|
|
【中文标题】美国邮政之死
【原文标题】How the U.S. Postal Service Fell Apart
【登载媒体】时代周刊
【原文作者】Josh Sanburn
【原文链接】http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,2099187-1,00.html
图解美国邮政的历史
美国邮政的诞生
美国邮政的起源可以追溯到美国革命战争时期，出现了一套新的邮政体系来取代皇家信件服务，因为殖民者不喜欢后者昂贵的价格，他们认为这是不公平的附加税。独立战争爆发的1775年，大陆议会任命本杰明•富兰克林担任首位邮政大臣。富兰克林比较擅长这个职位，他曾经在殖民地信件服务系统中担任过助理邮政大臣。
1874年，第一枚邮票
在邮政服务的早期，支付信件邮寄费用的不是发信人，而是收信人。这样的安排导致投递时间延长，信件被拒收的几率很高。当1847年第一枚邮票投入使用之后，投递成本被规范化了，服务的效率也随之提高。在第一批5美分面值的邮票上印有第一位邮政大臣富兰克林的肖像，10美分邮票上的是第一位总统乔治•华盛顿的肖像。
1850年，邮向自由
内战开始前十年，亨利•“盒子”•布朗把自己装在一个三英尺的箱子中，从弗吉尼亚的里士满邮寄到费城的废奴办公室，并获得了自由。这趟旅程花费了26个小时。
1860年，小马快递
小马快递服务是一项加快西海岸邮递速度的举措，对原有的邮递路线进行了大幅度改进。先是用船直航巴拿马替代原有的陆地路线，然后换船一路向北抵达加利福尼亚。小马快递运送的第一个包裹离开密苏里州的圣何塞，用了10天时间走完2000英里的路程，到达加利福尼亚的萨格拉门托。上边的版画描绘的是一名小红马快递递送员抵达落基山的一个快递站。每隔10英里就有一个快递站，当马匹开始疲劳的时候，递送员可以立即换一匹新马。
1870年，“无论雨雪……”
这是一幅描绘洛矶山脉信使的木版画。这个著名的信条并非美国邮政的官方口号，而是挂在纽约James Farley邮局门口的一个牌匾。这句完整的话（来自希罗多德的警句）是：“无论雨雪、无论艳阳高照还是夜幕降临，这些信使都在坚守自己的道路。”
1910年，邮政马力
美国邮政投入使用的新型机动车来运输包裹。
1911年，邮件登上飞机
美国首次尝试用飞机运送邮件是在1859年，一位飞行员试图（未成功）乘坐一个热气球，携带邮件从印第安纳州拉法叶到纽约。后来又进行过多次空运邮件的尝试，但是飞行员、托马斯•爱迪生的实验助理Earle L. Ovington（上图）才是第一次完成正式飞行运输的人。他携带一个邮包，从纽约的花园城市飞往米尼奥拉。到达目的地之后，Ovington在空中盘旋，把邮包从飞机一侧丢下。邮包在空中破裂，其中的信件散落而下。
1915年，乡村递送
一位信使和他的瓦格纳4-11型摩托车站在一个邮箱旁，脚下是南达科塔纽维尔附近的道路。邮件在他摩托车后座的邮包里。
1922年，死亡信件办公室
死亡信件办公室与1825年建立，目的是储存“无法派送”的货物。这张死亡信件办公室的照片或许拍摄于华盛顿附近的一个邮局。
1947年，收发室
无数的邮包堆在一起，逐个被倒入分拣槽中。这是大都会人寿保险公司繁忙的收发室。
1953年，邮政部长
艾森豪威尔政府的邮政部长Arthur Summerfield坐在一堆邮件中。这个职位自从本杰明•富兰克林到1971年，一直是内阁职位。
1954年，邮票售卖机
邮票售卖机最早出现在19世纪末，由英国人发明。这种机器在1908年首次出现在美国，私人邮票印刷商开始接受硬币购买邮票。
1955年，早班
邮递员离开纽约邮局开始他们在圣诞节期间的工作。
1959年，导弹邮件
美国邮政曾经尝试过“导弹邮件”这种新技术。为了实现更快的运输速度，他们与美国海军巴贝罗号潜艇合作，发射了一枚带有两个邮包的巡航导弹。尽管导弹最终到达佛罗里达的梅波特，邮件也派送成功了，但是昂贵的成本和无数失败的例子让人们最终放弃了这种方法。
1959年，提高效率
操作员在罗德岛普罗维登斯新型自动化邮局中工作。60年代，邮政开始使用高效率的设备处理以前手工完成的工作。
