One mailman compared the postal strike to a volcano. In its sudden fury, the stoppage that began last week was indeed cataclysmic, but labor trouble has been only one of the latent threats to the mail service. The Post Office Department has long suffered from deteriorating facilities, a chaotic financing method and archaic approaches to both moving mail and administering the organization.
There have been ample warnings of impending collapse in recent years. Mail service in Chicago broke down during the 1963 Christmas season. Three years later, the Chicago post office simply ground to a halt for nearly three weeks under a glut of 10 million letters and packages. Even first-class letters can take several days to travel a few miles—or even blocks—whereas overnight service used to be taken for granted. Last July, a rash of sick calls at one post office in The Bronx produced what was, in effect, a strike.
In 1968, the President’s Commission on Postal Organization declared that each year the Post Office “slips farther behind the rest of the economy in service, in efficiency and in meeting its responsibilities as an employer.” The commission, headed by former A.T. & T. Chairman Frederick R. Kappel, cited among the Post Office’s top problems “widespread disquiet among postal employees” because of “antiquated personnel practices, poor working conditions, limited career opportunities and training.”
The American postal service seems less reliable and slower than those of many other nations—even some underdeveloped ones—but no other nation’s system handles anywhere near the 82 billion pieces of mail processed each year in the U.S. The U.S. Post Office, with 725,000 workers, is the Government’s largest civilian agency. Three-quarters of its $7.13 billion budget goes for salaries and employee benefits. Yet, the Kappel commission said, “hiring, discipline, promotion and grievance procedures have not been changed over the last few decades.”
The figures bear out the commission’s findings. Advancement is rare. About 85% of all postal employees are in the five lowest grades, and more than four-fifths finish their careers in the same grade as they started. The Post Office has difficulty holding on to personnel, suffering an annual turnover of 23%. Yet because of red tape, it takes at least 13 weeks to hire a new employee; two-thirds of the applicants do not wait that long.
The caliber of employees is declining. During the Depression, the benefits of civil service attracted many capable applicants, most of whom were retired by the late 1960s. Since World War II, the lure of security has diminished. Prosperity in the private sector has siphoned off the kind of workers that once flocked to take civil service examinations. One result: In New York, 900 Post Office jobs are now going begging.
The postal system also suffers from poor management. Until recent years, most supervisory jobs were filled by political preference, and even today local clubhouses have a voice in distributing key posts. Postal rates, wages and the location of facilities are determined not by Post Office officials but by Congress. Decisions are often made with politics rather than efficiency in mind.
When he took over as Postmaster General in 1965, Lawrence O’Brien noted that the department’s research facilities were more suited to the needs of the 1880s than today. The Kappel commission found that mail handling has changed little in the past century. The unions have continually fought mechanization, and Congress has never provided sufficient funds for it. Rates have been kept relatively low, and Congress has not acted on the Administration’s latest request for an increase. This puts the Post Office in the position of seeming to be a chronic debtor. Since 1838, revenue has met costs in only 17 years. The difference comes from the Treasury. Present deficits total $1.5 billion a year.
Meanwhile, the system’s physical plant has been decaying. A great many post offices were built in the great construction push of the 1930s, and are poorly conceived and situated for modern needs. Backlogged capital requests total $5 billion.
Last May, President Nixon said: “Total reform of the nation’s postal system is absolutely essential.” He and Postmaster General Winton Blount, like O’Brien before them, proposed that the Post Office be taken out of the Government and set up as an autonomous corporation. It would be owned by the Government but free from direct political pressure. The corporation would have the power to set postal rates, subject to a congressional veto, raise capital and negotiate salaries. It would aim at being self-supporting by 1976. Nixon folded into the proposal his previously announced plans to remove postmaster and rural-letter-carrier appointments from politics.
The proposal, previously suggested by the Kappel commission, ran into strong opposition in Congress and among the postal unions. But intensive Administration lobbying and a White House promise to include binding arbitration got the bill reported out of the House Post Office Committee earlier this month, and prospects for passage by Congress have improved. The entire Government must share the blame for the strike; now there is greater incentive to support basic alterations of the system.
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