Change? The current economic situation has forced a lot of it onall of us over the past two years. Change is good they say, butthat depends upon whom the change affects and how it affectsus.

One change that has not received much national media attention isthe U.S. Postal Service and its need to cut delivery costs. Thepurpose is to help plug a hole in an ever-growing postaldeficit.

The USPS is in trouble – big trouble. Last year it lost $3.8billion (but really $7 billion if one counts a congressional slightof hand that delayed payments into the employee retirement fund).It is projected to lose even more next year. Like any family orbusiness struggling to make ends meet, the postal service has tomake changes. The question is how deep, how far and at what impacton its customers who depend on the service?

The postal service’s revenue trouble comes from one main source -the Internet. Technology today with e-mails that can be sent andreceived across the world in the matter of seconds has devastatedthe postal services number one revenue source – first-classmail.

These days fewer people write fewer letters. More businesses sendmore invoices electronically, thus more people pay their bills thesame way resulting in the dramatic decline in mail volume. Asolution is to increase stamp prices but doing so just forces morepeople to cyberspace.

The postal service’s expense trouble comes also from one mainsource – labor costs. At 80 percent, the USPS salary and benefitsexpenses are higher than any other governmental agency.

One of the proposed solutions is to eliminate the delivery of mailon Saturdays. Simple enough, except that actually reducing laborcosts is not part of the equation! So the idea of dropping Saturdaydelivery is somewhat of a red herring that sounds good onpaper.

Dropping Saturday seems innocuous enough except for the fact thathome-bound or senior citizens may have to wait an extra day forthat card or letter from a family member – two extra days when aMonday holiday occurs. Remember too, that here in rural Mississippialmost 50 percent of households do not have high-speed Internetaccess and depend on the mail service.

That payment you mailed to the credit card company may need to bepaid a few days earlier to insure on-time delivery to avoid latepayment penalties, especially on those 10 weeks each year thatinclude a federal holiday. On the other side of the coin, mostbusinesses depend on cash flow to operate. They may see anuncomfortable financial shift, as the natural Saturday volume movesto Monday, Tuesday and Fridays.

We feel for our friends in the postal service, for currentemployees should not have the rug pulled out from under them bybudget cutters, With many set to retire over the next five years,maybe this is the time to adjust the salaries and benefits of newand future postal workers, to something more in line with theprivate sector and other federal agencies.

Perhaps Saturday mail will vanish. But that should be the finalstep, not the first, in reinventing USPS, because cutting servicenever helps a business grow. It is a national treasure. We need tokeep it viable.