遭胁迫
从80年代开始，美国邮政经历了一系列工作场所的枪击事件。在公众眼中，暴力行为代表美国政府部门和企业越来越大的压力——在更少的时间里，用更低的成本做更多的事情。“上邮局”这句话已经变成了引发暴力的极度愤怒的同义词。上图是1986年俄克拉荷马州埃德蒙著名的枪击事件发生之后的场景。一位兼职的邮递员Patrick Sherrill用手枪打死了14名邮局员工。
2010年，抗议
由于预算被削减，邮局被迫做出了很多艰难的决定。美国邮政正在考虑停止周六派送服务，并关闭全美数千家邮局。在上边2010年的照片中，美国邮政工会成员和他们的支持者在费城的劳动节行走中，抗议停止周六派送服务。
濒死的行业
就像上图这个伊力诺依州米林顿的邮局一样，全美有3700个邮局因美国邮政面临严酷的财政危机而即将关闭。而且还有更多的邮局步其后尘。邮政部长说，美国邮政可能会考虑关闭全国15000个邮局。
在宾夕法尼亚大学研究生公寓中，立着一块褪色的木牌子，上面写着“华盛顿马龙邮局”，这个邮局已经不存在了。
如果这块牌子出现在其他学校的学生公寓中，它或许只是一个恶作剧的工具。但在这里不是，而是美国邮政赠送给宾夕法尼亚大学25岁的研究生Evan Kalish的一个礼物。他曾经纵横往来于美国东北部，还曾经飞到南部的夏威夷，目的只有一个：查看2700个即将或者已经关闭的邮局。
在过去三年里，他拍摄的照片、收集的信用卡和送出的礼物详细记录了这个曾经处于美国社会核心的机构慢慢消亡的过程。很多邮局的建筑物都具有历史意义，有些甚至是美国成长过程和灾难恢复过程中，社区建立的标志。Kalish说：“邮局帮助建立了这个国家，而现在，它似乎正在让自己毁灭。”
如果你在谷歌地图上搜索这个小镇，会发现马龙邮局是唯一的地标级建筑物。但它在8月9日关闭了。第二天，街道对面的Red's Hop N市场开始提供部分邮政服务——出售邮票和固定邮资的包装箱——和活体昆虫、香烟、牛肉干并排摆在货架上。这是美国第一个“乡村邮局”，也是邮政系统赖以弥补预算缺口的策略之一。
对于关闭3000到15000所邮局的经济和心理抵抗力量持续高涨，这种情绪主要来源于像Kalish一样的个人和邮递员工会。邮递员现在已经开始派送广告，这项全国范围内的公关活动是为了挽救10万邮政系统的就业岗位，但他们的财政预算依然极为紧张。
美国邮政（USPS）若干年来的财政路线一直在下滑，加上糟糕的经济环境、网络支付的兴起、电子邮件和其它数字通讯方式的普及，以及国会的命令，让美国邮政自2007年以来产生了十亿美元的预算赤字。去年的亏损额是83亿美元，今年的亏损额是51亿美元（原因仅仅是强制推迟支付55亿美元的退休人员医疗保险费用）。信件数量下降了1.7％，未来的货量预期呢？直线的下降。官方称，如果不采取任何措施，到明年8月或者9月，邮政服务将耗尽所有资金。由于上周五国会没有做出任何决定，美国邮政因此将继续拖欠55亿美元的退休人员医疗保险费用。
一些遏制损失加剧的举措正在酝酿过程中，其中一项已经被提交到参议院。部分提案建议裁掉12万名邮政职员，再通过人员流失不补的方式削减10万人。近期发布的消息包括关闭国家三分之二的信件处理中心，以及最让全国人愤怒的决定——关闭数千家邮局。据说，这可以削减200亿美元的成本。
当被问到这个小镇邮局以及整个邮政系统的命运时，Kalish说：“这是和时间的赛跑。”他逐渐培养出一种业余爱好，让一些研究生学生从早8点到晚7点活跃在街道上，与当地人沟通、更新谷歌地图，用他们发现的每一个邮局的照片和细节更新他的博客“上邮局”。“所有这些都受到了邮政服务的威胁，你根本不知道它们还会存在多久。”
Kalish对邮局的迷恋或许是过分夸张，甚至带有怪僻的美国历史研究，但这绝非空穴来风。多年来，美国邮政做的事情不仅仅是送信，它还是小社区里人们的聚集场所，它的作用远远超过一个收集信件和出售邮票的地方。
研究美国邮政资金问题的纽约大学教授Steve Hutkins说：“邮局是民主的发源地，它一直被当作是一项生意，其实它并不是。”
驮驴和雪地机车
