The U.S. Postal Service: Our Next Bankruptcy?

And you thought public health care was getting a bad name? Move over, socialized medicine. We have another problem on our hands. The General Accounting Office (GAO) has announced that the U.S. Postal Service is in danger of financial insolvency.

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Last year, the Postal Service lost $2 billion. This year, it's lost $7 billion and is on track to continue that trajectory. Things are so dire that Postmaster General John E. Potter has requested permission from Congress to stop Saturday mail delivery. Already, the Postal Service has begun subjecting "underperforming mailboxes" to a "density test" and ripping up boxes that don't make the grade. Talk about a harsh performance review.

The post office, for its part, is trying to respond. In addition to ending Saturday service, it's contemplating reduced hours, layoffs and local branch closures. But some argue that it's time to think about privatization.

And it's not just in the U.S. where snail mail has fallen on hard times. Over here in Britain, where I live, there's been an ongoing dispute between postal workers and the Royal Mail over jobs, pay and benefits. This summer, we've already been subjected to several local strike actions, with threats of a national strike in September. My own local post office -- once replete with birthday cards, gift wrap and all manner of office supplies -- is now a stripped-down shadow of its former self, the lone passport photo stand the only perk left outside the increasingly long lines.

Of course, none of this should come as a shock. The economic crisis that's gripped the world for the past two years means that any low-cost alternative to regular mail will be all the more attractive. That, together with the spate of technological tools available for communicating -- e-mail, Twitter, texting, IMs -- not to mention the popularity of online billing, means there's less need for the post anymore. Not surprisingly, U.S. mail volume plummeted by 13 percent this year -- equivalent to some 20 billion fewer pieces -- the single largest drop in the service's 234-year history.

Still, there are reasons to be concerned. The post office is the single largest civilian federal agency, employing about 633,000 career and 94,000 non-career employees. That puts it right behind the Department of Defense and Walmart as the country's largest employer. That's a lot of jobs.

And of course, there's some nostalgia at play here as well. I'll be the first to admit that, while once an avid letter writer, I almost never resort to handwritten communications anymore, other than to express condolences. And yet, I still feel sad about the gradual death of snail mail. I still remember the tissue-y feel of the envelope between my fingers and the exotically colored stamps when a letter arrived from overseas. Or the thrill when my mother would slow down the car so that I could lean out the window to deposit a letter in one of those drive-by mail slots. (And while we're at it, the thrill of not wearing a seatbelt. Remember those days?)

No more. Like Donna pining for the days of the glam stewardess portrayed in "Mad Men," I feel like we've come to the end of an era.

There are limits to my nostalgia, of course. What was the very first thing I did upon learning that the U.S. Postal Service was in dire straits? I tweeted it, natch. I mean, c'mon folks. I just had to get the word out to my peeps!


You are free to write Delia a letter expressing your views. Or you can just follow her on Twitter.



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