Businesses urged to get involved in USPS restructuring

When the president for the Association of Postal Commerce speaks in Omaha next Thursday, he will tell the business people in the audience that it’s time they tell Congress what they need and what they’ll pay for from the Postal Service.

Like roads, the postal system is part of the nation’s infrastructure, but the country needs to decide how it should be organized and paid for, in light of today’s economy and increasingly popular electronic communication, Gene Del Polito said by phone from Washington, D.C.

Del Polito, who has advocated for the mailing needs of business and commerce for 25 years, will be the keynote speaker at the Omaha Postal Customer Council Mailers Conference. The event, from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., will be held at the Embassy Suites in La Vista.

U.S. Postmaster General John Potter said recently that the Postal Service may face deficits of $5 billion or more annually unless lawmakers ease restrictions and let the agency operate more like a business.

“We have to make some important public-policy decisions about the future of the Postal Service,” Potter said in a prepared speech this month before the National Press Club in Washington. “We’re facing cost requirements that just can’t be squared with the reality of the business.”

Del Polito said the examination and analysis of what the postal service should be doing to satisfy its customers’ needs already has begun in Washington.

“What I tell mailers is that it’s not a matter of, ‘What do we do to save U.S. Postal Service?’ It’s ‘Is it satisfying the nation’s need?’”

Increasingly, the mail is a vehicle for business communication and commerce, and it should be designed to facilitate the transactions of commerce, he said.

Personal communication constitutes 4 percent of all mail, with business making up about 72 percent, Del Polito said. The remainder is what he calls “consumer obligation responses to business,” such as payment of bills.

Personal communication previously constituted 8 percent to 10 percent, he said, so the postal system always was predominantly used for business purposes, along with the mailing of magazines, newspapers and catalogs.

The mail system will exist for “quite some time,” Del Polito said, but lawmakers must create a business model that is financially self-sufficient and provides value to its users so they continue to use it.

Lawmakers hear from their nonbusiness constituents whenever there’s a proposal to alter mail service, such as terminating Saturday delivery or closing a post office, Del Polito said. Businesses should come forward and tell Congress where they stand, he said.

Register online for the conference at www.omahapcc.com

This report includes material from Bloomberg News.