The coronavirus has sent those problems spiraling out of control. Costs, on the other hand, haven’t gone down. The rise of the internet tanked the volume of first-class mail in circulation, which peaked in 2001 and has dropped every year since. It's meant to be self-sustaining, paying for itself from the money it makes off postage and other daily mail services.īut it also has to follow rules set by Congress that result in higher costs - notably, it’s expected to deliver mail daily and keep postage rates flat for all parts of the country. We won’t weigh in on whether the law was "meant to bankrupt" the Postal Service. But the service has more financial problems than just the requirements of the 2006 law. Kalina Newman, a spokesperson for the AFL-CIO, cited a 2010 Postal Service report and a CNBC article.Ī lame-duck Republican Congress did pass a financially burdensome law in 2006 requiring the Postal Service to pre-fund health benefits for future retirees, and the service’s deal with Amazon hasn’t proven to be the money drain that Trump has said it is. In this case, the post is accurate in some ways, and misleading in others. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat potential false news and misinformation on its News Feed. The post has been around more than a year, but it was picked up April 13 by the AFL-CIO, a federation of labor unions. Without this law, the Postal Service would be turning a profit."
This was meant to bankrupt it so it’s business could be privatized for profit. "It’s losing money because in 2006, the Republican-led Congress passed a law forcing it to prepay its pensions for 75 years, which no other corporation does. "The Postal Service is not losing money because of Amazon," the post says.
“Only time will tell” what other concessions will be made to appease Amazon or any another business who signs an NSA, he adds, but “one thing is sure, the postal service is changing and not for the better.Trump has long been critical of the Postal Service, saying as recently as April 7 that the service "has lost billions of dollars every year" and has an unfair relationship with Amazon.īut a widespread Facebook post says Trump’s frustrations are misguided, and that members of his own party are actually to blame for the Postal Service’s financial problems. In contrast to the manager’s concern for the Amazon packages, Barbot says he found it odd “that she left many Priority packages which the shippers paid top dollar to have delivered,” especially since they have a much higher profit margin for the USPS than do Amazon packages. In recent years, the Postal Service has faced mounting financial challenges brought about by declining mail volume and a congressional mandate to pre-fund employee pension benefits, leading to cost-cutting proposals such as ending Saturday delivery and closing rural post offices.Īccording to Barbot, “their latest solution is a relatively new business concept called the negotiated service agreement, or NSA,” which he predicts “will initiate the piecemeal morphing of the postal service from a public entity into one that is beholden to its corporate partners.” (RELATED: Penniless Postal Service Promotes Discounted Rates for Chinese Merchants)ĭavid Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, told The Daily Caller News Foundation that, “This is something that we’ve been talking about for a while now: the distraction of the Postal Service from delivering mail,” which according to its charter is supposed to be its top priority.īarbot, who until recently worked as a City Carrier Assistant (CCA) in Greensboro, North Carolina, notes that, “What’s actually contained within the document is anyone’s guess,” because the USPS has refused to disclose significant details of the agreement, but says his experience indicates “just how beholden is to Amazon.”īarbot relates one instance in which he was instructed to return mail to the station, leading to a confrontation with the evening shift manager, who told him, “there better not be any Amazon packages in there!” Upon discovering two very small Amazon packages among the mail, the manager complained that, “great! Now I’m going to have to take these back out!” 28, 2015, through documents available online and public records. The Daily Caller News Foundation has independently verified Barbot’s identity, and his employment with the USPS as recently as Jan. In an article for AlterNet, Paul Barbot, a career postal worker, asserts that because of a secretive arrangement between the USPS and Amazon, “an Amazon package trumps all others received to deliver that day even the ones that are more profitable to the postal service.”
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