Postal Financial Reform and Beyond
Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
Steve Musacco
The financial situation of the U.S. Postal Service has reached critical mass, and it has taken dramatic actions in the past several months to downsize its operations and business expenses. Unfortunately, the USPS has taken no action to deal with a postal culture that generates toxic workplace environments and an increased potential for workplace violence.
The U.S. mailing industry is a $900 billion enterprise, employing about 3 million workers. The USPS is the third-largest employer in the country, behind Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense. It employs about 700,000 workers and has a vast network of more than 400 mail processing plants and 37,000 post offices. The Postal Service had a $5.1 billion debt in fiscal year 2007 and a $2.8 billion deficit in fiscal year 2008. Further, a $6 billion deficit is projected for both 2009 and 2010 unless congressional action is taken to reform how health benefits of retired postal employees are funded over time.
To address the financial condition of the USPS, last month the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia held a hearing on the financial stability of the U.S. Postal Service. Additionally, earlier last month the Postal Service announced new downsizing measures and shortly thereafter voluntary early retirement opportunities for 150,000 employees. The poor financial condition of the Postal Service, reflective of this country’s deep recession, and the new organizational changes bring added stress to its employees.
Besides congressional hearings on the financial condition of the Postal Service, Congress needs to look at reforming the postal culture. More specifically, Congress needs to address and enact legislation to change the authoritarian, paramilitary, postal culture. At least two former USPS postmasters general used these exact words to describe the postal culture, the last being Marvin Runyon (1992-1998). Unfortunately, instead of the postal culture improving post-Runyon, it has progressively worsened. Besides attention to the financial “bottom line,” the Postal Service and Congress need to pay careful attention to how postal employees are treated in the workplace.
If you Google “going postal as a myth,” there are still archived articles from the national media emphasizing the major conclusions and findings of the United States Postal Service Commission on a Safe and Secure Workplace in 2000 (hereafter referred to as the Califano report) and the Centers for Disease Control report of 1994. This is especially true with regard to the Califano report. The national media reacted to its findings uncritically, especially national newspapers and magazines.
As a result of my extensive examination, it became very clear that the arguments used by the CDC and the Califano report to frame the notion of “going postal” as a myth and a bad rap are not supported by the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. The observation or conclusion that Postal Service work environments have been a trigger or a factor involved in some of its employee-directed homicides, and that the occurrence of these types of homicides are far more frequent in the Postal Service compared with other organizations, is supported by the record, however.
The core values embedded in the Postal Service’s organizational culture and its alignment to its organizational structure have engendered a paramilitary, authoritarian postal culture. It is a culture that promotes unilateral, top-down approaches to manage its employees and their workload. This bottom-line mentality is highly visible in postal facilities where autocratic management styles are too often reflected by use of fear, harassment, bullying or intimidation to achieve service, financial and productivity goals. These management styles are frequently rewarded by promotions, annual merit raises or cash awards for achievement of corporate goals.
Consequences of the unilateral, top-down approaches employed by the Postal Service include widespread anger, stress, and turmoil for both craft and management employees alike. Because of the concerted effort by the Postal Service’s Board of Governors to contract out core postal operations, these tensions, stresses and turmoil have escalated in the last several years.
Also, since the top-down management approaches are systemic in the Postal Service, many postal facilities have toxic work environments and can be a catalyst or trigger for serious acts of workplace violence, including homicide and suicide.
In the book, “Beyond Going Postal,” requirements and recommendations were provided to the Postal Service to enable the shift from an unhealthy organization to a healthy one. These requirements and recommendations included a change in leadership style, organizational design, reward and performance evaluation systems, selection and development and change management.
Additional requirements were legislative intervention by the Congress, including enactment of laws for the prevention of bullying in the workplace and accompanying sanctions. Without congressional action, the Postal Service will unlikely make the necessary shift from an unhealthy organization to one that is healthy.
Financial viability is critical to an organization’s success and its bottom line. Also, important to an organization’s success is how its employees are treated. Postal employees, regardless of rank or position, deserve a postal culture in which the core values of respect, fairness and validation of dignity are not empty slogans, but instead are the reality of organizational life.