Early last week I penned a letter that was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Then last Friday, someone responded to my letter. Both postings are below.

My mail experience shows less-frequent delivery is fine LOREN BERG, Rio Verde, Ariz. While I agree with a Dec. 30 letter writer that the U.S. Postal Service needs changes and agree that the 75-year funding of retirees’ health benefits is more than a little bizarre, much more basic changes need to be addressed. For one, I think that six-day-a-week residential mail delivery borders on the obscene. With more of us receiving increasing amounts of our critical communication in some electronic format, let’s face it: The volume of regular mail has dropped substantially, and there is nothing in the wind that indicates that this trend will not continue.

A change to twice-a-week residential mail delivery would work no hardship on us as recipients but would have a major impact on the cost of our mail delivery. As an example, five months each year when we are in Minnesota we get our mail once a week — a service we pay additional amounts for. Our mail is accumulated in Arizona and each Wednesday is sent to our address in Minnesota, generally arriving on Friday or Saturday. No catastrophe occurs because it is not delivered every day.

MAIL DELIVERY Here’s what’s at core of possible service cuts. So the writer of the Jan. 2 Letter of the Day (“My mail experience shows less-frequent delivery is fine”) thinks that “six-day-a-week residential mail delivery borders on the obscene.” I’ll tell you what I think is obscene: the relentless Republican assault on middle-class, blue-collar, unionized postal employees whose wages and benefits set the benchmark for the rest of us working fools. That’s what it’s all about.

Here’s my idea: Every veteran returning after service to his country should be guaranteed a job with the Post Office. I don’t care if mail delivery is seven days a week and twice on Sundays. TIM WIRTH, Lakeland

While I fully support any program that assists our returning veterans in finding employment I do not think the answer is to pack them into an already bloated Post Office. First, what benefit is there to either the returning veteran or the American public to create jobs for work that does not need to done – come on – twice on Sunday! Think about it; what job satisfaction and feeling of worth would be created by putting people – veterans or others – in jobs created only to employee more people and not to generate anything meaningful or worthwhile? A better idea might be to “Right Size” the Post Office, and yes reducing the frequency of residential delivery might be one of those options, and in doing that provide even better paying jobs rather than spreading a pie that is shrinking over even more people. To Mr. Wirth’s point that Post Office wages and benefits tend to set the bar for other employment, would this not work to the benefit of others, not only Post Office employees.

Is reducing the frequency of residential mail delivery the only option? Of course not, but it is certainly one that probably should be considered. And yes, the aforementioned funding of 75 years of retirees’ health benefits is another. The whole point is that we need to look at all of the options to increase the efficiency of the Post Office operation to stem the ongoing losses and better serve the Post Office’s customers – the American public.