If what I read was accurate, apparently the post office does make money....billions of dollars a year. Yet they are required to account for 75 years of pre and post retiree medical benefits in a ten year period (unlike any other company or agency), so it appears that they have massive losses. About 25% of post 65 retirees don't even use Medicare as their primary health insurance, which adds huge expenses.

Which begs the question, how hard is it to get a postal service job? I wonder if I can get a job with the postal service after I retire (before age 60) and get those postal medical benefits for life?

This. Also even if you live in day Dallas if your items are small they will slap a stamp on it and turn it over to the post office. The post office is literally part of business plan for those companies without they wouldn’t be able to offer a lot of service.

Government employees should not be in collective bargaining units. Period.

In private sector, everybody's in it to make money and unions balance out management's inherent leverage.

In public sector, the mission is public service. You'll be taken care of in the civil service, no doubt about that but unions should not be extorting largesse from the public coffers. You want to make it big (and take the associated risks) that's what private sector is for. Probably no coincidence that the one government entity which is actually held in high regard and is considered pretty effective has no unions...

this is always a big fight in my family during the holidays, we have several postal workers and teachers in my family. After a few cocktails I start telling them that their unions have destroyed the post office and public schools, hence why they are scared of fedex and charter schools, who both do better jobs. They never have a good rebuttal, but they do call me a “heartless bastard.”

I’d love to be a fly on the wall for that, you heartless bastard.

Thanks for your opinion

The post office is profitable excluding pension expenses. The economic benefit our country receives from the post office is well worth the additional tax payer investment to cover the pensions and chump change compared to the $4 trillion annual budget. Complaining about a $5-10 billion annual expense is crazy when you spend $750 billion on the military, of which a big portion flows into other country’s economies. At least post office workers put their pension money back into the us economy.

I think it was Cher who last week went down to her local post office to volunteer to help out. If tens of thousands would just follow her lead, we would solve this problem.

The post office kicked her out. They do not accept volunteers to handle the mail.

Just the facts shared with no commentary. If you blew your coffee or beer out your nose, do not blame me.

A woman came to the cockpit and offered to volunteer by taking the leg to Charlotte. We politely declined.

not offering commentary here

Wtf, guys. Start a post office thread and take the circle jerk over there.