Yet another right wing newspaper editorial attacks postal workers, and blames them for postal service’s problems- from California’s North County Times:
The new $1.5 billion Flats Sequencing System being installed by the U.S. Postal Service at its Carmel Mountain distribution center is a modern marvel. The machine takes up 70,000 square feet, sorts 12,500 flats an hour and can read bar codes, printed words and even handwriting.
Better yet, it reduces the cost of sorting magazines, advertisements, newspapers, manila envelopes and the like by as much as 60 percent. Unfortunately, those total cost savings won’t be passed on to taxpayers any time soon.
In any other enterprise, automation would result in a reallocation of resources —- and, yes, work force reductions.
Instead, letter carriers will simply be moved to other parts of the operation because their union-negotiated contract forbids layoffs.
Did we mention the USPS had an $8.5 billion shortfall last year?
Did we mention that all but $500 million of last years postal deficit was the result of Congressional actions, and had nothing to do with postal workers?
Did we mention that letter carriers aren’t actually overstaffed, and are in fact working lots of overtime?