Extensions of Remarks

April 26, 1990 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS 8535 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS BENEFITS OF AUTOMATION First-class mail delivery performance was "The mail is not coming in here so we ELUDE POSTAL SERVICE at a five-year low last year, and complaints have to slow down," to avoid looking idle, about late mail rose last summer by 35 per said C. J. Roux, a postal clerk. "We don't cent, despite a sluggish 1 percent growth in want to work ourselves out of a job." HON. NEWT GINGRICH mall volume. The transfer infuriated some longtime OF GEORGIA Automation was to be the service's hope employees, who had thought that they IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES for a turnaround. But efforts to automate would be protected in desirable jobs because have been plagued by poor management and of their seniority. Thursday, April 26, 1990 planning, costly changes of direction, inter "They shuffled me away like an old piece Mr. GINGRICH. Mr. Speaker, as we look at nal scandal and an inability to achieve the of furniture," said Alvin Coulon, a 27-year the Postal Service's proposals to raise rates paramount goal of moving the mall with veteran of the post office and one of those and cut services, I would encourage my col fewer people. transferred to the midnight shift in New Or With 822 new sorting machines like the leans. "No body knew nothing" about the leagues to read the attached article from the one in New Orleans installed across the Washington Post on the problems of innova change. "Nobody can do nothing about it," country in the last two years, the post of he said. tion. It has become rather obvious that auto fice's total work force declined by only 1.1 With more mall being sorted in processing mation alone is not the answer. Postal offi percent. In the area most affected by auto offices, the goal across the country is to cials will have to come up with innovative mation, mail processing, the worker pool ac have letter carriers spend more time on the methods of incorporating automation and the tually increased by 5,131 people, according street, with larger quantities to carry. But retraining of their employees. to postal figures. some carriers are not happy about that pos The article follows: Work-force reductions are complicated by sibility and they, too, admit to slowing their union contracts that provide postal workers [From the Washington Post, Nov. 26, 19891 work pace. with wages and benefits worth about $20 an "They knew the future," Joseph Williams, BENEFITS OF AUTOMATION ELUDE POSTAL hour and contain strict work and assign manager of the Carrollton post office in a SERVICE ment rules, strong seniority rights, restric section of New Orleans said of his disgrun <By Dana Priest and Judith Havemann> tions on the use of part-time employees and tled carriers. At the giant mall-processing center in New bans on layoffs. Although automation was planned for Orleans, 22 clerks sit in front of pigeon The New Orleans post office is one exam years, some offices were caught off-guard holes, the kind used 214 years ago by Benja ple of how poor planning from above and when it finally arrived. For example, last min Franklin's office, slowly examining labor restrictions from below can play havoc fall a planned upgrade of some of the sort each letter before placing it into its proper, with efforts to cut costs. ing machines in the main D.C. processing numbered niche. Within an eight-month period, the facility center, which serves Washington, as well as Mail handlers unload letter trays from received seven new 60-foot-long letter-sort Montgomery and Prince George's counties, trucks, wheeling them inside where others ing machines, had two others taken away caused a drop in on-time deliveries from 93 haul, lift, toss and sort mail all night and and another four already in the plant retro to 79 percent because postal managers were half the day. fitted with new equipment. To make room, unable to adjust to the temporary shutdown concrete walls were knocked down overnight of some equipment. In the middle of this scene from the 1950s and some of the new equipment was used to is an island of innovation, the U.S. Postal hold down still-drying floor tile. The standard is 95 percent on-time arrival. Service's link to the 21st century: new, elec Despite drastic decreases in the volume of The most-advanced machine in the cur tronic sorting machines that flush 28,000 mail handled, the service had to hire addi rent automation plan is called a "multi-line letters an hour past blinking electronic eyes tional employees: technicians to run the optical character reader." nts electronic eye and into one of 100 steel traps, each repre new machines. Postal managers were unable can read a five- or nine-digit typed or print senting a carrier's route. to lay off people whose jobs were made re ed Zip code and up to four lines of address. But the sorted letters must be picked up dundant by technology. Instead, they trans The machine translates the address or Zip again by human clerks and delivered by ferred employees to areas where there was code into a bar code symbol, which it sprays human carriers. In the course of being more work and adjusted work hours to on the envelope, then sorts to a particular sorted and delivered, a typical letter is better coincide with the new mall flow. tray that represents a carrier's route. Bar touched by 14 humans' hands. The changes affected workers' personal code machines read and sort envelopes that Decades after its first stab at modernizing, lives and depressed morale. "You're talking contain the codes. the Postal Service-a $41 billion-a-year gov upheaval," said postmaster Charles K. Officials point to San Diego as a model of ernment owned corporation with more em Kernan, general manager of the New Orle the way automation should work. The suc ployees than the U.S. Army-has undergone ans division. cess there is due largely to the innovative the most expensive, traumatic technological About 550 processing clerks on the late work of local managers who devised their change in its history. The change has not night shift downtown were told to begin own strategy for using the machines and, yet been palpably beneficial. work at midnight instead of 10 p.m. This more important, figured out how to stop the Having poured $526 million into new sort meant a 10 percent pay cut because more of workers from feeling threatened by the ing machines and other technology in the the shift occurred in daylight hours. The change. past 12 months, the Postal Services faces a change also made it impossible for many "It's like a rock in the water," said San $1.6 billion loss this year, declining business parents to get home in time to send their Diego division postmaster and general man growth, lagging worker productivity and children to school. ager Margaret Sellers. "You start out with a raids on its most lucrative business by pri Wayne Cola, who works the letter-sorting ripple, if you don't do planning, you get a vate competitors. machine, said his three children now must tidal wave." "We've got to capture the savings dollar spend the night with his mother-in-law be First, Sellers created an automation team, for-dollar that these machines represent or cause he gets off later in the morning. "The with five subcommittees to manage the we can kiss the Postal Service as we know it kids don't like it," he said. change and to sell it to employees. When goodbye," Robert Setrakian, chairman of Postal officials in New Orleans also cen she received the first sorting machine, she the Postal Board of Governors told post tralized mail processing so they would have put it on display at a post office open house masters in September. more mail to feed into the machines. As a and then persuaded union leaders to hold Meantime, U.S. postal patrons can get result, 22 of the 34 manual clerks in a meetings and to walk the workroom floor ready to kiss the 25-cent stamp goodbye. As nearby suburb were forced into the down explaining to workers what the machines Postal Service costs continue to rise nearly town processing center because there was no could and could not do. 1¥2 times as fast as inflation, the board is work for them elsewhere. They were put in "Our reactton at first was against it," said prepared to raise postage rates again in one comer of the facility where they spend postal clerk Gary Pattee, an eight-year vet 1991, probably to 30 cents for a first-class the day under-employed, sorting letters by eran. "It was hard to sell it to us because we letter. hand. thought we were out of here." e This "bullet" symbol identifies statements or insertions which are not spoken by a Member of the Senate on the floor. Matter set in this typeface indicates words inserted or appended, rather than spoken, by a Member of the House on the floor. 8536 EXTENSIONS OF REMARKS April 26, 1990 Instead, Pattee, like other workers, was Postmaster General Anthony M. Frank President Gorbachev is overplaying his encouraged to learn how to operate the me said the Voss scandal set the agency back 18 hand. He doesn't want to negotiate with the chanical letter-sorting machines, and he was months in its effort to automate.

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