The US Postal Service is preparing to announce its decision to stop delivering first-class mail on Saturdays in a last-ditch effort to save itself from total ruin.
According to CBS News, a 150-year-old tradition will end this summer when postal workers stop delivering most letters, bills, and catalogs to non-paperless homes across America.
Packages, medicine, and letters marked priority or express will continue to be delivered on Weekends.
"The American public understands the financial challenges of the Postal Service and supports these steps as a responsible and reasonable approach to improving our financial situation," said postmaster general Patrick R. Donahoe in a prepared statement. "The Postal Service has a responsibility to take the steps necessary to return to long-term financial stability and ensure the continued affordability of the U.S. Mail."
The USPS, which is still hemorrhaging as much as $25 million a day despite having already cut its workforce by 35 percent, is expected to save some $2 billion a year by eliminating Saturday mail deliveries.
However, according to David Walker, a member of a postal reform panel, the Postal Service "won't come close" to solving its financial problems with this change. "It's got to look at more fundamental changes in its infrastructure, its compensation costs, its retirement obligations, and also what it does and who does its business," he told CBS News.
By law, the USPS needs congressional approval to reduce its delivery schedule, but Postal Service attorneys don't expect Washington to put up much of a fight considering the President himself has already expressed support for the cut.
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