WASHINGTON, DC — The below remarks are as prepared for delivery by Postmaster General and CEO Louis DeJoy during the open session meeting of the Postal Service Board of Governors on Nov. 10, 2022.
“Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank all our Governors for their commitment to public service and their support for our initiatives to transform the Postal Service.
As the Chairman has identified, we have accomplished a great deal since the release of the Delivering for America Plan.
The Postal Service’s new organizational structure and improving operational discipline, combined with a purposeful long-term strategy, has made the organization more confident in pursuing its transformative agenda to accomplish its public service mission— which is to deliver to 163 million addresses and cover all of its cost through selling its products and services.
Over the last two years we have stabilized our operations, evolved our products, improved our service, strengthened our balance sheet, halved our projected losses and—motivated our employees to join us in this transformation.
I am proud of our leadership team, our union leadership, and our whole organization, for their willingness to pursue the rescue operations necessary to stabilize this cherished institution and set it on a course for a brighter future.
While a lot has been accomplished, there is still much more to be done.
We still face significant losses, our carriers still drive 30-year-old vehicles, our plants and post offices still have significant deferred maintenance and are not aligned for the intended mission and our technology and business processes need to be brought into the modern era.
This leadership team is committed to moving as fast as possible to accomplish the major changes necessary to improve this condition and the financial trajectory.
While we are committed to our public service mission, we must move at the speed of private industry, if not faster, to effect this transformation before we again begin to drain our cash position.
As the Postal Reform Acts states, we must move mail and packages in an integrated network and deliver to 163 million delivery points six days a week and cover our cost.
And our mission to serve is growing. Our delivery points continue to expand with over 1.7 million new addresses added just last year, while mail volume continues to decline-by approximately 3% annually.
Albeit improving, the Postal Service currently does not have an integrated mail and package network that satisfies our service and cost objectives.
We need to configure one from within our existing infrastructure while serving the nation. It is the only successful path forward to avoid future government funding.
This means from collections to delivery, aggregated mail and packages should progress through a series of logically sequenced value added and cost-effective facilities and processes.
This is what is needed to grow our revenue, reduce our operating cost, and reduce our carbon footprint. As I have said before, this means change—a lot of it—and it takes time.
With stakeholder cooperation, this will take five years to mostly accomplish. Without stakeholder cooperation, a lot longer.
We have a plan that will serve the American people and our mail and package customers and conform to the laws and we are marching forward with it.
Unfortunately, with all that has been accomplished financially, our 2023 budget will not show the breakeven results we were striving for.
As our CFO will later show you, our budget for next year includes close to $3 billion dollars of CSRS costs and $1.5 billion of inflation costs over what we planned. Having said that, the Postal Service continues to move forward with its various cost and revenue initiatives to improve.
Financial predictability and success will come when we get the administrative correction for CSRS and we begin to bear the fruits of the changes to our network underway.
In the meantime, the leadership team and the whole organization will continue to grind out the cost and revenue improvements we can attain – while delivering improving service performance – as identified in our 10- year plan.
Concerning the coming peak season, we are well prepared with the significant increase in processing equipment and improvement in operating techniques deployed over the last two years.
We have also stabilized our workforce and require adding only 20,000 seasonal workers for this year’s peak.
For perspective, last month the postal service delivered over 567 million packages across our 163 million delivery points. Over 99% of those deliveries received 90% on time delivery service throughout the country. We accomplished this while delivering 11.3 billion pieces of mail with similar success.
Our customers and the American people should feel confident in the service we will provide for the holiday season, so use us to fill you orders, send your gifts, mail your holiday cards and letters and conduct your normal business. We will not disappoint.
Concerning other matters of interest, we continue to work our strategy for vehicle acquisitions and look forward to filing our SEIS as soon as possible.
I now want to thank all our employees for another successful engagement in the election process. I haven’t seen the final performance numbers yet, but I am sure they are going to be great.
A special thanks to Adrienne Marshall our Director of Election and Government Mail, to our Union task force and to Governor McReynolds and our Board Election Committee.
Your contributions are of great value to the Postal Service and the American people.
And finally, I would like to wish our leadership team, our Governors, our employees, our stakeholders and all Americans a safe and happy holiday season and I hope everyone receives lots of goodies through the mail.”