Word: postally
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...nation's nearly 10,000 magazines face a severe new cost squeeze that threatens to be fatal for some. Reason: huge prospective rate increases by the Postal Service, the main distribution channel for most of the publications. In setting up the service as successor to the Federal Post Office Department, whose deficits were met from Government funds, Congress required that mailing charges should cover most postal costs. The service translated this into a request for a boost in second-class material (magazines and newspapers) that would average about 150% over five years, or 30% annually...
While this astounding proposal was being debated, an interim increase of 25% was put into effect last May and was left in force after the Administration's August wage-price freeze. Now it appears that the Postal Service will be exempted from Phase II guidelines. In a press conference, Donald Rumsfeld, director of the Cost of Living Council, announced that the service need only "certify" the need for increased rates and that no controls should "prevent the full recovery of costs...
Doing Damage. While the Postal Service remains free of guidelines, publishing businesses are very much subject to Phase II restraints in what they can charge readers and advertisers. (An exemption for the communications industry was dropped from legislation passed by Congress last month.) But even if there were no Phase II inhibitions on prices, magazines would still be in jeopardy. The industry has been suffering from rising costs and declining profits in recent years, and passing along huge additional costs could only inflict more damage. To raise subscription prices radically would drive away readers; to hike advertising rates significantly might...
...Price Commission also approved a 3.8% increase in the advertising rates of Chicago's Field Enterprises, but turned down the bid of Virginia's Bassett Furniture Industries to boost prices by 1.8% on the grounds of "insufficient justification." New applicants for price increases included the U.S. Postal Service, which requested a 23.9% hike in third-class mail. All together, more than 160 applications are pending before the commission. Cost of Living Council Director Donald Rumsfeld said that a study of 64 of them showed that requests averaged 3.3%, a level that "does not in and of itself pose...
...Laws barring strikes by public employees have long been opposed by labor leaders as an infringement of the First Amendment. The court seemed unimpressed by that argument in two related cases. In the first, the court affirmed a lower court ruling against the United Federation of Postal Clerks. The union had argued that the federal no-strike rule should at least be limited to those workers shown to be essential to the Post Office's operation. The Supreme Court also refused to upset a New York State labor-law ruling. As a result, the state can still require...