Postal Service offers $15,000 buyouts to 45,000 mail handlers

money.cnn.com ^ | 5-25-12 | By James O'Toole

[rawhide]

The U.S. Postal Service is offering buyouts to 45,000 mail handlers, part of the struggling agency's efforts to shed staff and cut costs.

The $15,000 buyouts, pro-rated for part-time staff, are available to nearly all of the Postal Service's mail handlers, excluding around 2,000 who aren't career employees

Mail handlers work at post offices and mail processing centers sorting mail, transporting it within their facility and loading and unloading trucks.

"The Postal Service is adjusting the size of its network to adapt to America's changing mailing trends," USPS spokesman Mark Saunders said in an email Friday.

The Postal Service wants to reduce its workforce by 150,000 by 2015, though Saunders said he had "nothing to announce" regarding potential buyouts for other USPS employees.

The offer for mail handlers, finalized earlier this week, came as a result of talks between the Postal Service and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. In a statement Thursday, the union said the deal "is intended to provide a financial cushion, and added peace of mind, for Mail Handlers who might be prepared to move on to the next chapter of their lives."

The Postal Service reported a $3.2 billion loss for the first three months of this year. The recession, declining mail volumes and a congressional mandate to pre-fund retirement health care benefits drove the losses.

The health care mandate is a major liability for the Postal Service, which doesn't have the cash to make a $5.5 billion payment that's due in August. The Postal Service supports itself on sales of postage and mail services, and gets no taxpayer funding.

[Don Corleone]

Stop the freekin’ junk mail or at least make it pay its own way!!!!

[vette6387]

I’d like to see a line item USPS P&L. It would be interesting to see where they spend their money. My guess is that the out of line costs are for labor, since transportation would follow the downward trend in mail volume.

[Sacajaweau]

Cut the pensions in half and make sure NO ONE gets overtime. I’ve seen these guys play the system with the “created” overtime....

[Terry Mross]

If they stop junk mail they’ll have to lay off everybody.

[Vaduz]

Postal Service offers $15,000 buyouts to 45,000 mail handlers.

Just lay them off and save the money,oh wait it’s the gov.

[Presbyterian Reporter]

Postal Service offers $15,000 buyouts to 45,000 mail handlers.

Just lay them off and save the money,oh wait it’s the gov.

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I had the same thoughts. Just lay them off like businesses do.

Also, businesses that are struggling find ways to cuts costs in order to stay alive.

Not so with the Post Office. They propose closing post offices knowing the congress critters are unwilling to shut down a post office in their district.

There would be all sorts of ways to cut costs short of shutting down facilities. But this is quasi-government and they do not think outside of the box.

[PeteyBoy]

It’s bone headed to cut people who handle the mail. Cut out the people who never touch a piece of mail. Postmasters in any size office are just glorified book keepers. Most don’t know the regulations as well as a majority of window clerks. Have one person do the books for about an hour and a half(doesn’t even take that long) each day in four Post Offices. Have a superviser do the scheduling and they can save tens of millions every year. Get rid of ALL the dead weight in district offices and Wshington.

Problem solved. Where’s my bonus?

[muawiyah]

Tell me how that's done in the federal government?

We have friends who would pay you a lot of money for how that trick gets played.

[muawiyah]

How many billions? To make it easy start here: http://about.usps.com/publications/annual-report-comprehensive-statement-2011/html/ar2011_report_1_001.htm#ep998294

[muawiyah]

They have 28,000 unnecessary facilities. McDonald’s has 12,000 facilities in the US.

[muawiyah]

All those postmasters in the 28,000 unneeded post offices have a RELIEF CLERK.

Get rid of those offices you get rid of 56,000 people. But I"ll go you one better ~ eliminate door delivery. That'll help get rid of 50 to 60 thousand letter carriers.

[tubebender]

Oh my... What would Bain Capital investors think of this??? I mean lay off employees to cut loses???

[peter the great]

Actually the costs that are out of line aren’t labor but health insurance all was well with everything until Congress mandated that the Post Office pay for benefits 75 years into the future

[mykroar]

You can save more millions if you mail the severance checks.

Buh-dump-bump.

[Noob1999]

I think the rel money is in a five day workweek.

That way, one set of letter carriers work five days a week, so they don’t need the overlapping sixth day coverage, and all the scheduling ineffeciency.

I’d also love to see the mail trucks contract with the towns and utilities, putting transponders in their trucks that could read all the smart meters, from water, to gas, and electricity. Save the companies and towns bundles on meter readers and transportation, while giving revenue to the USPS whose trucks drive by your location five times a week.