WHAT HAPPENED the other day in the lobby of a Michigan Avenue building couldn`t have been rigged, but it sure looked that way.
Paul N. Carlin, the recently appointed U.S. postmaster general, didn`t know in advance a photographer would ask him to stand by the mailbox in the lobby to have his photo taken. As he posed, he pointed to the mail pick-up times and spoke of the importance of on-time service.
If the pick-up is early, customers may miss it; if it is late, the mail will be late in each step from then on, and overnight deliveries may not make it, he said.
Just then, seven minutes before one of the pick-up times, mail carrier Ali Hasan approached the mailbox.
”Are you going to take the mail now?” Hasan was asked. Oh no, he replied, it might inconvenience some customers if he made an early pick-up. He always tried to be right on time, he said with a grin.
”Do you know who you`re talking to?” Carlin asked. ”No, sir,” Hasan said, before being introduced to his boss and chatting briefly.
As they parted, Hasan said good naturedly, ”You do your job, and I`ll do mine.”
CARLIN`S JOB isn`t an easy one. Last Tuesday, he took over from retiring William F. Bolger as top man in the United States Postal Service. The organization has annual revenues of $25 billion, big enough to be No. 12 in the Fortune 500 if it were a corporation.
Still, the 53-year-old former head of the Postal Service`s central region is confident and enthusiastic about his new task. Carlin`s performance during his five years in the 13-state region, based in Chicago, suggests he is capable of taking on the whole country.
”Under Mr. Carlin`s leadership, the central region has become a model for the entire Postal Service,” said the service`s board chairman, John R. McKean, when the board selected Carlin as postmaster general in November.
THE NUMBERS seem to support this. While total operating expenses grew each year Carlin was here, revenues grew faster. The surplus of revenue over expenditures increased more than fivefold, from less than $110 million in fiscal 1980 to more than $580 million in 1984. (The service`s fiscal year ends Sept. 30.)
In the same period, the volume of mail grew 17 percent, while the number of Carlin`s employees grew less than 2 percent.
Despite this, service performance, measured by the percentage of mail that reaches its destination within one, two and three days, remained about constant.
CARLIN ALSO lists among his accomplishments in Chicago raising the percentage of management jobs held by women from less than 14 percent to almost 21 percent, and introducing customer surveys.
The surveys have been conducted in post offices throughout the region, Carlin said. ”One of our people would wait in line and be served like any other customer and make notes later,” he said. ”The second person would interview customers, ask structured questions.
”Then, they`d meet with the managers of the unit and work on a course of action as to how to improve service.”
So far, 6,000 to 7,000 customers have been interviewed in the central region, and Carlin plans to apply the program nationwide.
CUSTOMER SURVEYS aren`t the only idea Carlin has borrowed from private enterprise.
Although he has little corporate experience–he has been a postal employee since 1969 and before that held such jobs as university administrator and assistant city manager–Carlin has a history of introducing corporate ideas into the Postal Service bureaucracy.
From 1969 to 1971, he says, he ”quarterbacked the passage of the Postal Reorganization Act,” which changed the system from the Post Office Department to the semi-independent Postal Service.
Later, he introduced paid advertising to the agency and developed a marketing concept for stamp collecting products that in its first year increased sales to $33 million from less than $21 million, according to his resume.
HIS ATTITUDES, too, tend to reflect the training he received as a participant in the advanced management program at Harvard University`s business school.
The Postal Service will do well ”if the service we provide is reliable and economical,” he said. ”If we don`t meet that dual test, businesses won`t use us. There are many other options.” The Postal Service, he pointed out, has a monopoly only on first-class, sealed-letter mail.
Carlin plans to continue to adopt corporate ideas.
”In the years to come, with your help and dedication, I believe the Postal Service can be compared favorably to the very finest private corporations in this country,” he said in a soon-to-be-published message to employees.
HE WAS MORE specific in an interview. ”When you go into McDonald`s, they treat every customer well,” he said. ”That`s the kind of customer responsiveness we`re trying to build.”
