Family Life

08.06.09 |

The U.S. Postal Service blames the recession for its loss of two-point-four-billlion dollars during the second quarter. The post office has now lost money for eleven of the past 12 quarters, and is mulling service cutbacks as a way of stemming the tide of red ink. Among them -- cutting out Saturday mail delivery and closing and consolidating hundreds of post offices. Postmaster General John Potter is urging Congress to pass legislation to allow five-day-a-week mail delivery. He says that would give the Postal Service the flexibility it needs to meet its budget.

The agency began an aggressive cost-cutting program a decade ago, adopting technology to process and handle mail. While it took 70 workers to process 35-thousand letters an hour ten years ago, with modern equipment two employees can accomplish the same task in the same amount of time. Potter claims the Postal Service will meet a 2009 goal of reducing spending by six-billion dollars since the cost-reduction program began.