说邮政服务是我们国家历史上最重要的一项传统制度其实并不过分。几十年以来，邮政系统是美国最大的公共就业机构，在19世纪的某一个时期里，四分之三的政府雇员都是邮政职工。开国者曾经认为邮政服务如此重要，以至于他们在宪法中写明，国会有权力建立、规范邮政服务。
在建国的早期，邮政服务通过投递报纸这个有关新国家信息的唯一来源，把美国分布广泛的人口联系起来。它让家人和士兵在战时保持联系。还没有道路的时候，它使用蒸汽机船递送信件。在巴拿马运河修建之前，它用游船、牲畜群和独木舟向加利福尼亚递送信件。
即使在今天，美国邮政依然在使用不可思议的方法来投递我们的邮件。如果你寄一封信到位于大峡谷底部的哈瓦苏派印第安人居留地，邮递员会赶着骡子为你投递。如果信件是到阿拉斯加的荒野中，美国邮政采取的方式是空投或者雪橇（在1963年之前都是使用狗拉雪橇）。有东西要寄到阿拉巴马的红河流域吗？美国邮政有逐个码头停靠的邮船。其它一些投递工具甚至还包括气动真空导管、导弹和气垫船，而我们只需要为每封信支付44美分（从1月22日开始变成45美分）。
今天的美国邮政是全国第二大的雇主（排在沃尔玛之后），管理着世界上最大的车队，处理全世界40％的邮件数量。
过去几十年来，这种大规模的运作相当平稳，利用铁路和航空普及带来的新技术与我们国家共同发展。从1953年到1966年，信件数量从500亿增长到750亿。即使如此，邮政服务总是陷于赤字当中，对国际邮件业务的介入注定让其无法翻身。到20世纪中期，邮政每年亏损6亿美元，整个体系就是从这时候开始分崩离析的。
1966年放假前的邮件高峰期，芝加哥邮政总局突然涌进了无数的广告邮件（这家邮局有13层楼，占地面积60英亩，是世界上最大的邮政建筑物）。结果发生了什么呢？所有信件都停滞了，真的一动也不动。在整整三个星期的时间里，100万磅邮件——大约1000万封信件——几乎没有被进行任何操作处理。造成这个问题的原因是邮政职工工时被削减、负责分拣信件的人缺乏经验、邮政部长职位空缺太久，以及改良后的退休金制度让更多人选择退休等因素的组合。
惨剧至少揭示了两个问题：邮政对国家的正常运着至关重要；邮政的运作存在非常严重的问题。邮政部长Larry O'Brien提出了一套新的服务方案，并警告说，邮政服务的根基存在缺陷，整个体系已经处于崩溃的边缘。
几年后的纽约，一场自发的罢工（工人拒绝接受工会的领导）爆发了，主要是为了抗议过低的工资水平。《时代周刊》称其为“震动全国的罢工”。据北卡罗来纳农业技术大学的历史学助理教授 Philip Rubio说，当时邮政职工的工资水平尚不及清洁工。“一名有4个孩子的家庭的邮政工人够得上申请食品救济券的资格了。”
工人们走上街道之后，尼克松总统派遣国民卫队和美军士兵去分拣邮件，但根本无济于事。Rubio说：“他们很快发现自己彻底失败了，处理邮件的速度赶不上邮件堆积起来的速度。8天之后，尼克松政府发出信号，表示愿意与邮政工人谈判。”
这些事件最终促成了总统顾问团卡普尔委员会的成立，它由多名企业高管组成，这些人对邮件操作没有任何专业知识。1970年，他们完成了一项邮政改革方案，最终形成邮政重组法案，把美国邮政部改为美国邮政。这不仅仅是名称的变化，国会实际上把邮政服务改为一个准政府组织，既不是一家企业，又不是政府的一部分。它不得不像一家自负盈亏的公司或私人实体一样运作，即使它依然要肩负向这个国家每一户家庭投递信件的使命。
在后来的几十年里，美国邮政在各方面都发展得不错，即使那些偶发的愤怒职工的暴力行为也并未撼动其根基——这些事件让我们给“上邮局”这个词赋予了新的含义。当然，经常会有一些愤怒的顾客抱怨邮局位置太过遥远，但总体来说，美国邮政的表现相当不错，以至于国会决定开始为其员工的退休金再融资75年。国会因此在2006年通过了一项法令，要求为退休人员预付年度的医疗补贴，以每年55亿美元的金额支付10年。Rubio说，华盛顿没有预见到两年后经济衰退固然是一个因素，“但更重要的是这项法案所造成的影响，让我们国家的邮政服务脱离了正确的轨道。”
因小失大？
