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By Doug Cunningham

Cutting U.S. Postal Service delivery to five days a week would be the beginning of the demise of the U.S. Postal Service. That's according to American Postal Workers Union president William Burrus. Burrus says it's not true that the postal service has to initiate major changes to survive a grave crisis. Burrus says a little-known requirement by Congress for the postal service to pre-pay retiree health care obligations is the central cause of financial problems at the postal service. Absent that burden, the union president says, there would be a surplus of $3.7 billion over the last three fiscal years. The postal service this week announced it would be cutting as many as 30,000 jobs through attrition - using hiring freezes as workers retire or quit. Burrus says more than 100,000 postal jobs have already been eliminated that way. Burrus says postal management has worsened the financial problem by offering excessive work sharing discounts to big mailers and using outside contracted work at a high cost.