The Post Office is losing billions a year because unions and politics won’t allow it to make common sense business decisions

Unions Killing U.S. Post Office

By Warner Todd Huston
Saturday, April 17, 2010

Union contracts are killing the U.S. Post Office, making it uncompetitive and driving costs through the roof according to the Government Accountability Office.

The U.S. Post Office lost $12 billion between 2007 and 2009 and has reached its borrowing limit of $15 billion already. On top of that the union pension fund is underfunded. Even as Congress cut benefits by $4 billion the agency faces a $3.8 billion loss.

The GAO report also states that one of the reasons why the Post Office has lost so much cash is because it doesn’t have the freedom to close fiscally inefficient offices. Politicians have stepped in and prevented a logical, financial sensible reassessment of the Post Office’s operations.

But it is union contracts that prevent the proper rearrangement of the work force to reflect the financial situation that faces today’s Post Office.

“Limitations on the workforce mix of full-time and part-time postal employees and workforce flexibility rules contained in contracts with USPS’s unions are key detriments of how postal work is organized and, thus, of its cost,â€