55岁的宾夕法尼亚人Patrick Donahoe在去年10月份开始任职第73任邮政部长，这或许是历史上最动荡不安的时期。Donahoe在邮政系统中已经工作了36年，从家乡匹兹堡的一名收发员做起，一直进入了宾夕法尼亚老乡本杰明•富兰克林的办公室。他开玩笑说：“我是一个老古董。”
在接受《时代周刊》采访时，Donahoe平静地讲述他试图让美国邮政摆脱困境的计划：到2014年削减200亿美元成本；推动国会批准5天，而不是6天的递送安排；裁减数万名邮政工人。听着他那令人昏昏欲睡的宾夕法尼亚口音，我们似乎忘记了他是在阐述如何让一家美国机构彻底转型。
奥巴马政府刚刚延迟了支付下一年度55亿邮政职工退休费的最后期限，新时间是11月18日。但这还远远不够，即使不支付这些钱，美国邮政在9月份结束的上一财年中已经亏损了51亿美元。
就是从那时开始，一些邮局陆续关闭，数量达几千家。到目前为止，他们在审查3650家邮局的运营状况。但情况不限于如此，Donahoe说实际数字恐怕要比这高出许多。
Donahoe说：“我们或许会考虑关闭1.5万家邮局，而不仅仅是3700家。并不是说我们喜欢关闭它们，但是当一个机构以7万美元的成本取得1万美元的收入时，必须要有一些解决方案了。”
据Donahoe说，官方重点考虑的是关闭两类邮局：每天工作不足1小时的乡村邮局，和收入不足50万美元，且临近还有另外一家邮政服务机构的城市邮局。但对有些人来说，关闭邮局的举措不但草率，而且毫无意义。
savethepostoffice.com网站的创始人Hutkins说：“关闭邮局对于邮政系统当今面临的财政状况其实没有什么帮助，运作这些邮局的成本，以及关闭它们所能节省下来的钱，与邮政系统的预算赤子相比是微乎其微的。”
Hutkins在纽约大学教授有关人的地理位置感和旅行如何影响我们的行为等有关课程。当他听到纽约的Rhinecliff邮局即将关闭的时候，邮政系统的问题引起了他的兴趣。于是他开始反抗，工具是小小的磁铁。
他开始制作有艺术性的冰箱贴，上面的图片是这个邮局的照片，他向镇子里的居民免费发放，以引起人们的关注。他所关心的不仅仅是一项重要服务的消亡，而是对帮助成立这个国家的重要成分的刻意毁坏。他认为邮政官员在这个问题上不够坦诚。
根据美国邮政的计算，关闭3650家邮局将节省2亿美元，占总预算赤子100亿美元的2％，但同时会削减数千个就业岗位。Hutkins说：“这是我一直难以理解的问题，因为它太荒唐了。”当你让一个人离开他的工作时，他对自己曾经真心效忠的机构不免发出一长串的抱怨。美国邮政是这样向社区居民解释邮局关闭的原因的：采取“紧急暂停”的方式关闭曾经遭受自然灾害侵蚀的邮局建筑物；用离职不补的方式裁减掉20万人，而不是10万人。
当我向Donahoe问到邮局关闭的问题，以及是否进展预算赤字的2％时，他令人吃惊地同意这个数字。
他说：“实际数字与此相差不远。如果你从美国邮政即将削减200亿美元的角度来看，这只不过是1％。但是，任何一个企业都会这样做，美国邮政从法律意义上讲不能仅仅做到盈亏平衡。”
的确，任何企业都可能这样做，但这正是让这场争论难以进行的重要原因。美国邮政是一个准政府事业，它的自治组织结构决定了它半私有、半政府的性质。
Hutkins说：“有关商业性的言论让邮政服务更加倾向于私有，这就是问题的根源所在。我认为他们是在因小失大，每个人都怀有一种执念，即尽量省下一些硬币，这给了他们足够理由关闭一家邮局。”
在费城，殖民地风格的B. Free Franklin邮局也即将被关闭。这所邮局并没有升起国旗，因为那里的信件递送服务在建国之前就存在了。它使用一种由本杰明•富兰克林发明的特殊意义的邮戳。它的关闭引起了热爱这种历史感的人们的悲伤和愤怒情绪。
我问Donahoe，第一任邮政部长富兰克林会给他今天的继任者哪些建议呢？“我想本杰明可能会说，不要因小失大。”
沃尔玛会步邮局的后尘吗？
尽管一些邮局的服务被转移到一些小型的杂货店中，但大部分还是被大型商场所接管，比如沃尔玛、好市多和西夫韦。你在那里可以买到任何东西，从流感疫苗到火花塞和新型眼镜。
其中一些商场还有邮政信箱，它们都出售邮票，并接受人们投递包裹。很多甚至比传统邮局的营业时间更长。
