Browsing: Postal Service

Two questions for our readers at the Postal Service, following up on this afternoon’s announcement that USPS will offer buyouts to tens of thousands of employees. First, I’ve been getting e-mails for at least a year from postal workers who said they would consider retiring early if the Postal Service offered an incentive. That incentive is here now, in the form of a $15,000 payout over 12 months. Is it enough? Will you take it? Second, maybe you read this story I wrote in April after interviewing Postmaster General John Potter. It includes the following: The Postal Service’s last round…

Update: 4:27 p.m.: We’ve got a story posted about this over on the mothership. And APWU has details on who, exactly, qualifies for retirement/early retirement under this buyout program. If you don’t quality for either, again, you can still take the $15,000 incentive and resign from the Postal Service Update, 2:43 p.m.: Just to clarify, the offer will be extended to a) employees already eligible for retirement, b) employees who were eligible for previous early retirement programs and declined them, and c) any employee represented by APWU or NPMHU who wants to take the $15,000 and leave the Postal Service,…

Even the BBC is writing about the Postal Service’s financial problems — today, with a story about how the Postal Service is removing its iconic blue mailboxes from street corners. In villages, towns and cities across America, residents are waking up to find the familiar blue mailbox at the end of the road is gone. In the past 20 years, more than half of America’s mailboxes have been taken out of service, leaving just 175,000 nationwide. (I should note that Tim Kauffman did a story about this back in November, though I can’t find a link to it right now.)…

8/21 UPDATE: U.S. Postal Service spokesman Gerry McKiernan just dropped me a line disputing Peter Roff’s take on the post office’s tax exemption. First, the Postal Service doesn’t own any planes on which it could pay taxes. Secondly, the Postal Service for many years was not allowed to run profits as a corporation does, meaning it had no income on which it would pay taxes, even without the exemption. (A 2006 reform allowed the Postal Service to turn a profit on competitive products like Priority Mail and package services, but in lieu of taxes, the post office uses some of that…

The National Association of Postal Supervisors has fired back at President Barack Obama for dragging the U.S. Postal Service further into the health care debate. In an Aug. 14 letter, NAPS President Ted Keating accused Obama of using the Postal Service as a “scapegoat” and unfairly painting it as “an example of inefficiency” during a health care town hall meeting last week. Obama told a crowd in Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 11 that private health care insurance providers should be able to compete with a government-run public option because “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. … It’s the Post Office…

As the debate over health care reform boils over, both sides are now using the U.S. Postal Service to score points. House Minority Leader John Boehner, June 11: If you like going to the DMV and think they do a great job, or you like going to the post office and think it’s the most efficient thing you’ve run into, then you’ll love the government-run health care system. And President Barack Obama at this afternoon’s health care town hall meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., as reported by the Associated Press: [Obama] also disputed the notion that adding a government-run insurance plan into a menu…

There’s an interesting discrepancy between the House and Senate bills that would provide the Postal Service with short-term relief from some of its retiree health care obligations (background here if you’re not familiar with the issue). On the House side is HR 22, one of the simplest pieces of legislation I’ve ever read. It gives the Postal Service three years of relief from its current retiree health benefit obligations — period. On the Senate side, there’s S 1507. It calls for a similar change in the Postal Service’s health care payment schedule. But it also includes an amendment that changes…

We have a story in today’s paper, and online, about the U.S. Postal Service’s plan to review nearly 1,000 post offices for possible closure. If you’re wondering which post offices are affected, we’ve uploaded a full list (pdf) from the Postal Service.

The U.S. Postal Service wants to study roughly 1,000 post offices for possible closure – the latest cost-cutting step from an agency that is scrambling to deal with a projected $7 billion deficit this year and larger losses in 2010. The agency started its review earlier this year with approximately 3,200 post offices, and decided about 1,000 of them are “candidates for further review.” Postal managers say they will consider several factors in deciding whether to close those facilities: mail volume, proximity to other post offices, and the potential savings in labor and utility costs. Post offices only generate about…

Update, 11:43 a.m.: Here’s a slightly eye-popping statistic from the GAO report: The Postal Service is projecting a $7 billion loss in FY2010 (next year) — even after reducing its expenses by $8 billion. Put another way, there is a $15 billion gap between the Postal Service’s projected FY2010 revenues and its current expenses. Update, 11:37 a.m.: That was quick. Here’s GAO’s report (pdf) about why the Postal Service is on the list. Update, 11:25 a.m.: Here’s a link to GAO’s current 2009 high-risk list (pdf). The list was started in 1990 and is updated biennially; it documents agencies that…

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