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The US Postal Service (USPS) will begin working with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut costs. On Thursday, US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy signed an agreement with the Trump era organization, welcoming the agency’s infiltration, which other federal organizations have railed against in recent weeks. In a letter sent to Congress, DeJoy explained that DOGE will assist” USPS “in identifying and achieving further efficiencies” within the operation. DeJoy praised DOGE by saying, the “team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems they can help us with. It has long been known that the Postal Service has a broken business model that was not financially sustainable without critically necessary and fundamental core change.DeJoy was hired by President Trump in 2020 to head USPS as Postmaster General as it struggled financially through the pandemic. Under DeJoy’s leadership, USPS has already been slashing jobs since 2021. In the past four years, it has cut 30,000 jobs, and plans to make another drastic round of layoffs, cutting 10,000 more employees over the next month. Last month, DeJoy announced plans to step down from his role, as Trump announced he would make sweeping changes to USPS. He mused about firing the board and allowing the Commerce Department to seize control. “We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money. And we’re thinking about doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office at the time. Doing so would be a step towards privatizing the postal service, something Trump has previously talked about. But, despite the call for massive changes, USPS is the federal agency Americans view most favorably, second only to the National Parks Service. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 72% had a favorable view of the postal service. In his letter, DeJoy pressed that USPS retirement assets and the Workers Compensation Program have been mismanaged” and the Postal Regulatory Commission, an agency which helps ensure the Postal Service operates transparently, abides by the law, and sets fair rates “unnecessary”. The agency “has inflicted over $50 billion in damage to the Postal Service by administering defective pricing models and decades old bureaucratic processes that encumber the Postal Service,” DeJoy said. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was quick to push back on the move, issuing a statement that sharply criticised DeJoy’s decision to work with DOGE. The only thing worse for the Postal Service than DeJoys Delivering for America plan is turning the service over to Elon Musk and DOGE so they can undermine it, privatize it, and then profit off Americans loss, Connolly said. He continued, This capitulation will have catastrophic consequences for all Americans especially those in rural and hard to reach areas who rely on the Postal Service every day to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more. DeJoy’s agreement with DOGE comes as the agency moved to dismantle the department of education this week. On Tuesday, more than 1,300 workers were told they would be losing their jobs, halving the number of employees working for the department and sparking fears that school lunch programs will be likely to disappear amid the cuts. With research showing school meals are the healthiest meals Americans eat, Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health, said SNA President Shannon Gleave, RDN, SNS, in a statement this week.Gleave continued, These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs. Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies.
Category:
E-Commerce
Between rising tariffs, an increased cost of living, and extensive federal layoffs, February felt pretty abysmal for many American workers. Now, theres data to show that it might have been one of the worst months in recent history for employee sentiment. Thats according to Glassdoors monthly Employee Confidence Index, a report that uses Glassdoors database of millions of employees’ reviews to get a real-time pulse on employee confidence in their companys six-month business outlook, according to the companys website. Last month, the share of employees reporting a positive six-month business outlook fell to 44.4%its lowest point since Glassdoor began publishing the index in 2016 (for context, the average outlook hovers around 50% positive). Sentiments were low across the board, but some industries were hit harder than others. These are the sectors where workers felt the most pessimistic about the coming months: Government and Public Administration Over the past several weeks, Elon Musks so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been on a mission to reduce waste by slashing tens of thousands of federal jobs, including gutting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), halving the Department of Education, and laying off 10% of the workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Not surprisingly, these massive cuts have resulted in rising job security fears among government employees. Employee confidence in the government and public administration sector plummeted by 4.9% month-over-month, bringing the total decline to 7.3% year-over-year. Cuts to the government workforce initiated by DOGE have thrown the future of the federal workforce into disarray, resulting in weakening sentiment, the report reads. Only 38.1% of government workers had a positive [six-month] outlook. Retail Dissatisfaction among government employees was matched only by retail workers. Similarly, only 38.1% of retail employees reported feeling positive about the futurethough, to be fair, thats only a 0.1% drop from this time last year. The retail industry has seen a barrage of headwinds in recent months. As the cost of living continues to rise, many consumers are opting to spend less, with major retailers including Walmart, Target, and Costco reporting noticeable dips in consumer spending last month. Meanwhile, the ongoing retail apocalypse has seen thousands of stores close across the nation, with companies like Joann fabrics and Party City going out of business entirely. Restaurants and Food Service Behind government employees and retail workers, food-industry employees were the third-most dissatisfied sector in the new report. The restaurant industry is currently facing down a number of potential tariffs that could make such products as coffee, tea, fruit, and vegetables much more expensive, and in some cases, inaccessible. Meanwhile, some of the nations largest fast-food chainslike McDonaldsare struggling to attract customers in an era of frugal spenders, who increasingly view meals on-the-go as a luxury.
Category:
E-Commerce
Shares of Docusign Inc. (NASDAQ: DOCU) surged nearly 18% on Friday, after the electronic signature service reported strong fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, partially driven by its new artificial intelligence-enabled platform, which it introduced last year. The e-signature company reported earnings of 86 cents per share, beating forecasts of 85 cents, with revenue coming in at $776 million, $15 million over forecasts for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, ending January 31. “Fiscal 2025 was a transformative year for Docusign,” CEO Allan Thygesen said in an earnings statement. “We launched Docusign IAM, our AI-powered agreement management platform, which is driving rapid traction with customers . . . We’re well positioned to pursue the significant opportunity ahead.” Docusign’s Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) is an AI-powered platform that enables businesses to create, manage, and gain insights from their agreements in a full-suite, end-to-end platform, resulting in faster workflows and minimized risks. DocuSign AI uses both traditional AI to analyze existing data and content, and generative AI to create new content, such as text, based on patterns learned from existing data. In his earnings remarks, Thygesen said IAM has quickly become the fastest-growing new product in Docusigns history, and the company expects IAM to account for low double-digits of the company’s total growth by Q4. Its tremendously valuable, he told CNBC on Friday. Its opening a treasure trove of data . . . Were seeing excellent pickup. Another good sign for the company: Docusign is collaborating with Microsoft and Google, which are two of its biggest partners. Both integrate Docusign deeply into their office suites. Docusign’s customers number 1.6 million, and 1 billion people have used the service in over 180 countries, including 95% of Fortune 500 companies. The service is available in 44 languages for document signers and 14 languages for those sending documents, according to the company’s website.
Category:
E-Commerce
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