明信片收集爱好者Kalish说：“他们竭力想证明的是，你可以在10万家像沃尔玛这样的商场中买到邮票，但这依然无法否认邮局存在的必要性。他们之所以这么做，是因为他们可以说，嗨，我们为社区居民省下了不少钱。但这却让社区文化贬值。”
那些试图挽救美国邮政的人经常说，像马龙这样的乡村邮局其实并非传统意义上的邮局。Kalish说：“它的功能极为精简。你不能索取收据；不能为包裹称重；必须使用最快的服务；只有一种包装箱可以选择。它的存在似乎意义不大。”
这里的服务的确不尽周到，但真正让人们担心邮政服务的原因是，我们眼睁睁地看着美国一部分历史被蒸发掉——费城的富兰克林殖民地风格邮局、那些绘有令人叹为观止的新政壁画的邮局（有些是罗斯福亲手设计的）、内战之后南方的第一家邮局。它们全都不复存在，有些被改头换面为商店、房地产办公室和波道夫古德曼精品店。
总之，有关美国邮政的争论焦点其实很简单：本应服务于全民的一个机构即将被私有化。但可惜的是，全民服务的理念与市场上看不见的手不吻合。这就是为什么UPS和FedEx不全境服务的原因，因为有些地方不挣钱。那么它们怎么才能完成最后一英里的递送呢？找邮局，这两家公司是美国邮政最大的客户。
当邮局不断被关闭，华盛顿试图解决这个国家最大的财政问题，社区居民抗议的声音此起彼伏的时候，Kalish站了出来。他在完成学业的同时开始了一项新的生活：记录美国这家历史悠久的机构缓慢死亡的过程。
他在上给月给我发电子邮件说：“这周末我又访问了119家邮局，其中32家即将被关闭。4天，1110英里，45小时的路途时间，总共2561……没错，与此同时我还要完成宾夕法尼亚大学的研究生课程。但总要有人为这些社区居民站出来说话。”
原文：
Inside a grad student's apartment at the University of Pennsylvania sits a slightly faded blue-and-white wooden sign from a post office in Malone, Wash., that no longer exists.
If this were any other college student's place, the sign would probably be a trophy from some kind of prank. But no: it was a gift from the post office to 25-year-old Evan Kalish, a UPenn graduate student who has crisscrossed the Northeast, driven down South and flown to Hawaii to see more than 2,700 post offices, many of which are in danger of closing or have already been shuttered.
Over the past three years, he's documented the slow death of an institution that was once at the heart of small-town America, taking photos, collecting postal cards, paying tribute. Many of the postal buildings are historic, some marking the establishment of a community in a growing nation or the revival of one after a disaster. "The post office helped build the country," Kalish says. "And it's almost like they're trying to destroy themselves."
