What do you think?
Rate this book
First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat
Investigating the essential role that the postal system plays in American democracy and how the corporate sector has attempted to destroy it. "With First The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat , Christopher Shaw makes a brilliant case for polishing the USPS up and letting it shine in the 21st century."— John Nichols , national affairs correspondent for The Nation and author of Coronavirus Criminals and Pandemic Accountability for Those Who Caused the Crisis " First Class is essential reading for all postal workers and for our allies who seek to defend and strengthen our public Postal Service."— Mark Dimondstein, President, American Postal Workers Union, AFL-CIO The fight over the future of the U.S. Postal Service is on. For years, corporate interests and political ideologues have pushed to remake the USPS, turning it from a public institution into a private business—and now, with mail-in voting playing a key role in local, state, and federal elections, the attacks have escalated. Leadership at the USPS has been handed over to special interests whose plan for the future includes higher postage costs, slower delivery times, and fewer post offices, policies that will inevitably weaken this invaluable public service and source of employment. Despite the general shift to digital communication, the vast majority of the American people—and small businesses—still rely heavily on the U.S. postal system, and many are rallying to defend it. First Class brings readers to the front lines of the struggle, explaining the various forces at work for and against a strong postal system, and presenting reasonable ideas for strengthening and expanding its capacity, services, and workforce. Emphasizing the essential role the USPS has played ever since Benjamin Franklin served as our first Postmaster General, author Christopher Shaw warns of the consequences for the country—and for our democracy—if we don’t win this fight. Praise for First Class : "Piece by piece, an essential national infrastructure is being dismantled without our consent. Shaw makes an eloquent case for why the post office is worth saving and why, for the sake of American democracy, it must be saved."— Steve Hutkins , founder/editor of Save the Post Office and Professor of English at New York University "The USPS is essential for a democratic American society; thank goodness we have this new book from Christopher W. Shaw explaining why."— Danny Caine , author of Save the USPS and owner of the Raven Book Store, Lawrence, KS "Shaw's excellent analysis of the Postal Service and its vital role in American Democracy couldn't be more timely. … First Class should serve as a clarion call for Americans to halt the dismantling and to, instead, preserve and enhance the institution that can bind the nation together."— Ruth Y. Goldway , Retired Chair and Commissioner, U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission, responsible for the Forever Stamps "In a time of community fracture and corporate predation, Shaw argues, a first-class post office of the future can bring communities together and offer exploitation-free banking and other services."— Robert Weissman , president of Public Citizen
- GenresPolitics
240 pages, Paperback
Published November 9, 2021
2 people are currently reading
26 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 26, 2022
A succinct account on how the post office is essential to Democracy and that privatization is not a good choice for the USPS.
August 18, 2022
First Class: The U.S. Postal Service, Democracy, and the Corporate Threat, Christopher W. Shaw, 2021, 229 pp., ISBN 9780872868779, Dewey 383.4973
An outstanding view of what is happening to the US Postal Service and why.
BUILD IT UP
Rural Free Delivery became nationwide in 1902, despite its cost. p. 16. [Other government departments are likewise not expected to fund themselves.]
From the 1850s until Parcel Post began in 1913, a price-gouging cartel monopolized package delivery, providing inadequate service at extortionate rates. In 1910, Wells Fargo paid its stockholders a 300% dividend. Parcel Post delivered 300 million parcels its first 6 months, faster and cheaper than its rivals. pp. 16-17.
Rural Free Delivery and Parcel Post were acts of empowerment for rural Americans. p. 18.
Public institutions threaten profiteering. p. 18
Eliminating the one federal agency that directly serves citizens daily would go far toward eliminating government services altogether. p. 19.
The Republican-majority Postal Board of Governors appointed Republican donor and labor-law-violating trucking-firm owner Louis DeJoy as postmaster general in 2020. DeJoy immediately degraded service. Federal judges, concerned about vote-by-mail, pushed back. pp. 23, 88, 98-99.
