Blue-Letter Day

While neither rain nor snow can stop the U.S. mail, neither management consultants nor computers seem able to speed letters on their way. James Rademacher, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, complains that a cost-cutting job freeze has reduced the number of letter carriers in the past year by about 10,000. The reorganized Postal Service relied greatly on computerization to improve service, but the result has been slower deliveries and angrier postmen.

With fewer shoulders hefting a bigger load of mail, the spirit and flesh have grown weaker. Rademacher plans to testify to the Senate this week that morale is down and mortality is up among his union members. An ongoing national survey by the union that has so far covered 110 cities shows that mailmen have suffered 300 heart attacks and 24 deaths on the job since last April--three times the comparable statistics for those cities in the previous year.

And the service? Well, Rademacher claims that a letter sent to him by Postmaster General E.T. Klassen from twelve blocks away in Washington, D.C., took six days to arrive. Rademacher now takes no chances. "When I have something for the Postmaster General," he says, "I send it by hand."

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