More Zip for the P.O.

While the rest of the nation celebrates the holidays, the U.S. Post Office yearly undergoes its weeks of winter discontent. This year the Post Office staggered beneath a record 9 billion pieces of holiday mail, an avalanche that subsides only gradually in the last hours of the old year. By diverting $30 million from next spring's budget, hiring temporary workers earlier than usual and winning a high degree of public cooperation -- even the White House used ZIP codes on its Christmas cards -- the Post Office managed to get by with only routine delays in most places. Much worse than a couple of weeks of slower deliveries, however, is the very real danger of having a "holiday hell" all year long. The Johnson Administration fears that the ever-growing mail load imposed on an archaic postal system could seriously erode year-round service in a few years unless drastic reforms are made.

Chicago Snarls. The Post Office now handles some 80 billion pieces of mail annually, as much as all other countries combined. The increase in the past year alone was 6% -- twice the anticipated rise. As a result, in late September and early October the Post Office suffered some snarls and snafus -- particularly in Chicago, the nation's busiest relay point. Even after that crisis abated, one large direct-mail company reported a ten-day delay in sending third-class mail from Manhattan to Brooklyn.

One of the postal system's worst problems is the obsolescence of its facilities. Few major terminals have been built in the East since World War II. While existing processing centers are often well situated in relation to rail road networks, mail moves increasingly by truck and plane. Automation has swept the industrial world but so far has barely touched the Post Office, where the manual labor of 681,600 employees, now reinforced by 150,000 seasonal workers, still is the prime mover of mail. Opposition from powerful postal unions and from some lethargic officials has slowed innovation.

Subject of Ridicule. Less tangible but nonetheless real has been the department's stepchild status in Washington. Congress looks at the Post Office Department as one of the last big pork barrels. Appointments and construction schedules both remain matters of patronage. Because the Post Office charges the public for service, the chronic P.O. deficit -- estimated at $1.2 billion for the current fiscal year -- is a subject of congressional ridicule. Yet it is Congress that sets the rates, fixes wages, and writes other regulations that assure losses in most postal operations.

The Post Office is also caught in a personnel bind. The generation of workers and supervisors recruited in the hungry '30s, when civil services attracted many qualified young men, is now retiring. With a basic starting pay of $5,331 for clerks and letter carriers, the department is having difficulty signing up competent men and even more difficulty keeping them. The P.O. is 20,000 below its roster strength, and turnover has been so high that a quarter of the nonseasonal force has had less than a year's experience.

So Drowsy. Recent Postmasters General have attempted some reform. The most effective has been Lawrence O'Brien, who took office 13 months ago. O'Brien, a onetime aide to John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, continues to act as Johnson's chief congressional lobbyist, and thus has more access to the power centers at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue than most of his predecessors. He is also acutely aware of his department's inadequacies. That he has made the President aware of them is demonstrated by the fact that in the current economy drive on domestic spending programs, the P.O.'s $6.2 billion budget is escaping with little damage.

Congress agreed this year to liberalize parcel-post regulations so as to improve the Post Office's competitive position vis-a-vis private carriers. The department's old office of research and development -- so drowsy that it failed to spend its small appropriation -- has been upgraded to bureau status. Starting next week, commercial bulk mailers will be required to presort and ZIP-code their material. The department has begun to plan new terminals that will mesh with modern transportation lines and to order data-processing machines for 75 of the biggest regional offices.

Before these reforms take hold, the prospect is for more snarls and, in the coming year, higher postal rates. Meanwhile, at the department's headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue, one improvement is already evident. The lights that used to go out soon after 5 p.m. now burn late, January through December, holiday season or no.

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