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- Earth Class Mail VP speaks before Postal Regulatory Commission
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What the Screen Actors Guild and Postal Unions Have in Common
By Ron Wiener, CEO & Postmaster General, Earth Class Mail
If you work in the postal industry — and especially if you are a member of a postal workers’ union — you may not have been paying much attention to the SAG (Screen Actors Guild) dispute with the entertainment industry, but you should be. While the SAG’s beef with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) isn’t over jobs but payscale, it’s fundamentally about how the Internet has irrefutably altered their industry’s business model.
In the good old days life was simple. Actors would get paid residuals on their work based on the revenues that their TV shows and movies generated when they were rebroadcast. Along came DVDs as a new distribution channel and the SAG had to renegotiate their union contracts based on this newfangled medium. But that was nothing compared to the much less definable world of Internet distribution.
Today a television show or movie could wind up being distributed for free on hulu.com, for a small download fee on iTunes, or on any number of other outlets. Actors are trying to protect their incomes at a time when it isn’t even clear what the revenue models are for the production companies in this brave new world, and negotiations have been arduous and, so far, not completely successful. Read more
Earth Class Mail VP speaks before Postal Regulatory Commission
“The single most transformative path the Postal Service’s evolution can and should take.” That was the focus of Earth Class Mail VP of Strategic Development Cameron Powell’s May 21 testimony before the Postal Regulatory Commission in Flagstaff, Ariz. Earth Class Mail was invited to testify at the PRC hearings regarding the potential of online postal mail as a future technology for adoption by both the U.S. Postal Service and its mail recipients.
In his testimony, Powell discussed why the Postal Service must join the digital and Internet revolutions against a backdrop of consumer dissatisfaction with traditional mail delivery, soaring fuel costs, dwindling revenue streams, increased emphasis on environmental stewardship throughout society, and rapidly changing consumer behavior and preferences in personal and business communications.
As Powell asserted in his advance written testimony, “what I propose does not replace or threaten the USPS in any way. It’s an empowering, transitional technology that will in fact guarantee the Postal Service’s survival.”
Click here to read a PDF of the complete advance written testimony.
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