Who Really Owns The Us Postal Service
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The USPS Is a Public Service, Non a Concern
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(The National Involvement)
U.s. Mail service workers load post into delivery trucks outside a post office in Royal Oak, Michigan, August 22, 2020
Photo by Rebecca Cook/Reuters
When Postmaster Louis DeJoy was appointed by former President Donald Trump last May, he immediately instituted many unpopular initiatives intended to help the United States Mail service (USPS) get more than fiscally sound. These initiatives, including cutting alphabetic character carrier hours and the removal of mailboxes and sorting machines, resulted in delays in delivery and generated political concerns about the potential impact on postal service-in ballots. The USPS experienced dramatic delays in the delivery of packages and bills that continued during the holidays and into the New year's day, with businesses alerting customers that there would be delays in packages and billing statements.
Yet in office, DeJoy recently released a x-yr reorganization plan for the USPS that includes lengthening delivery times past as much as five days for some offset-form post, cut the hours of some mail service offices, and increasing postal rates, with austerity as the solution to USPS's challenges. The plan represents the largest cutback in services in a generation. Critics accept noted that these initiatives may negatively impact small businesses (65 percent of National Small-scale Business concern Clan members apply USPS over private shipping companies) and those individuals who rely on the USPS for prescription drugs or for financial documents, such as bills, paychecks, and stimulus checks—as well as the USPS workforce, which is disproportionately comprised of veterans and racial/ethnic minority employees.
Nevertheless, the USPS is a service long beloved by the public. If anyone expected Trump's sharp rhetoric or the declines in on-fourth dimension commitment had a negative impact on how people view the USPS, then they may be surprised. As part of a nationally representative RAND American Life Panel (ALP) survey fielded in May 2020, more than two thousand individuals were asked well-nigh their perceptions of the USPS and other federal institutions. The survey institute that the public had a very high level of trust in the USPS every bit an bureau; at the fourth dimension, information technology ranked only below the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) but significantly in a higher place the Federal Emergency Management Bureau, the Fundamental Intelligence Agency, and Congress.
The aforementioned respondents were surveyed again in October 2020, after DeJoy'south initial changes were being implemented. That survey showed trust in the USPS really went up, increasing significantly beyond the board—across political orientation, educational attainment, income, employment condition, gender, race/ethnicity, rural/urban, and age. This occurred at the same fourth dimension trust in the CDC plummeted (according to the aforementioned survey) equally perceptions of the agency became increasingly politicized.
Why the counterintuitive result? It'due south likely considering many Americans feel a personal connection to the USPS; they rely on it daily for basic needs. Let'due south not forget that U.S. protests last summer got many postal boxes returned and some sorting machine removal stopped. And with the coronavirus pandemic, people and businesses likely depend fifty-fifty more on the USPS now: package book increased about twenty percent in 2020 compared to 2019.…
The remainder of this commentary is available at nationalinterest.org.
Michael Pollard is a senior sociologist and Lois Davis is a senior policy researcher at the nonprofit, nonpartisan RAND Corporation. Both are professors at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
This commentary originally appeared on The National Interest on April 5, 2021. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and frequently on their peer-reviewed inquiry and analysis.
Who Really Owns The Us Postal Service,
Source: https://www.rand.org/blog/2021/04/the-us-post-office-is-a-public-service-not-a-business.html
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