United States Postal Service is Dying!
On Friday, March 20, the US Postal Service confirmed what has been talked about for years. The Post Office as we know it is a dying business. It is on the same fast-track highway to death as the Yellow Pages, Classified Ads, Movie Rental Stores, VCR€™s, cameras that use film, and dial up internet access. The US Postal Service announced it was offering early retirement to 150,000 of their 646,000 employees and will eliminate 3000 jobs as it tries to grapple with a 2.8 billion dollar loss for 2008.
Two years ago, I heard a speaker say that there will always be a place for the Postal Service. That no longer appears to be true. Postmaster General John Potter recently told Congress that the profitable first class mail the Post Office delivers has dwindled to levels not seen since 1964. Compared to last year, the volume of mail is down 5.2 billion pieces. If the economy does not recover, the Postal Service projects volume for 2009 will be down by 12 million to 15 billion pieces of mail.
In our new book, Engaged! How Leaders Build Organizations Where Employees Love to Come to Work, we confidently write that the number one characteristic great organizations share is a positive, compelling vision for the future. So what exactly is the compelling vision of the United States Postal Service? To effectively deal with the severe downturn in the need for their current service, on May 11th, they will raise the price of a first class stamp from 42 cents to 44 cents.
Undoubtedly, the increase in postage will drive even more of their remaining customers to bypass the USPS completely and send everything via electronic format.
Filed Under: Peter's Blog on April 8th, 2009
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