The Postal Service and two of its major unions have agreed to extend separate labor contract negotiations until January 20, 2012. Contracts with the National Association of Letter Carriers and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union expired at midnight Sunday, November 20, 2011.

The extension will allow the parties to continue to work on the important economic, health care, workplace, and other contractual issues being discussed. The NALC represents more than 195,000 employees who work as letter carriers delivering mail primarily in urban areas. The NPMHU represents more than 46,000 employees who work in mail processing plants and post offices.

Respectively, wages and benefits for NALC- and NPMHU-represented employees exceeded $15.7 billion and $3.5 billion last year. Should negotiations fail, a process begins which could result in a third party determining contract terms and work rules for more than 240,000 employees.

Unlike the private sector, when negotiations come to an impasse, postal employees are not permitted to strike as Congress has designated the Postal Service as an essential service to the nation. An arbitrator determines the final outcome and is not legally required to consider the Postal Service’s financial obligations when rendering a decision.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses, and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to fund its operations.

With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has an annual revenue of more than $67 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 29th in the 2010 Fortune 500.

Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency six consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

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Holly branches and pine boughs are not the only green signs of the holiday season; mailers and shippers can also count on the Postal Service to help them go green, save green, and be green this time of year.

“The Postal Service is one of the greenest mailing and shipping companies in the world,” said Thomas G. Day, chief sustainability officer. “We offer more than a half-billion eco-friendly mailing and shipping supplies, free package pickup, and holiday cards printed on recycled paper available in 2,000 Post Offices, and the Postal Service is leading the adoption of green practices by engaging our employees, customers, and suppliers.”

The Postal Service offers customers options to help reduce their carbon footprints, just as it consistently seeks ways to reduce its own environmental impact.

“We have a ‘fleet of feet’ delivering mail the greenest way possible, by walking,” Day added. “Nearly 9,000 of our carriers will be delivering holiday mail on foot this season. And we also have nearly 80,000 ‘park and loop’ routes, where carriers will drive vehicles from the Post Office to neighborhoods and then deliver those holiday packages and cards on foot.”

Green Packaging
The Postal Service has established rigorous sustainable green packaging standards for its Priority Mail and Express Mail supplies and a majority of ReadyPost boxes, envelopes, and labels.

By buying packaging made with recycled content, USPS helps sustain green jobs in America, as it reduces greenhouse gas emissions to the environment. Priority Mail and Express Mail supplies are free to customers and can be delivered at no charge.

Green Postage
Tens of billions of postage products, including stamps, stamped envelopes, and postal cards are made with post-consumer recycled content, providing an environmentally responsible use for America’s waste paper. Festive holiday stamps can add just the right touch to seasonal greeting cards, and a large assortment of holiday stamps and customized holiday cards are available.

Green Shipping
Customers can save fuel this Yule by ordering free shipping supplies, print shipping labels, and pay for postage, all from the comfort of home or office. The Postal Service will pick up packages free the next business day and send them on their merry way to cheer loved ones wherever they are. Skip the trip, and save time, money, and fuel this holiday season.

Green Delivery
The Postal Service will deliver 16.5 billion cards, letters, and packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve by using the largest civilian fleet in the world containg 215,000 vehicles.

Among them are a range of alternative fuel-capable vehicles, including three-wheeled electric vehicles with zero gas emissions that operate at a cost of only 2 cents a mile, as well as vehicles that can operate on compressed natural gas, propane, ethanol, and fuel cell. There also will be 30 large all-electric trucks delivering holiday mail in Manhattan.

Recycling
The Postal Service has made recycling a priority. Secure recycle bins in more than 10,000 Post Office lobbies make it easy for customers to read, respond and recycle their PO Box mail during the holidays and helped customers divert approximately 56,000 tons of paper from landfills last year.

The Postal Service recycled nearly 225,000 tons of paper, plastics and other waste in 2010, which avoided more than 700,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Postal Service has won more than 75 environmental awards, including 40 White House Closing the Circle, 10 Environmental Protection Agency WasteWise Partner of the Year, Climate Action Champion, Direct Marketing Association Green Echo, Postal Technology International Environmental Achievement, and Climate Registry Gold Status.

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In a presentation delivered today at a media roundtable organized by the International Post Corporation during the COP 17 climate conference in Durban, South Africa, U.S. Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe heralded the U.S. Postal Service’s sustainability successes, making the business case to go green.

“Leaner, greener, faster and smarter is our sustainability call to action,” said Donahoe. “It’s environmentally responsible, as well as a very good business decision.” The Postal Service’s vision is to be a sustainability leader by creating a culture of conservation throughout the Postal Service and leading the adoption of sustainable business practices by employees, customers, suppliers, the mailing industry and U.S. federal government peers.

Donahoe talked about the Postal Service’s 400 Lean Green Teams, comprised of cross-functional postal employees who collaborate to identify and implement low- and no-cost ways to conserve natural resources, purchase fewer consumable products and reduce costs.

“Lean Green Teams have helped the Postal Service reduce energy, water and petroleum-fuel use, and solid waste to landfills, helping the Postal Service save more than $5 million in fiscal year (FY) 2010.

Lean Green Teams also helped recycle more than 222,000 tons of material — an increase of nearly 8,000 tons over the prior year — which generated $13 million in revenue and saved more than $9 million in landfill fees,” said Donahoe. “This is a powerful story and makes the business case for sustainability,” he added.

