The United States Postal Service is struggling to remain afloat in light of a possible default and is cutting services in the process. Overnight mail delivery is being done away with and entire mail processing locations are being closed.
While many are afraid that service might slow down, no one seems to be worried about the jobs that are about to disappear.
There are about 3,700 local post offices that are slated to close or be replaced with “village post offices” within a few months. 252 mail processing centers are also under review right now. These centers alone account for 35,000 workers.
The Postal Service already lost 110,000 employees when it closed the doors of about 200 facilities over the last four years.
According to the Postmaster General, “35 percent of the Postal Service’s retail revenue comes from expanded access locations such as grocery stores, drug stores, office supply stores, retail chains, self-service kiosks, ATMs and usps.com, open 24/7.”
The proposition is to increase this number, severing the careers of countless postal service employees and giving their work to machines. This has happened to a much smaller degree before but during the prosperous time of the 90s when the Internet hadn’t yet uprooted many traditional business models and cultivated the grounds for other interesting and innovative ones.
Why isn’t anyone talking about the hundreds of thousands of people who soon may have to look to unemployment benefits to survive if they can’t secure another job? The American Postal Workers Union says they feel betrayed by the Postal Service, but what are workers saying?