For anyone who’s keeping count, a grand total of 4,189 postmasters took advantage of a $20,000 buyout/early-out deal, according to a final tally from the U.S. Postal Service. The vast majority of those left in July; several hundred more departed in August and September. USPS executives announced the package in May at the same time that they unveiled plans to reduce customer service hours at some 13,000 post offices. The final number is a bit more than the Postal Service had predicted back in August; it represents about one-fifth of all postmaster positions on the rolls earlier this year.
Browsing: Postal Service
For clerks, drivers and anyone else out there represented by the American Postal Workers Union, if you’re considering (or have already made a decision on) taking the $15,000 buyout offer announced this week, we at Fed Times are interested in speaking with you for a story about the reaction this offer is getting from the USPS career workforce. Just send me an email at sreilly@federaltimes.com and let me know how to reach you and what’s the best time. Thanks!, Sean Reilly Federal Times Ph: 703-750-8684
Key members of the U.S. Postal Service’s executive lineup will be back in their normal jobs as Ellis Burgoyne, the agency’s chief information officer, returns to work next Monday, according to a notice on an official USPS web site. Burgoyne has been out since June because of illness. With his return, Joe Corbett—who has been filling in as CIO—will return to his regular job as the Postal Service’s chief financial officer; Steve Masse, who has been acting CFO, will revert to his normal position as vice president for finance and planning; and Cynthia Sanchez-Hernandez, who has been handling Masse’s responsibilities,…
Some seven months after inquiring about overseas travel by Postal Regulatory Commission Chairman Ruth Goldway, Sen. Tom Carper is pressing some recommended changes for the commission as a whole. So far, it’s not clear whether the five-member oversight panel will go along. In a Sept. 6 letter to Goldway, Carper questioned “the amount of time and resources devoted to international travel in recent years, particularly as the commission has struggled at times to fulfill its higher-priority statutory responsibilities in a timely manner.” He urged the PRC to limit such trips to what is “truly necessary” to fulfill its legal role…
In case anyone missed it, (this particular FedLine correspondent was away when the decision came down), the Postal Regulatory Commission last week officially dismissed a union complaint seeking to block the U.S. Postal Service’s downsizing of its mail processing plant network. The complaint, filed in June by the American Postal Workers Union, argued in part that the Postal Service had first to receive an advisory opinion from the PRC on the proposed changes to first-class mail delivery standards that are accompanying the downsizing. But while that approach is “preferred,” it’s not mandatory, the five-member commission ruled in its 16-page order.…
“The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine,” a proverb goes. By that standard, it should come as no surprise that the U.S. Postal Service now has until Oct. 9 to respond to allegations in a $180 million lawsuit filed by contractor Northrop Grumman over the handling of a major automation project. The suit was filed in early May, with the Postal Service’s response originally due two months later. But Federal Court Claims Judge George Miller later pushed back the deadline until Sept. 3 and—in a ruling this month—delayed it again to Oct. 9 following a motion from…
The U.S. Postal Service’s forthcoming cutbacks at thousands of post offices have gotten a qualified thumbs up from an independent overseer. In an advisory opinion released today, the five-member Postal Regulatory Commission said that the Post Office Structure Plan, or POStPlan, makes sense from a public policy perspective, but added a few recommendations, such as giving local customers a clear choice between keeping an individual post office open with reduced hours or closing it altogether and providing replacement delivery service. Under the plan, announced in May, the Postal Service intends to reduce customer service “window” hours to as little as two hours a day…
No doubt about it: The U.S. Postal Service’s third-quarter financial report was–on the surface–a bloodbath. With $5.2 billion in red ink spilled in just three months, you might think Freddy Krueger was keeping the books. Amid all the gore, though, the numbers reflect some faint flickers of hope. The question is whether those glimmers represent: (1) A blip; or (2) An early sign that finances are at least stabilizing, if not actually turning around. USPS leaders are naturally eager to accentuate the positive, particularly after this month’s failure to make a required $5.5 billion payment into a fund for future retiree…
Last Tuesday marked another bittersweet milestone in the U.S. Postal Service’s seemingly endless downsizing campaign as almost 3,800 postmasters walked out the door. A few hundred more could follow them by the end of next month, according to USPS figures released today at FedLine’s request. The cause, of course, is the POStPlan, which calls for reducing customer service window hours at some 13,000 post offices nationwide to as little as two hours a day. As part of the same plan to save about a half-billion dollars annually, the Postal Service also intends to eliminate more than half of the 21,000…
The American Postal Workers Union has an update on the status of buyout talks, only to say that there’s really nothing to say. “I understand that there is great interest in this topic among some members, but it is simply not feasible or smart to conduct negotiations in public,” APWU President Cliff Guffey says in this week’s release on the union’s web site. “Great interest” may be an understatement, based on the feedback that FedLine’s been hearing. Among some union members, frustration is also running high that two months after mail handlers got a $15,000 buyout offer, clerks are still…