Airline deregulation led to mergers, frequent bankruptcies, cramped seating, fewer nonstop flights, more charges, less service, nonrefundable tickets, and no more competition. p. 28. More than 300 airports lost commercial airline service altogether. p. 29. After intercity bus deregulation, Greyhound abandoned 1,313 communities, and raised fares 25%. Greyhound acquired its only competitor. Now in North Dakota it stops only in Fargo, on the Minnesota border. p. 30. Now more than 20% of rural Americans have no intercity bus service.
The European Union in 1998 required member states to end their postal monopolies. p. 32. New Zealand deregulated post in 1998. 906 post offices were reduced to 103. Sweden ended its mail monopoly in 1993. It now has no post offices. p. 33. Rural delivery is twice a week. Government subsidy will be needed to continue postal service at all. Some rural Norwegians must now travel for hours to pick up their mail. p. 34.
A major goal of privatization is to end a successful public institution. p. 35. The United Kingdom's Royal Mail is being deliberately destroyed. It was privatized in 2013, despite opposition by two-thirds of Britons. It was sold for much less than its value. 6,750 post offices were closed. Remaining ones are government-subsidized.
Deregulation would be even worse in the U.S. because it is so vast, and urban/rural and rich/poor disparities so great. (The U.K. has about the land area of Oregon.) p. 37.
In 1859, the U.S. Post Office Department spent $1.2 million delivering mail by stagecoach to California, and earned only $34,497 for it. p. 37. Before the transcontinental telegraph and railroad, this subsidization linked the Pacific Coast to the rest of the country.
In the early 1800s, the Post Office earned most of its revenue from business-to-business letters in the Northeast, subsidizing newspaper and rural mail. Private carriers began skimming some of that lucrative business. Congress reasserted control in 1845 by reaffirming the Post Office's monopoly, and slashing postage rates. p. 38.
The Southern gentlemen governing the Confederacy hated taxes and government services as much as today's rich do. They demanded the Confederate postal service be self-sufficient. So rates were high, service was poor, soldiers and civilians had lower morale due to few letters and little reliable news. p. 40.
A private company can go out of business. Executives of Montana Power Company in 1997 sold the business, started and failed a telecom, took bankruptcy, and made off with millions of dollars. p. 41. Montanans' utility bills soared.
U.S. Government-subsidized magazine postage in the early 1900s helped "muckrakers" reach millions of readers, who clamored for reform, such as of unsanitary meatpacking, and usurious monopoly rail rates. pp. 47-48.
SHUT IT DOWN
USPS has closed half its post offices, relocated thousands of others away from foot-traffic downtowns to automobile-only outskirts, and reduced window hours. All, ostensibly, to save minuscule amounts of money--violating federal law, which requires that post offices not be closed merely because they sell fewer stamps than their operating costs. Costing customers much more than USPS saves, in driving, waiting, inconvenience, lack of timely delivery. Costing small-town businesses the walk-in traffic they rely on, for which the post office was the anchor. Chapter 4. USPS is selling its impressive, historic downtown post-office buildings to undo the work of the New Deal. These are sold for less than they're worth. Often, USPS then leases space in the building, at excessive rental prices. And, USPS will maintain the building it no longer owns, at its own expense. These are not decisions that would be made by someone who believes in public service. Much of it violates current federal law. p. 75-78, 96-97, 99. USPS removed half its collection boxes. p. 85.
FOR WHOM?
