Delivering for America, released today by USPS management, lays out a strategy for making the postal service more modern and financially sustainable, a worthy goal. The plan contains some positive attributes but also includes proposals that should be of concern to postal workers and customers.

On the plus side, this 10-year plan recognizes that the United States Postal Service’s strength resides in the people who provide the service. It calls for more career opportunities for postal workers and a greater emphasis on recruitment and retention. USPS senior managers should be given credit for already acting on those recommendations by hiring 11,000 additional career workers to staff sorting facilities at the start of 2021 and adding 1,700 more this month.

The plan recognizes that six-day and increasingly seven-day delivery is key to the USPS’ future growth. It also calls for the creation of more community-based services to provide fast local delivery and for equipping the neighborhood post office to serve as the local hub for government at all levels.

This plan is an acknowledgement that many USPS customer service offerings are outdated. In response, Delivering for America includes long overdue proposals for upgrading local post offices and enhancing products and services. The plan calls for investing $4 billion in improving the lobbies of local post offices, and adding shipping consultants for small businesses. Postal workers and our customers would welcome all these enhancements.

The plan also calls for opening 46 new annexes to handle the ever-increasing number of packages the USPS processes. This too is a positive step.

We also unite with management’s appeal to Congress to take the long overdue step of addressing the 2006 prefunding mandate and other measures to stabilize postal finances.

But we have deep concerns about other elements of the plan that, if implemented, would fail to meet its stated goal of providing ‘service excellence.’ The APWU will stand united with the people of the country to ensure they receive the ‘prompt, reliable and efficient’ service that the law requires.

Any proposals that would either slow the mail, reduce access to post offices, or further pursue the failed strategy of plant consolidation will need to be addressed. The APWU will proactively engage with USPS’s managers, the Postal Regulatory Commission, leaders in Congress and the public to address these issues.

We welcome the opportunity this plan affords to start a discussion about the future of the USPS. Over the coming months, we will work with management, the PRC, Congress and others to put into place the elements of the plan we support and to address the areas where we disagree. We will continue to advocate for expanded and enhanced services, particularly postal financial services.

We urge the Postal Service and Congress to move swiftly to address the continuing crisis of poor service performance and to pass much-needed postal reform legislation and financial relief.

There is strong bipartisan support for relief from the burdensome and unnecessary financial constraints of the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. There also is strong support on Capitol Hill for other financial reforms that would benefit the postal service.

Every effort should be made to pass postal reform and stabilize the USPS’ finances so that we can truly plan for a strong and secure future for this vital service.