Browsing: Postal Service

SAN DIEGO | Not that there was much doubt on this score, but Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., this morning confirmed  that Congress won’t act to head off a U.S. Postal Service default on a $5.5 billion payment into a retiree health care fund that is legally due Wednesday. The default “will occur,” said Issa, who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and is the lead sponsor of a USPS overhaul bill. The payment was originally due last September, but Congress pushed back the deadline until Aug. 1. Issa’s comments came in an interview after he spoke at an Association of Government Accountants conference here.…

Here’s at least one area where the U.S. Postal Service is showing some serious growth: The number of appeals of post office closings. From 2007 to 2009, there were exactly two such appeals. As of mid-May, the year-to-date total for fiscal 2012 was 126, or well above the 103 appeals filed in all of 2011, according to a new joint report from the inspectors general for the Postal Service and Postal Regulatory Commission. The increases shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that the Postal Service has ramped up its efforts to get rid of under-performing P.O.’s. The tally for closures…

One way or another, it looks like a major congressional battle is headed our way over the U.S. Postal Service’s long-sought goal of ending most six-day mail delivery. One possible flash point is the postal overhaul bill (H.R. 2309) sponsored by Reps. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Dennis Ross, R-Fla., which would allow postal officials to begin moving to five-day delivery within six months of the legislation’s being signed into law. The House’s Republican leadership had hoped to bring the Issa measure to the floor this month; earlier this week, the National Association of Letter Carriers said its “most urgent goal is…

The U.S. Postal Service plans to close or consolidate about half of its 461 mail processing facilities during the next two years or so. Judging from a newly released after-action review of one recent downsizing, a bumpy road lies ahead both for postal employees and customers. The review, released today by the Postal Service’s inspector general, examines the consolidation of the Frederick, Md. Processing and Distribution Facility with the Baltimore Processing and Distribution Center between last October and January. Long story short: Service suffered and costs were higher than expected. One big mistake was scheduling the move during the Christmas…

The early numbers are in and it appears that as many as 7,400 postmasters and full-time mail handlers could be headed for the exits under separate buyout/early retirement offers from the U.S. Postal Service. For both groups, the sign-up deadline was Monday. Although applicants can still back out, the Postal Service anticipates that between 3,800 to 4,200 postmasters could resign or retire in response to the $20,000 buyout incentive, USPS spokesman Mark Saunders said today. The Postal Service is offering full-time mail handlers $15,000 to take the money and run; between 2,800 and 3,200 may go, Saunders said. One thing is clear:…

When American Postal Workers Union members agreed to a contract last year that included wage and benefit concessions, they were obviously binding themselves for the life of the agreement with the U.S. Postal Service. Less obvious—at least to FedLine–was that they were also setting the stage for similar givebacks by other postal unions. That’s a lot clearer now, however, with the award of the three-member arbitration board charged with setting the terms of a new contract between Postal Service and the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. The APWU agreement “provided precedent that would have been very difficult to ignore,” wrote…

If you’re eager (and who isn’t?) to see how the U.S. Postal Service responds to Northrop Grumman’s $180 million lawsuit over a monster automation project gone awry, well, sit tight.  The original deadline was today, but Federal Claims Court Judge George Miller has given Postal Service lawyers an extension until Sept. 7. “Additional time is needed to conduct further investigation that is required to prepare full and accurate responses to allegations” in Northrop’s suit, Miller ruled last week. Northrop did not object to the delay.

Now that the U.S. Postal Service and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union are officially arbitration-bound, it seems time for an overview of the state of USPS labor negotiations that will affect both the mail carrier’s bottom line, not to mention the incomes and working conditions of tens of thousands of postal workers. More than a year has passed since members of the American Postal Workers Union ratified a new contract that will run through 2015. But the Postal Service has yet to sew up agreements with its other three bargaining units. Its last contract with the National Rural Letter…

It’s not looking good for the American Postal Workers Union’s last-ditch attempt to delay a wave of mail processing plant downsizings set to begin next week. In a unanimous decision released today, the Postal Regulatory Commission ruled that the APWU had failed to make the case for an emergency injunction.  Although the five-member commission didn’t make a final decision on the union’s complaint filed earlier this month, today’s ruling says that the union “has failed to demonstrate that it has a substantial likelihood of prevailing on the merits, that it will suffer irreparable harm, or that the balance of the…

The U.S. Postal Service is reporting some temporary upper-management turnover stemming from its chief information officer’s illness. Because of a “serious health issue,” Ellis Burgoyne won’t be returning full-time to his job as CIO before October, Postmaster General Pat Donahoe wrote in a June 20 memo included in a filing today with the Postal Regulatory Commission. In the meantime, Chief Financial Officer Joe Corbett has taken over as acting CIO, while Steve Masse—previously vice president for finance and operations—is subbing for Corbett as acting CFO, according to the filing. Taking Masse’s place: Cynthia Sanchez-Hernandez, who has served as headquarters finance…

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