The big cut-rate mailers, big competitors, and big contractors have a seat at the postal decision-making table. The American people do not. pp. 88, Chapter 8. Valpak Coupons weighs in on every case before the Postal Regulatory Commission, demanding minimum service for everyone, for minimum rates for itself. pp. 89-91, 94-95, 97, Chapter 6. Airlines successfully lobbied Congress to prohibit USPS from operating its own airplanes. Yet airlines focus on passenger service; hauling mail is a low priority. pp. 103-104, 165. USPS ended up giving contracts worth billions of dollars to FedEx and UPS to fly the mail. p. 109. FedEx pays $0 in taxes. FedEx has been granted a monopoly on hauling air cargo between the U.S. and China. FedEx and UPS pushed for the Trans-Pacific partnership, which would outlaw any national law or regulation that has the effect of limiting corporate profit. pp. 105, 107. FedEx spent $42 million successfully lobbying Congress to prevent its workers from unionizing. pp. 105-106. UPS spent $68 million lobbying from 2010-2019, successfully killing ergonomic standards and regulations designed to reduce repetitive-stress injuries. p. 106. UPS and FedEx fight hard and successfully to keep the US Postal Service as noncompetitive as possible. p. 107. UPS is trying to prohibit USPS from providing parcel service at all. FedEx wants USPS to cease to exist. pp. 108-109. Only the US Postal Service delivers to every address. If private oligopolies again capture all the business, they can again gouge their customers and/or reduce service, with impunity. Parcel-mail revenue is necessary to keep USPS in business, now that banks and businesses no longer have to send statements and bills by first-class mail. p. 110. A business lobby got Congress to prohibit USPS from offering coin-operated photocopy machines. p. 113. Private packing stores succeeded in prohibiting USPS from offering packing service at competitive rates. p. 114.
NO MAILGRAM
Businesses have succeeded since the 1950s in prohibiting USPS from offering an electronic mailgram service: "Want to send a document? Let us electronically transmit it: We'll print it at, and deliver it from, the destination post office." This would be the biggest boon to post since paper. It would have the impact of paper, with 1-day service everywhere. It would be popular and profitable. It would lessen the need to haul paper around the country. Businesses from Western Union to FedEx have made sure it doesn't happen. pp. 114-117. The 2006 law kept USPS from offering new services, period. p. 117.
PRIVATIZED PRESORT
USPS has already largely privatized mail sorting, creating a low-wage presort industry by offering deep discounts on bulk business mail. By law, discounts cannot exceed costs USPS avoids by accepting presorted mail. In fact, discounts greatly exceed costs avoided. USPS has built the processing plants, bought and installed the equipment, and hired the staff necessary to handle peak volume. When volume is less than peak, the costs of processing the mail have already been paid. To pay Pitney Bowes or United Mailing to sort mail while the USPS processing and distribution center is operating below capacity, avoids few costs. Moreover, the mail USPS receives from the presort houses must then be resorted into carrier-route sequence along with all the rest of the mail. Presort houses are able to work cheaply only by paying less than living wages. pp. 136-137. Public assistance to low-wage, low-benefit Walmart employees costs federal, state, and local governments $6 billion per year. Employees of presort houses are in the same boat. p. 138.
GOVERNMENT LIKE A CORPORATION
If USPS management succeeds in destroying USPS's ability to process peak volume, more mail will enter the building than can leave; mail will stop moving. It happened in the main Chicago office in 1966. pp. 141-142. The 1966 Chicago mail logjam ostensibly justified a presidential commission, of corporate executives, who said, make the postal service like a corporation. Not beholden to citizens. Decisions dictated by top management, controlled by a board of directors, composed of business executives. The particular logistical problems the Chicago logjam exposed were not addressed by changing the goals and governance of the organization away from public service and toward enriching private corporations. Chapter 8. Postal governance is now expressly political: the nine governors and five commissioners, by law, have up to five and three, respectively, of the same political party. In recent decades, this has meant a Republican majority, which "post-partisan" Obama appointed too. The current (2022) board, including postmaster general and deputy, comprises 5 Republicans, 4 Democrats, and 2 independents, with the fifth Republican having been appointed by Biden. Democratic presidents get their campaign money from, so owe allegiance to, lords of Wall Street, just as Republicans do. Even the Democratic appointees have largely led cheers for using government to help enrich corporate owners. Representatives of citizens and workers have been conspicuously absent. Unelected governors are no less political than congressmen, mostly are no more knowledgeable on, nor interested in, postal issues, but are completely unaccountable to the public, and are even more responsive than Congress is, to the wants of the corporate vultures circling the postal service. pp. 145-158.