The Malone post office is the only landmark listed if you search for the town on Google Maps. But it closed down Aug. 9. The next day, across the street, Red's Hop N' Market began providing limited postal services — selling stamps and fixed-rate shipping boxes alongside live worms, cigarettes and beef jerky. It became the first "Village Post Office" in the country and part of a strategy that the postal service is counting on to help close a massive budget gap.
Resistance, both emotional and economic, to the closing of 3,000 to 15,000 post offices is growing, fueled by the objections of individuals like Kalish and mail-carrier unions which have taken out ads as part of a national public-relations campaign to save what could be more than 100,000 layoffs. But the financial situation remains dire.
The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has been sliding down an unsustainable fiscal path for years. A toxic combination of a poor economy, an increase in online bill paying, the proliferation of e-mail and other digital communication, and congressional mandates have created billion-dollar deficits for the USPS since 2007. Last year it lost $8.3 billion. This year, it lost $5.1 billion (only because a mandatory $5.5 billion prepayment for retiree health benefits was postponed). Mail volume declined 1.7%. Projected mail volume over the next decade? Down, down, down. Officials say if nothing's done, the postal service will run out of money by August or September of next year, and absent congressional action by Friday, the USPS will default on that mandated $5.5 billion payment.
There are a number of plans in the works to stem the losses, including one now making its way through the Senate. Some proposals being considered would lay off 120,000 postal workers and cut another 100,000 through attrition, not to mention the recent announcement that two-thirds of all mail-processing centers will close and — the thing that has riled up people across the country the most — the closure of thousands of post offices. All told, it would reduce costs by $20 billion.
"It's a race against the clock," Kalish said when asked about the fate of the small-town post offices and the institution itself. His hobby turned addiction that often has the grad student on the road from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. many days, talking to locals, updating Google Maps as well as his blog Going Postal with images and details about each postal building he visits. "The postal service is threatening all of them. You have no idea how long any of them will be around."
Kalish's fascination with post offices has become a kind of quirky and extreme thesis on Americana, but it's hardly unmerited. For years, the USPS hasn't just delivered our mail. It's been a gathering place for small communities while operating as part of something larger than just a collection of mailboxes and places that sell stamps.
"The post office is a foundation piece of democracy," says New York University professor Steve Hutkins, who has been studying the USPS's financial issues. "And it's being treated like a business. And it's not."
Pack Mules and Snowmobiles
It wouldn't be far-fetched to argue that the postal service has been the most important institution in our country's history. For decades, the postal service was the largest public-sector employer in the U.S. At one point in the 19th century, three-quarters of all government employees were postal workers. The Founding Fathers considered the postal service so important that they put it in the Constitution, mandating that Congress have the power to establish and regulate post offices.
In the country's early days, the postal service held together the far-flung populations of the U.S. by delivering newspapers — the only real source for information about the new nation — throughout the country. It provided a link between families and soldiers during war. It carried mail by steamboat when no roads existed. It linked California to the rest of the country by delivering mail across the Isthmus of Panama, even before the canal was built, by using boats, pack animals and canoes.
Even today, the USPS's methods to deliver our mail are just as remarkable. Want to send a letter to the Havasupai Indian Reservation at the bottom of the Grand Canyon? The postal service will take it there by mule. Need to mail a package to the Alaskan wilderness? The USPS can get it there by parachute or snowmobile. (It used sled dogs until 1963.) Have to mail something along Alabama's Magnolia River? The USPS has boats that travel from dock to dock. It has even sent mail via pneumatic tubes, missiles and hovercraft. And somehow, it's still just 44 cents to get a letter anywhere (well, 45 cents starting Jan. 22).
Today it's the country's second largest employer (after Walmart) and operates the world's largest fleet of vehicles — not to mention that it handles 40% of the entire world's mail volume.
For decades, this massive operation ran fairly smoothly, expanding along with the country and taking advantage of the new technologies brought about by railroad and flight. Mail volume increased from 50 billion pieces in 1953 to 75 billion in '66. Even so, the postal service often ran deficits. Its mandate of universal mail access almost ensured that it would go in the red. By the middle of the 20th century, the postal service was losing $600 million a year, and that's when the system starting breaking down.
On the brink of the holiday season in 1966, a sudden influx of advertising mail hit the enormous Chicago main post office (13 stories high, covering 60 acres and billed at the time as the world's largest postal facility). What happened? The mail simply stopped. Stopped. For almost three weeks, 1 million lb. of mail — 10 million pieces — barely moved. It was a confluence of employee hours' being cut, inexperienced workers' attempting to sort the mail, a postmaster position left empty for too long and improved pensions that led to a high number of retirements.
