U. S. Postal Service considers cutting 120,000 jobs

As losses reach $8B or more again this year, Postal Service considers cutting 120,000 jobs

Associated Press
August 11, 2011

WASHINGTON - The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs.

Facing a second year of losses totaling $8 billion or more, the agency also wants to pull its workers out of the retirement and health benefits plans covering federal workers and set up its own benefit systems.

Congressional approval would be needed for either step, and both could be expected to face severe opposition from postal unions which have contracts that ban layoffs.

The post office has cut 110,000 jobs over the last four years and is currently engaged in eliminating 7,500 administrative staff. In its 2010 annual report, the agency said it had 583,908 career employees.

The loss of mail to the Internet and the decline in advertising caused by the recession have rocked the agency.

Postal officials have said they will be unable to make a $5.5 billion payment to cover future employee health care costs due Sept. 30. It is the only federal agency required to make such a payment but, because of the complex way government finances are counted, eliminating it would make the federal budget deficit appear $5.5 billion larger.

If Congress doesn't act and current losses continue, the post office will be unable to make that payment at the end of September because it will have reached its borrowing limit and simply won't have the cash to do so, the agency said earlier.

In that event, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said, "Our intent is to continue to deliver the mail, pay our employees and pay our suppliers."

Postal officials have sought congressional assistance repeatedly over the last few years, including requests to be allowed to end Saturday mail delivery, and several bills have been proposed, but none has been acted on.

In addition the post office recently said it is considering closing 3,653 post offices, stations and other facilities, about one-10th of its offices around the country, in an effort to save money. Offices under consideration for closing are largely rural with little traffic.

And in June the post office suspended contributions to its employees' pension fund, which it said was overfunded.

In its 2010 annual report the post office reported a loss of more than $8 billion on revenues of $67 billion and expenses of $75 billion.

And even while total mail volume fell from 202 billion items to 170 billion from 2008 to 2010 the number of places the agency has to deliver mail increased by 1.7 million as Americans built new homes, offices and businesses.

The latest cutback plans were first reported by The Washington Post, which said a notice to employees informing them of its proposals stated: "Financial crisis calls for significant actions, we will be insolvent next month due to significant declines in mail volume and retiree health benefit prefunding costs imposed by Congress."

I think it is now time for the federal government to finally release the USPS from congressional control.

Yes, the delivery of the mail is one of the few constitutionally mandated roles of government, but government has proven consistently, over many, many decades, that is completely incompetent at anything involving business enterprises.

I believe the private sector could do this job much more competently and, more importantly, more efficiently.

Right now the executives of the USPS have their hands tied by congress. This has to end if we expect to continue having our mail delivered at all.

This is one of the last government monopolies - the monopoly over mailboxes - and it is clearly an utter failure.

Time to move into the 21st century.

The carrier I used to work with thinks that the USPS could do without half of the administrative staff (<---non-union, btw) and then get rid of the postal unions themselves. Yep, he was anti-union.

how can this thread been seen as NON-political.. just read the replies the article has received.. every one saw the article as being political for the get-go.

It depends. If Kronos wants to move it to Politics, he can.

TexasBlue wrote:The carrier I used to work with thinks that the USPS could do without half of the administrative staff (<---non-union, btw) and then get rid of the postal unions themselves. Yep, he was anti-union.

I think that would be an excellent start! It's funny, every time one of these government agencies or a public school seeks to cut staff they always want to cut the people who are actually doing the jobs the agency or school is supposed to do. In the case of the post office, the carriers and persons running the mail room - in the case of schools the teachers; but NO ONE wants to touch the "administrators" who, more often than not, are just a waste of resources and are paid FAR more than the workers on the ground!

I say GUT the administrative staff and deep-six the union! The USPS would the better for it!

86 those of what you said, 86 failing rural post offices and stop delivering mail on Saturdays.

TexasBlue wrote:86 those of what you said, 86 failing rural post offices and stop delivering mail on Saturdays.

Yes to all of the above!