To this end, the Postal Service recently started what it calls its
”employee involvement–quality of work life” program.
The basic idea is that if employees treat one another well, they will also treat customers well, Carlin said. Under the program, employees are given freedom to do their jobs their own way, within certain limits, provided they get their work done, he added.
In the central region, Carlin brought in consultants and management and labor representatives from such companies as Illinois Bell Telephone Co. and Ford Motor Co. to explain to Postal Service employees how similar programs worked for them.
Carlin also held meetings to explain the process to senior executives, and they in turn held meetings for more junior employees, and so on.
ASKED FOR evidence that the program is effective, Carlin referred to mail carrier Hasan, whom he had met in the lobby. As part of his uniform, Hasan wore a jacket with the words ”Blue Angels” on the back. The Blue Angels are a team of mail carriers who make a special effort to meet deadlines, Hasan said.
”That`s the kind of idea that`s coming up from our people,” Carlin said. ”Whoever would have thought the Postal Service would allow that?”
He did acknowledge, however, that not every postal employee is as enthusiastic as Hasan. ”There are 180,000 postal people who make up this region,” he said. ”Change doesn`t come overnight.”
THE SUCCESS of a program designed to improve employee attitudes may depend, at least to some extent, on relationships between Postal Service management and the labor unions that represent about 600,000 of its 700,000 employees.
According to the arbitration panel that recently awarded a pay raise to the union members, labor relations in the Postal Service have been
deteriorating over the last decade, particularly in recent months.
”Labor relations were clearly not a strength for Mr. Bolger, so there`s a lot of room for improvement,” a union official said.
CARLIN IS no novice at negotiating with labor. He was on the management team in the New York postal strike of 1970, though several union sources said they didn`t clearly recall his attitudes then.
Since then, ”we`ve had different reports back from union people who have worked with him,” said a spokesman for the American Postal Workers Union, the largest. ”There are people out there who got along quite well with him and others who didn`t.
”We`re interested in improved labor relations, as we gather he is, so we`re willing to reserve any judgment and let`s just see how it goes.”
Vincent Sombrotto, president of the other large union, the National Association of Letter Carriers, made a similar statement but with a hint of discontent.
”We look forward to working with the new postmaster general to create the kind of labor relations which ensure that postal management shows the same respect for the dignity and humanity of its employees as it does for increases in productivity,” he said.
FOR HIS PART, Carlin simply said, ”My expectations are high. I`ll try to be firm but fair.” He added he was willing to ”work very hard” for good labor relations.
Asked to comment on the fact that Postal Service employees are paid as much as $5,000 a year more than their counterparts in the private sector, Carlin diplomatically said, ”I feel that we`re well paid.
”Because of our salaries, the type of work we do and the job security, many people want to work for the Postal Service.”
In Chicago`s northern suburbs, the agency recently received 64,000 applications for 200 to 300 openings for mail handlers in the next two years, he said.
With labor costs making up 83 percent of the Postal Service`s budget, management is clearly concerned with preventing salaries from rising fast.
In last year`s labor negotiations, the unions pointed to recent Postal Service profits, but Carlin said these profits (or surpluses, as he calls them) offset previous losses. In the long-term, the agency aims to break even, he said.
WHEN THE Postal Service was created in 1971, it had equity of $1.7 billion, and it received another $1 billion from the federal government in the mid-1970s, he said. By the end of 1981, however, the agency had a deficit of $1.3 billion.
Surpluses since then have brought that up to zero, and the Postal Service has been working back to its original equity position, Carlin said. At the end of September, it had equity of just over $300 million, he said.
In recent months, costs have again exceeded revenues, but that will be reversed when postal rates are increased Feb. 17, a Postal Service spokesman said.
Carlin warned against overreacting to multimillion-dollar Postal Service surpluses.
”The figures you`re hearing sound like large amounts, but this is a large organization,” he said. ”We have a $750 million payroll every two weeks.”
