The United States Postal Service is implementing refinements to service standards and has launched new online tools and a fact sheet to help customers prepare for the changes. These adjustments will affect First-Class Mail, Periodicals, Marketing Mail, Package Services (including Bound Printed Matter, Media Mail, and Library Mail), USPS Ground Advantage, Priority Mail, and Priority Mail Express. The enhancements are estimated to save the Postal Service at least $36 billion over the next decade through reductions in transportation, mail and package processing and real estate costs. The service standards refinement will occur in two phases to ensure effective operational implementation: the first phase will begin April 1. The second phase will start July 1. These newly enhanced service standards align with the Postal Service’s operational goals and enable the organization to realize the projected savings while also: *Preserving the current service standard day ranges for First-Class Mail and USPS Ground Advantage, thus ensuring the standard First-Class Mail delivery time will not exceed 5 days. *Enhancing service predictability and reliability. *Offering 2-3-day turnaround service within regions and specific local areas. *Allowing flexibility in regional transportation schedules, which may extend service expectations by one day for mail collected at certain Post Offices, while overall improving delivery speeds for mail and packages between regions.

Dockworkers at ports from Maine to Texas began walking picket lines early Tuesday in a strike over wages and automation that could reignite inflation and cause shortages of goods if it goes on more than a few weeks. The contract between the ports and about 45,000 members of the International Longshoremen’s Association expired at midnight, and even though progress was reported in talks on Monday, the workers went on strike. The strike affecting 36 ports is the first by the union since 1977. Workers began picketing at the Port of Philadelphia shortly after midnight, walking in a circle at a rail crossing outside the port and chanting “No work without a fair contract.”

For years, major corporations, service providers and government agencies have surrendered to the temptation to cloak their cost saving efforts in a veneer of environmental virtue by claiming – without evidence – that going paperless is better for the environment. Two Sides North America (TSNA), the only industry organization to directly challenge this greenwashing, has been highly effective in stemming the tide of misleading declarations, persuading 170 major organizations to remove anti-paper environmental claims. However, as rising inflationary pressures drive cost cutting, greenwashing is once again on the rise. To help reverse this trend, TSNA has doubled down on its anti-greenwashing efforts, and with unprecedented success. So far this year, TSNA has already broken its full-year record for the number of corporations and other organizations it has persuaded to eliminate anti-paper greenwashing claims.