The Postal Service wants to cut approximately three billion in costs to avoid bankruptcy. The Postal Service plans on doing this by eliminating one day delivery of first class mail, and it plans on closing about half of its mail processing centers. The postal service intends to send its plans to the Postal Regulatory Commission for review, and the new delivery times could begin as early as next spring. Once these changes take place, first class mail could take two to three days to be delivered, 28,000 jobs could be cut, and several hundred rural mail centers could be closed.

The United States Postal Service states that this plan will save up to about three billion dollars by the year 2015. However, in order to return to profitability, the postal service must reduce its operating costs by $20 billion dollars by 2015. Back in September, the Postal Service stated that it would be examining 252 out 487 mail centers to see which ones could be shut down to reduce costs.

In several news reports, David Williams says, “The U.S. Postal Service must reduce its operating costs by $20 billion by 2015 in order to return to profitability.” David Williams is the network operations vice president of the postal service, and he goes on to say, “the proposed changes to service standards will allow for significant consolidation of the postal network in terms of facilities, processing equipment, vehicles, and employee workforce and will generate projected net annual savings of approximately $2.1 billion.” David Williams is the network operations vice president of the postal service.

The U.S. Postal Service has to make these drastic changes in its service because digital communication has replaced sending letters and care packages. Since the institution of email, instant messaging, texting, and other ways of networking, the Postal Service has been overwhelmed with budget problems. The only way it can think to fix the problem is to cut all services that are not lucrative. In other words, it has to cut all services that are not bringing in any profit.

Another problem the service is facing is the postal workers unions that won’t let the government agency cut 28,000 jobs. Closing that many facilities will put too many people out of work and the workers union won’t allow it. The only thing we as Americans can do is wait to see what the Postal Regulatory Commission says to the proposed changes.