As the cost of the mail keeps going up, critics say the quality of service keeps going down at the U.S. Postal Service.

• Despite a goal of next-day local delivery, a recent audit of service in six cities found that nearly one-third of the first class letters took two or more days to arrive.

• Last year, thousands of undelivered pieces of mail - some of them dating back years - were found in carriers' apartments in Washington and Chicago, and millions of undelivered pieces were found in trailers parked at Washington-area post offices.

• The Postal Service ordered post offices to stop promising two-day delivery for so-called Priority Mail - which cost $2.90 to mail - because the promise was routinely broken.

The size of the Postal Service, which employs more people than General Motors, has hampered efforts to streamline operations and introduce new labor-saving technology. The highly paid, heavily unionized work force has also presented obstacles.

• Labor costs eat up more than 80 percent of Postal Service expenditures, compared to only 52 percent for Federal Express.

• The Postal Service has one manager or supervisor for every 10 workers, compared to one for every 15 at Federal Express.

• The average wage and benefit package for clerks, carriers and sorters was $42,711 in 1993, compared to $34,627 among all private-sector workers.

In an effort to eliminate the jobs of 30,000 managers, Postmaster General Marvin Runyon offered an employee buyout program. Only 13,000 managers accepted - but because the program was carelessly structured, it also attracted 24,000 clerks and mail carriers whose jobs had to be filled with new workers. The buyout program cost nearly $1 billion.

The Postal Service apparently is unable to compete directly with the private sector. Its overnight Express Mail service has managed to capture only about 10 percent of the market, even though it offers a lower price than its competitors.

Some critics say that the only way to improve the Postal Service is to privatize it. They point out that New Zealand has done so and that Germany and England are considering it. The move seems unlikely in the United States. Postal union political action committees funnel more money to candidates than any other public-sector union group.

Source: John Merline, "Can the Postal Service Deliver?" Investor's Business Daily, October 28, 1994.