CONGRESS BOWS OUT
Congress was eager to rid itself of responsibility for postal employees. Reorganization did that. p. 149-150.
WE NEED A LOBBYIST
Ralph Nader recognizes the need for a lobbying organization on postal issues, representing the American people, as distinct from representing the financial interests of big mailers, big competitors, big suppliers. Nader /did not/ organize such a lobbying group. No one else has either. pp. 154-158.
Postal leadership serves the advocates of privatization.
FEWER PLANTS, SLOW SERVICE
USPS ended overnight local-area delivery in 2015, with plans to reduce what were once some 500 processing and distribution facilities to 135. A piece of magazine-size mail sent from El Paso to El Paso now makes a 760-mile round trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Most of the transportation is contracted out, to firms such as Postmaster General DeJoy's. p. 93, 96-98.
READ MORE:
See also savethepostoffice.com by Steve Hutkins.
Christopher W. Shaw also wrote an excellent history of banking in the United States, /Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic/, 2019. Includes the history of postal banking, and why it is still needed.
More books in City Kights' Open Media series:
https://citylights.com/open-media-ser...
An outstanding view of what is happening to the US Postal Service and why.
BUILD IT UP
Rural Free Delivery became nationwide in 1902, despite its cost. p. 16. [Other government departments are likewise not expected to fund themselves.]
From the 1850s until Parcel Post began in 1913, a price-gouging cartel monopolized package delivery, providing inadequate service at extortionate rates. In 1910, Wells Fargo paid its stockholders a 300% dividend. Parcel Post delivered 300 million parcels its first 6 months, faster and cheaper than its rivals. pp. 16-17.
Rural Free Delivery and Parcel Post were acts of empowerment for rural Americans. p. 18.
Public institutions threaten profiteering. p. 18
Eliminating the one federal agency that directly serves citizens daily would go far toward eliminating government services altogether. p. 19.
The Republican-majority Postal Board of Governors appointed Republican donor and labor-law-violating trucking-firm owner Louis DeJoy as postmaster general in 2020. DeJoy immediately degraded service. Federal judges, concerned about vote-by-mail, pushed back. pp. 23, 88, 98-99.
Airline deregulation led to mergers, frequent bankruptcies, cramped seating, fewer nonstop flights, more charges, less service, nonrefundable tickets, and no more competition. p. 28. More than 300 airports lost commercial airline service altogether. p. 29. After intercity bus deregulation, Greyhound abandoned 1,313 communities, and raised fares 25%. Greyhound acquired its only competitor. Now in North Dakota it stops only in Fargo, on the Minnesota border. p. 30. Now more than 20% of rural Americans have no intercity bus service.
The European Union in 1998 required member states to end their postal monopolies. p. 32. New Zealand deregulated post in 1998. 906 post offices were reduced to 103. Sweden ended its mail monopoly in 1993. It now has no post offices. p. 33. Rural delivery is twice a week. Government subsidy will be needed to continue postal service at all. Some rural Norwegians must now travel for hours to pick up their mail. p. 34.
A major goal of privatization is to end a successful public institution. p. 35. The United Kingdom's Royal Mail is being deliberately destroyed. It was privatized in 2013, despite opposition by two-thirds of Britons. It was sold for much less than its value. 6,750 post offices were closed. Remaining ones are government-subsidized.
Deregulation would be even worse in the U.S. because it is so vast, and urban/rural and rich/poor disparities so great. (The U.K. has about the land area of Oregon.) p. 37.
In 1859, the U.S. Post Office Department spent $1.2 million delivering mail by stagecoach to California, and earned only $34,497 for it. p. 37. Before the transcontinental telegraph and railroad, this subsidization linked the Pacific Coast to the rest of the country.