The Postal Service works to achieve aggressive sustainability performance goals, including:

• Reducing facility energy use 30 percent by 2015
• Reducing vehicle petroleum use 20 percent by 2015
• Increasing vehicle alternative fuel use 10 percent each year through 2015
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2020

The agency’s FY 2010 Annual Sustainability Report, released in June 2011, demonstrated the Postal Service is meeting or exceeding a number of its sustainability goals — including a 133-percent increase in alternative fuel use, a 33-percent reduction of supplies purchases and a nearly 30-percent reduction in facility energy use.

Facility energy use reductions helped yield a cost avoidance of more than $400 million since FY 2007. In FY 2011, the Postal Service, the first U.S. federal agency to measure and publicly record its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, reported an 8-percent reduction in its GHG emissions from an FY 2008 baseline, an achievement for which the agency was awarded the Climate Registry’s Gold Status Recognition, the first for any U.S. company or federal agency.

The 2011 IPC Postal Sector Sustainability Report was debuted and discussed at a roundtable. The report contains member posts’ sustainability business cases, and demonstrates how global postal sector members continue to make great strides in cutting the industry’s carbon emissions, making the business case for going green.

The IPC is a cooperative association of the U.S. Postal Service and 23 other postal agencies in North America, Europe and the Pacific, whose mission is to develop and improve international postal services.

The Postal Service has won more than 75 environmental awards, including 40 White House Closing the Circle, 10 Environmental Protection Agency WasteWise Partner of the Year, Climate Action Champion, Direct Marketing Association Green Echo, Postal Technology International Environmental Achievement and Climate Registry Gold Status.

The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

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The U.S. Postal Service have announced it will move forward with its proposal to change service standards. This action is being taken in response to on-going financial challenges caused by the dramatic and continual decline in First-Class Mail volume and the resulting revenue loss.

“The U.S. Postal Service must reduce its operating costs by $20 billion by 2015 in order to return to profitability,” said David Williams, vice president, Network Operations. “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.”

This is part of the overall savings expected from the network optimization initiative, which is projected to save up to $3 billion by 2015. The size of the existing Postal Service network is dictated by the current overnight transit time in existing service standards.

The Postal Service is proposing, through the rule making process, to move First-Class Mail to a 2-3 day standard for contiguous U.S. destinations; however, there would be an opportunity for mailers who properly prepare and enter mail at the destination processing facility prior to the day’s critical entry time to have their mail delivered the following delivery day.

On Sept. 15, the Postal Service announced it would begin studying 252 out of 487 mail processing facilities for possible closure. At that time, the Postal Service also announced it would be considering changes to service standards in an Advance Notice of Proposed Rule making published in the Federal Register.

The Advance Notice filing was a formal effort to gather input from the public early in the process to ensure their views can be factored into the service change proposal. The Postal Service will send to the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) a request for an advisory opinion regarding service standard changes associated with a significant rationalization of its mail processing network.

Shortly thereafter, the Postal Service will publish a notice in the Federal Register soliciting public comment on the specific proposed changes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 151 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

With nearly 32,000 Postal Service-managed retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 35th in the 2011 Fortune 500.

Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency six consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

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What do the U.S. Postal Service and Santa Claus have in common? Neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom of night will keep them from delivering dreams this holiday season. December 1 marked the start of the Postal Service’s annual “Letters to Santa” program, a campaign that’s helped fulfill the holiday wishes of children and their families for nearly a century.

“Letters to Santa” is an annual letter-writing program through which members of the public and charitable organizations respond to children’s letters addressed to Santa Claus, the North Pole and other seasonal characters. To announce that the letter adoption period has begun, a ceremony was held today at New York City’s Operation Santa command center at the iconic James A. Farley building with a special appearance by Santa Claus.

“We are delighted to once again kick off the holiday mailing season with the start of our annual ‘Letters to Santa program’,” said Postmaster General Patrick R. Donahoe. “The Postal Service is gearing up for a huge mail delivery to the North Pole to help Santa and his elves get ready for the big day.”

The Postal Service expects to deliver more than 16.5 billion cards, letters and packages between now andNew Years Eve. This year, a postmark of Santa in his sleigh being pulled by six reindeer will appear in the upper right-hand corner of holiday cards and letters.

“While Santa’s been making wishes come true a bit longer than the Postal Service, for more than two centuries he’s relied almost exclusively on postal employees to bring him letters from girls and boys around the country and to help him deliver their presents,” Donahoe said. “For nearly 100 years, the ‘Letters to Santa’ program has made dreams come true for those in need.

This is a time to celebrate how postal employees, charitable organizations, and businesses have made a difference in the lives of children coast to coast.” To learn more about the USPS “Letter to Santa” program or to view a list of participating Post Offices, visit usps.com/2011holidaynews

Visit USPS on Facebook at www.facebook.com/usps to learn how USPS can help simplify your holiday shipping needs. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

A self-supporting government enterprise, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that reaches every address in the nation, 150 million residences, businesses and Post Office Boxes. The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses, and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

With 32,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, usps.com, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than $65 billion and delivers nearly 40 percent of the world’s mail. If it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 29th in the 2010 Fortune 500.

Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines ranked the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity. The Postal Service has been named the Most Trusted Government Agency six consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute.

The article Santa Claus Children’s Letters to be Delivered by US Postal Service appeared first on The Toonari Post - News, Powered by the People!.