A surefire way to send someone running away at any gathering is to talk about the post office. Yet while it may be boring, the health of the U.S. Postal Service is important to our industry. That’s why a good portion of the Fall 2013 Envelope Manufacturers Association (EMA) meeting was devoted to postal affairs, beginning with a presentation from Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe. It’s obvious that EMA is well-respected, since he spent the time to fly to Minneapolis to make his presentation to us.

I took away several key points. Congress needs to pass a postal reform bill. Almost all of the USPS’s losses this year were due to the requirement that it prefund its retiree health care over 10 years. No other government agency, or private business for that matter, is required to do this. Change this to a 40-year payment and the USPS is almost back to a profit.

If the USPS could get two other items changed, it would become profitable and begin to pay down its debt. One would be to allow the USPS to have its own health insurance plan for its employees and use Medicare for retirees over age 65, which would save the USPS $8 billion per year. The second change would be to reform its workers’ compensation rules. The postal service has thousands of former employees receiving workers’ compensation benefits well past retirement age. These former employees should transition to the USPS pension plan. This would create additional big savings.

Seems simple, but nothing is simple when it comes to Congress and actually doing something for the mailing industry and the 8 million jobs supported by a viable Postal Service. This is where our own Steve Brocker, senior VP of sales and marketing, comes in. He gave a presentation at the meeting to explain the differences between the House and Senate postal reform bills. They aren’t that far apart, and they have bipartisan support. With luck, and the looming crisis of a postal service running out of money, maybe Congress will finally act.

Many other details were discussed at the EMA meeting, but I’ll explain those to you when I see you at that next gathering.