In the early 1800s, the Post Office earned most of its revenue from business-to-business letters in the Northeast, subsidizing newspaper and rural mail. Private carriers began skimming some of that lucrative business. Congress reasserted control in 1845 by reaffirming the Post Office's monopoly, and slashing postage rates. p. 38.
The Southern gentlemen governing the Confederacy hated taxes and government services as much as today's rich do. They demanded the Confederate postal service be self-sufficient. So rates were high, service was poor, soldiers and civilians had lower morale due to few letters and little reliable news. p. 40.
A private company can go out of business. Executives of Montana Power Company in 1997 sold the business, started and failed a telecom, took bankruptcy, and made off with millions of dollars. p. 41. Montanans' utility bills soared.
U.S. Government-subsidized magazine postage in the early 1900s helped "muckrakers" reach millions of readers, who clamored for reform, such as of unsanitary meatpacking, and usurious monopoly rail rates. pp. 47-48.
SHUT IT DOWN
USPS has closed half its post offices, relocated thousands of others away from foot-traffic downtowns to automobile-only outskirts, and reduced window hours. All, ostensibly, to save minuscule amounts of money--violating federal law, which requires that post offices not be closed merely because they sell fewer stamps than their operating costs. Costing customers much more than USPS saves, in driving, waiting, inconvenience, lack of timely delivery. Costing small-town businesses the walk-in traffic they rely on, for which the post office was the anchor. Chapter 4. USPS is selling its impressive, historic downtown post-office buildings to undo the work of the New Deal. These are sold for less than they're worth. Often, USPS then leases space in the building, at excessive rental prices. And, USPS will maintain the building it no longer owns, at its own expense. These are not decisions that would be made by someone who believes in public service. Much of it violates current federal law. p. 75-78, 96-97, 99. USPS removed half its collection boxes. p. 85.
FOR WHOM?
The big cut-rate mailers, big competitors, and big contractors have a seat at the postal decision-making table. The American people do not. pp. 88, Chapter 8. Valpak Coupons weighs in on every case before the Postal Regulatory Commission, demanding minimum service for everyone, for minimum rates for itself. pp. 89-91, 94-95, 97, Chapter 6. Airlines successfully lobbied Congress to prohibit USPS from operating its own airplanes. Yet airlines focus on passenger service; hauling mail is a low priority. pp. 103-104, 165. USPS ended up giving contracts worth billions of dollars to FedEx and UPS to fly the mail. p. 109. FedEx pays $0 in taxes. FedEx has been granted a monopoly on hauling air cargo between the U.S. and China. FedEx and UPS pushed for the Trans-Pacific partnership, which would outlaw any national law or regulation that has the effect of limiting corporate profit. pp. 105, 107. FedEx spent $42 million successfully lobbying Congress to prevent its workers from unionizing. pp. 105-106. UPS spent $68 million lobbying from 2010-2019, successfully killing ergonomic standards and regulations designed to reduce repetitive-stress injuries. p. 106. UPS and FedEx fight hard and successfully to keep the US Postal Service as noncompetitive as possible. p. 107. UPS is trying to prohibit USPS from providing parcel service at all. FedEx wants USPS to cease to exist. pp. 108-109. Only the US Postal Service delivers to every address. If private oligopolies again capture all the business, they can again gouge their customers and/or reduce service, with impunity. Parcel-mail revenue is necessary to keep USPS in business, now that banks and businesses no longer have to send statements and bills by first-class mail. p. 110. A business lobby got Congress to prohibit USPS from offering coin-operated photocopy machines. p. 113. Private packing stores succeeded in prohibiting USPS from offering packing service at competitive rates. p. 114.