The fiasco made two things clear: the institution was vital to the nation's functionality, and there was something very wrong with the way it was being operated. Postmaster General Larry O'Brien proposed a new postal service, warning that there were cracks in the postal service's foundation and that it was close to collapse.
A few years later in New York City, a wildcat strike (one in which workers defy their union leadership) broke out, primarily over low wages. TIME called it "the Strike that Stunned the Country." At the time, postal workers were making less than sanitation workers, according to Philip Rubio, an assistant professor of history at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. "A postal worker with a family of four could qualify for food stamps," he said.
When the workers walked out, President Richard Nixon sent in National Guard and U.S. Army troops to try to sort the mail. But it didn't help. "They rapidly realized what a failure that was," Rubio said. "They just couldn't get up to speed, and the mail kept stacking up. Within eight days, the Nixon Administration signaled it was willing to negotiate."
These incidents led to the Kappel Commission, a presidential advisory group made up of corporate leaders who had, admittedly, little knowledge about mail-delivery operations. By 1970, they were at work on proposals to reform the postal service, which eventually became the Postal Reorganization Act, turning the U.S. Post Office Department into the U.S. Postal Service. It was more than just a name change. Congress essentially turned the postal service into a quasi-governmental organization — not really a business but not really part of the government either. It was being forced to run more like a corporation or a private entity, to be self-supporting, even as it was still tasked to maintain service to every home in the country.
For the next several decades, the USPS was successful by most measures, surviving the occasional disgruntled worker's becoming violent — incidents that brought the phrase going postal into our consciousness. And, of course, there were some perennially angry customers fed up with long lines at the post office. But in general, the USPS was doing well enough that Congress decided it should start prefunding its retiree accounts — for the next 75 years. So in 2006, Congress passed a law requiring an annual prepayment of retiree health benefits, to the tune of $5.5 billion a year for 10 years. Except Washington didn't see the recession coming two years later. "That act has left such a devastating legacy that it threatens to drive our nation's postal service off the rails," Rubio said.
Penny-Wise and Pound Foolish?
Enter Patrick Donahoe, the 55-year-old Pennsylvanian who became the nation's 73rd postmaster general in October of last year, perhaps the rockiest time in the history of the place. Donahoe has worked at the postal service for 36 years, first as a clerk in his hometown of Pittsburgh. He eventually worked his way up to the office that Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin once held, postmaster general. "I'm an antique," Donahoe jokes.
Speaking to TIME, Donahoe calmly laid out his plans to fix the USPS's predicament: reducing costs by $20 billion through 2014, pushing Congress to approve five-day rather than six-day delivery, laying off tens of thousands of workers. Listening to his sleepy Pennsylvania accent, one could easily forget that he's talking about gutting and radically transforming an American institution.
The Obama Administration recently extended the deadline for the post office to make its next $5.5 billion retiree payment. That deadline is Nov. 18. But even that isn't enough — even without making that payment, the USPS lost $5.1 billion in the fiscal year ending in September.
And that's where the post-office closings come in. Thousands of them. So far, it has placed 3,650 post offices on a review list for possible closure, but that's not the end of it. Donahoe says that the number could be much higher.
"We'll probably look at 15,000 post offices rather than just 3,700," Donahoe says. "Not to say that anything is guaranteed to close, but if you're spending $70,000 to operate a place that's bringing in $10,000, there have to be some other solutions."
According to Donahoe, officials are looking at two types of post offices that could be closed: rural post offices that have less than an hour's work a day and urban post offices that generate less than half a million dollars in revenue and have another post office nearby. But to some, shutting down post offices seems not only reckless but also pointless.
"Closing post offices has almost nothing to do with the financial problem that the postal service finds itself in today," says Hutkins, founder of savethepostoffice.com. "Virtually nothing. The cost of operating these post offices and the amount of money that will be saved by closing them is minuscule in the context of the budget of the postal service and the deficit that it's running."
Hutkins teaches courses at NYU on our sense of place and how traveling affects our behavior. He got interested in post offices when he heard his post office in Rhinecliff, N.Y., was going to close. So he fought back. With magnets.
