The unions seem especially incensed that management wants to cut mail delivery down to five days a week, a move that it thinks would save about $3 billion a year. Congress hasn't given the USPS permission to do this, and the APWU's Burrus wants to make sure it doesn't. Ending Saturday delivery, he warns, "would be the beginning of the demise of the Postal Service."
In a way he's right. If the USPS doesn't sharply cut its labor costs and change its business model, eliminating the sixth day would open a gap that its competitors, such as Fed Ex and private couriers, could fill for customers who still need Saturday service. But rate increases would produce the same results by a different route. And to do nothing other than feeding the USPS tax money while waiting for it to reform would be worse.
Unless the public wants to commit to massive subsidies in perpetuity for an institution that is less and less relevant to their jobs and lives, the USPS on its current path is destined to fail.
Cutting the sixth day is only a near-term fix, but it might be what's needed get the unions' attention. If mail is to be treated more or less like a private business, as Congress intended when it created the Postal Service four decades ago, downsizing is the logical survival tactic at this point.
After that, the Postal Service would have to find new markets and a new business model to ensure its long-range survival. It might then have a chance, but it would first have to be fully privatized. That would mean losing its first-class monopoly, but also being freed to compete in any market where its infrastructure and work force could be put to profitable use.
Congress (perhaps the public as well) is nowhere near cutting the leash in this way. But technology and economics are fast bringing this post-Post Office world into being, if it's not here already.