’ term for what was called “parcel post” when I was growing up. 
still have no fucken clue why this is such a hobbyhorse for conservative politicians. are they literally all getting phat loot from private parcel companies? do they hand out free shares in fedex and ups at the door to the republinazi convention?
The past several years, I’ve been the recipient of various “…of the month” gifts and spent far too much time tracking their really-bad shipping policies. One such company’s warehouse was an hour’s drive from my house, but their shipper would inexplicably send my shipment all over the continental US over the course of several days, so that my month’s shipment would not arrive for two weeks (I asked the company if I could just pick up my shipment myself and save two weeks’ spoilage, but NO, absolutely not). Another company’s warehouse was in Kentucky, and through the magic of tracking codes, I could watch my shipment circle various towns in Kentucky before it finally achieved escape velocity and left that state. Yet another company used a shipper so notoriously bad that it was no surprise when my shipment would arrive at a facility and sit there a week without movement.
One constant in all of this mess: Whenever my delivery was handed off to any post office in my state for last-mile delivery, I could expect it to pinball at top speed to my own post office, where it would promptly go on the truck to be delivered to me. Time after time, I’d be notified the package was in (post office 4 hours away) at 11 pm, and it would be in my hands at 10 am the next morning.
TL;DR: the USPS is still the most efficient and fast shipper and it would be a crime to lose it.
Katydid: yep. I’m guessing that your “post office 4 hours away” was a hub that handles all the mail into and out of a handful of 3-digit ZIP codes. The “11 PM” example was probably when the parcel went through the sorting machine. From there it would be trucked overnight to your local post office; then early in the morning, your carrier would show up, do a manual sort of all the pieces for their route, and be on their way.
I get no thanks for any of that. The code that I wrote was mostly about transportation between hubs.
Bébé Mélange @ # 1: still have no fucken clue why this is such a hobbyhorse for conservative politicians.
Here’s a (prob’ly not the only) fucken clue: A large percentage of minority and poor voters rely on mail-in ballots.
@ #4 & #1
Gaming the voting system undoubtedly is part of the explanation, but that doesn’t explain things like gutting the National Park Service or the way the Bush administration used (and overpaid for) private contractors to do all the support services: 1) Paying taxpayer money to private businesses opens up all sorts of avenues for quid pro quo transactions, and 2) Conservatives have very poor imaginations and thus think everyone else thinks just like they do. They would never work hard for the benefit of their fellow citizens, let alone any other lifeforms on Earth, therefore anyone who is not employed by an Ebenezer Scrooge must be a slacker and is probably stealing office supplies to boot.
I meant to say:
the way the Bush administration used (and overpaid for) private contractors to do all the support services in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
@3, my point being that for-profit delivery services are slow, inefficient, and inept…while the USPS despite all the efforts to sabotage it, keeps things moving. What logistical sense does it make to keep a package circling several locations in Kentucky? My only guess is that I’m being punished for not paying extra for VIP delivery by having my package slow-walked. And I can’t begin to guess why the lowball delivery company takes my package from an hour away from my house and routes it randomly 1500 miles away.
The usual path for the USPS, when the carrier uses “last mile” USPS delivery, is for the package to arrive at one post office, zip through two or three more locations, then arrive at my local post office, where it’s loaded on the truck and out for delivery.
I was thinking yesterday about the speed of the USPS. I order a good number of used books, and last week I ordered eight of them. Replacing some books which I’ve given away as well as some I want to read.
I placed the orders on Thursday. The first book arrived, USPS priority mail, on Monday. The second yesterday. A four day turn-around from the order to delivery is amazing. Sure, the bookseller was in a different time zone and probably filled the order and sent it into USPS on Thursday, but that’s still an amazing speed.
The rest are probably moving as media mail, but even that moves through the system far faster than it did ten years ago.