He began artfully constructing refrigerator magnets with a photograph of his post office on them and then handed them out to raise awareness around town. What concerns him is not just losing an important service but also what he sees as willful destruction of something that helped build the country. And he thinks postal officials aren't being truthful about it.
By the USPS's calculations, closing all the 3,650 post offices up for review would save just $200 million, or 2% of the deficit of about $10 billion. But it would also eliminate thousands of jobs. "This is a problem I really struggle with because it seems so irrational," Hutkins says. When you get him going, he has a litany of complaints against an institution he holds dear to his heart — the way the USPS is explaining the post-office closures to communities, how it uses "emergency suspension" procedures to eventually close post offices that have been damaged by natural disasters, how it's laying off not 100,000 workers but actually more than 200,000 through what the postal service calls attrition.
When I asked Donahoe about the post-office closings and if they amounted to only about 2% of the deficit, he, surprisingly, agreed.
"It's pretty close to being accurate," he said. "If you think about it from a $20 billion perspective" — the amount the USPS is trying to cut — "it's about 1% of that. But any other business would do this, and the postal service by law is required to do better than break even."
True, any other business might do this, but that's what makes this debate so difficult. The USPS is a quasi-governmental public utility. It's a semiautonomous organization that is partly private, partly governmental.
"The rhetoric of business is a way to push the postal service toward privatization," Hutkins says. "That's ultimately what this is all about. My one theory is they're just penny-wise and pound foolish, and it may simply be that they're so locked in to the mind-set that if they can save a nickel, that's reason enough to close a post office."
In Philadelphia one of the locations slated to close is the colonial-themed B. Free Franklin post office. It doesn't fly a flag because the mail delivery there was established before the nation was founded. It uses a unique postmark featuring a franking technique created by Ben Franklin. And it's on the list of post offices slated to close, stirring up sadness and anger for those who love the historic location.
I asked Donahoe what sort of advice Franklin, the first postmaster general, might give his successor today. "I think that Benjamin would probably say, Don't be penny-wise and pound foolish."
Will Walmart Be the New Post Office?
While some post office services are migrating to small general stores, many are going into national big-box stores like Walmart and Costco and Safeway, where you can get anything from a flu shot to spark plugs to new glasses.
Some will have P.O. boxes, and they'll all sell stamps and allow people to mail packages. Many will even be open later than a traditional post office.
"They really like to make the point that you can buy stamps in 100,000 places like Walmart, but that's really not all the post office entails," says Kalish, the postal-card collector. "The reason they're doing this is so they can say, Hey, look, in your community we just saved money. But it's just devaluing that community."
Those who are trying to save the USPS often argue that Village Post Offices like the one in Malone are being incorrectly billed as direct replacements for traditional post offices. "They're designed to be as bare-boned as possible," Kalish says. "You can't request a [return] receipt. You can't weigh a package. You have to send it priority. You have to send it in this type of box. It's just not a sufficient replacement."
The services are reduced, but the real issue that is driving those concerned and obsessed with the postal service is that we're slowly watching a piece of American history evaporate — the colonial Franklin post office in Philly, post offices (some designed by Franklin D. Roosevelt himself) with incredible New Deal murals, the South's first post office built after the Civil War. All of them could be gone as those and others get turned into shops and real estate offices and Bergdorf Goodmans.
In the end, the debate about the USPS is simple: it's the privatization of a service that is supposed to be universal. But universal access doesn't exactly sync with the market's guiding hand. That's why UPS and FedEx don't ship everywhere. It's just not profitable for them. So where do they turn for last-mile delivery? To the postal service. Those private mail carriers are two of the USPS's biggest customers.
Meanwhile, as post offices are closing, as Washington is grappling with the larger financial problems of the nation and as communities are protesting, Kalish is on the road. In between taking classes and adjusting to his new life as a grad student, he's documenting the slow death of an American institution.
"This weekend I visited another 119 post offices, including 32 on the hit list," he e-mailed me last month. "Four days, 1,110 miles, 45 hours on the road. Grand total: 2,561 ... And yes, all this while doing graduate work at UPenn. But somebody's got to stand up for these communities."
|
评分
-
2
查看全部评分
-
|
狗仔卡
楼主
提升卡
变色卡
抢沙发
千斤顶
显身卡
发表于 2011-12-4 23:56