NO MAILGRAM
Businesses have succeeded since the 1950s in prohibiting USPS from offering an electronic mailgram service: "Want to send a document? Let us electronically transmit it: We'll print it at, and deliver it from, the destination post office." This would be the biggest boon to post since paper. It would have the impact of paper, with 1-day service everywhere. It would be popular and profitable. It would lessen the need to haul paper around the country. Businesses from Western Union to FedEx have made sure it doesn't happen. pp. 114-117. The 2006 law kept USPS from offering new services, period. p. 117.
PRIVATIZED PRESORT
USPS has already largely privatized mail sorting, creating a low-wage presort industry by offering deep discounts on bulk business mail. By law, discounts cannot exceed costs USPS avoids by accepting presorted mail. In fact, discounts greatly exceed costs avoided. USPS has built the processing plants, bought and installed the equipment, and hired the staff necessary to handle peak volume. When volume is less than peak, the costs of processing the mail have already been paid. To pay Pitney Bowes or United Mailing to sort mail while the USPS processing and distribution center is operating below capacity, avoids few costs. Moreover, the mail USPS receives from the presort houses must then be resorted into carrier-route sequence along with all the rest of the mail. Presort houses are able to work cheaply only by paying less than living wages. pp. 136-137. Public assistance to low-wage, low-benefit Walmart employees costs federal, state, and local governments $6 billion per year. Employees of presort houses are in the same boat. p. 138.
GOVERNMENT LIKE A CORPORATION
If USPS management succeeds in destroying USPS's ability to process peak volume, more mail will enter the building than can leave; mail will stop moving. It happened in the main Chicago office in 1966. pp. 141-142. The 1966 Chicago mail logjam ostensibly justified a presidential commission, of corporate executives, who said, make the postal service like a corporation. Not beholden to citizens. Decisions dictated by top management, controlled by a board of directors, composed of business executives. The particular logistical problems the Chicago logjam exposed were not addressed by changing the goals and governance of the organization away from public service and toward enriching private corporations. Chapter 8. Postal governance is now expressly political: the nine governors and five commissioners, by law, have up to five and three, respectively, of the same political party. In recent decades, this has meant a Republican majority, which "post-partisan" Obama appointed too. The current (2022) board, including postmaster general and deputy, comprises 5 Republicans, 4 Democrats, and 2 independents, with the fifth Republican having been appointed by Biden. Democratic presidents get their campaign money from, so owe allegiance to, lords of Wall Street, just as Republicans do. Even the Democratic appointees have largely led cheers for using government to help enrich corporate owners. Representatives of citizens and workers have been conspicuously absent. Unelected governors are no less political than congressmen, mostly are no more knowledgeable on, nor interested in, postal issues, but are completely unaccountable to the public, and are even more responsive than Congress is, to the wants of the corporate vultures circling the postal service. pp. 145-158.
CONGRESS BOWS OUT
Congress was eager to rid itself of responsibility for postal employees. Reorganization did that. p. 149-150.
WE NEED A LOBBYIST
Ralph Nader recognizes the need for a lobbying organization on postal issues, representing the American people, as distinct from representing the financial interests of big mailers, big competitors, big suppliers. Nader /did not/ organize such a lobbying group. No one else has either. pp. 154-158.
Postal leadership serves the advocates of privatization.
FEWER PLANTS, SLOW SERVICE
USPS ended overnight local-area delivery in 2015, with plans to reduce what were once some 500 processing and distribution facilities to 135. A piece of magazine-size mail sent from El Paso to El Paso now makes a 760-mile round trip to the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Most of the transportation is contracted out, to firms such as Postmaster General DeJoy's. p. 93, 96-98.
READ MORE:
See also savethepostoffice.com by Steve Hutkins.
Christopher W. Shaw also wrote an excellent history of banking in the United States, /Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic/, 2019. Includes the history of postal banking, and why it is still needed.
More books in City Kights' Open Media series:
https://citylights.com/open-media-ser...
August 8, 2022
This book has convinced me we need to protect the U.S. Postal Service at all costs. Privatization and deregulation aren’t the answer. We risk losing a cornerstone of American democracy.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews