Word: postally
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Signs are they haven't done so. Despite a $585 million high-tech makeover for the Postal Service over the past two years, the odds have not improved that a letter will get from Boston to Miami in less time than the sender could drive it there. Performance on first-class mail delivery was at a five-year low in 1988, and complaints about late mail rose 35% last summer. For the workers, automation, heavier mail loads (especially during the Christmas rush) and outside competition have turned a once cushy job into a form of boot camp in eight-hour...
...delivered along with the mail: the past three years brought 355 attacks by workers on supervisors and 183 by bosses on workers. Last August, John Taylor, a letter carrier in Escondido, Calif., went on a rampage with a rifle, killing two colleagues, his wife and himself. Four other California postal employees committed suicide this year. In May, an irate Boston mail handler in a stolen airplane strafed the city streets with an AK-47. During a 13-hour siege in New Orleans last December, a mail handler shot his supervisor in the face, killing him, and wounded three other people...
...Postal officials say it is just a coincidence that postal employees have been involved in such mayhem, but the general public might nonetheless wonder if the mail isn't driving the mailman crazy. Psychologist Mark Haffey, who counseled workers after the Taylor killings in California, warned that "two employees identified strongly with the violence by John Taylor. They indicated that they had experienced similar impulses but had not acted on them...
Another resolution urged an escalation of confrontational activity by Black trade unions. It said workers should be prepared to occupy the Johannesburg Stock Exchange if necessary to prevent possible privatization of major state enterprises such as the postal and transport services...
Gimmicks? Of course. About $4.6 billion in deficit reduction comes from allowing the across-the-board cuts triggered by Congress's failure to adopt a ) budget in October to remain in effect through the first week of February. By declaring the Postal Service's deficit "off budget," the number crunchers "saved" $1.7 billion. A similar bit of wizardry -- prepaying a $3 billion Pentagon payroll in the 1989 fiscal year -- "reduced" the 1990 deficit by that amount. Bush was in no position to resist the sleight of hand: the legerdemain was originally concocted by his budget director, Richard Darman...