USPS has cut 27,547 career jobs in the last 12 months - postalnews blog
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USPS has cut 27,547 career jobs in the last 12 months

As the US Postal Service proceeds with plans to cut back services and reduce staffing, reports filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission show that the agency cut 27,547 career employees in the last year, a reduction of almost five percent. The reports reflect staffing levels as of February 2012 compared with a year earlier.

The largest reductions were in the clerk craft, which saw a loss of 8,625 employees, or 5.6% City carriers were next, with 8,500 fewer employees. a drop of 4.5%. Carrier staffing is a problem for the USPS in the current situation, as volume drops, but delivery points increase. As a result, overtime continues to climb: the overtime rate for city carriers was 13.1% for the last two weeks of January, the most recent period the USPS has filed reports for. In the same period a year earlier, the rate was 11.7%. Letter carriers account for about half of the $1.3 billion the USPS has paid out in overtime through the first four months of its fiscal year.

Supervisor and management staffing also fell, with 2,498 fewer employees on the rolls, a drop of 9.3%. Postmasters and installation heads were reduced by 859, or 3.8%, while Headquarters trimmed 63 employees, a drop of 2.2%.

(Staffing numbers are from the On Rolls and Paid Employee report (ORPES), and reflect actual employees on the rolls, not “positions”.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 21st, 2012 at 9:13 am and is filed under postal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • georgb

    usps closed 7 districts saved 1 billion ayr close 35 and save 5 billion ayear oxford mass pop 10ooo has 2 post offices why some towns losing their only office while other towns have 2 or more

  • jo

    More overburdened routes;more overtime.A 7 year old could have figured that out.How about this;much more legit comp and disability in the future.Have a 7 year explain that to upper postal managrment.

  • Retired

    If you are working overtime, it means you have too much work and not enough people to do the work. So why are they consolidating offices and reducing service to create more overtime. As a former manager, it didn’t take much to move the mail and endless computer work did nothing but tell you what you know you already did the day before. I had no need or contact with District or Area people and they contributed nothing to the bottom line of delivering mail. USPS needs to totally reorganize its management structure and utilize no more than 10 Districts and 3 Areas (Eastern, Western, and Central). Never seen such a top heavy organization.

  • mcgoo

    All mail must be delivered on Mondays(even if it takes penalty) but on Tuesdays there is not enough mail for 8 hrs. DM’s orders. Why doesn’t someone fire the dDM for stupidity?

  • leebren

    mcgoo, I have always wondered the same thing, there is no reason the plant could not more efficiently process mail so that Mondays are not so heavy overtime is mandatory, Tuesday slightly better. I know some carriers want all the overtime they can get, but some would rather work their shift of 8 1/2 hours and go. Our routes are much longer now that we have FSS and DPS, I make more overtime now than ever before.After 34 years, I really dont want it, I want to get home.

  • Mr. Postman

    Hi, I’m just a dumb ‘ole letter carrier from Kansas, but I watched Jethro Bodine on enough of the Beverly Hillbillies shows to know a thang or two about cipher’in and gazintahs.

    For some reason, have you ever noticed politicians and managers don’t use zeros in large numbers for you to read? There’s a reason why. When they say, “Oh, it’s only $1.3 billion, that’s all,” it doesn’t sound so huge. It’s more “socially acceptable” that way.

    However, even Jethro could tell ya, it’s a dang big number. Jethro was smart enough to know, ya cain’t do gazintahs with the word “billion.” Here’s what Jethro would do… He’d take that $1.3 billion, and replace the “billion” word with naughts so he could figger out what all this is costing. Jethro would say it’s “$1,300,000,000.00.” Notice with the decimal point and the two extra naughts for cents, it’s a dang big number to be sure.

    Now, if you tell Jethro the average wages AND benefits for a letter carrier at the top of the pay scale is about $90,000.00 a year (or a measly $.000009 billion a year in political jargon), he’d take the $90,000.00, divide it by 3 to get 4 months worth of wages or $30,000.00. He’d next do some ciipher’in and figure $30,000 gazintahs the $1,300,000,000.00 43,333.33 times, or 43,334 full-time employees at top pay scale $1.3 billion will pay for 4 months.

    Assuming the $1.3 billion loss attributed to overtime is a trend that will continue, it’s safe to assume the USPS will lose $3.9 billion, or $3,900,000,000.00 annually to overtime alone that would have paid wages and benefits for over 43,000 employees annually.

    And so, there you have it… when USPS management and certain members of Congress claim our wages are too high, they fail to mention they’re paying time-and-a-half to replace those 27,547 employees with, and are actually losing enough money to pay 43,334 employees on an annual basis at straight-time.

    Even Jethro would tell you, “har more peeple.”

  • admin

    Jethro might want to check his figures. First of all, the $1.3 billion figure isn’t a “loss”- it’s simply the total amount of overtime dollars paid out in those four months. Secondly, he seems to be doing a lot of unnecessary and not very accurate “cipherin’”. The decline in career employees is based on February 2012 vs. February 2011. The overtime dollars paid out are based on October 2011 through January 2012. Dividing one by the other is completely meaningless. Also- because straight time hours include the cost of fringe benefits, and overtime hours do not, it’s not accurate to say that overtime is 50% more expensive than straight time. The per dollar cost is similar, and in fact straight time hours are slightly more expensive than overtime. Jethro might want to stick to “handfishin’”, and leave mathematics to other people.

  • OG

    $55,000,000,000.00* divided by 1 decade = PROBLEM

    * (approximate)

    OG

  • give me a break

    Monday’s mail is heavier because the mail that enters the system on Friday and Saturday gets processed over the weekend, including Sunday.

    There’s no delivery on Sunday so it all sits there until Monday morning, the heaviest day of the week.

  • Beau Guss

    Shut down the plants fom 12:01 a.m. sunday to 12:01 A.M. monday and you might have that 2nd class mail for delivery on tuesday. You would eliminate Sunday premium for employess and save a few bucks there.

  • hrdcorefan

    ADMIN – “The overtime dollars paid out are based on October 2011 through January 2012.”

    Didn’t the U.S. Postal Service end the first four months of its 2012 fiscal year (Oct. 1 – Jan. 31, 2011) with a net loss of $4.5 billion, but without the requirement to prefund retiree benefits, the net loss would have been a positive net gain of $105 million.

  • Beforreal

    If Mgmt would put all 204b back in there assignment and pick up the extra load which they are being paid for. the USPS could save billions just look at this way if they went back to there route or clerk position it would be a lot of people not working because the 204b would be back in there assignment pay roll cut legally.!!!

  • Bob

    mr postman is right with his figures we could hire aprox 43000 employees with benifit at stright pay and it would equal out to the same thing and all the other employees would not have to work all that over time and they would be less stressed. the supervisors would be less stressed too not having to force the employees to cover those hours that are not covered during primetime vacations, sick leave, and any other leave that they have to force us to work

  • Hotchie

    With benefits, it is cheaper to pay out overtime than to hire someone. It’s more cost effective to NOT fill a position and pay the OT. Even when this OT is mandatory and unwanted. Many don’t want the OT, others do. So why not have earlier starts and eliminate the V time rule and 5 PM window? Ot hounds can work 14 a day. The rest 8 and skate.

  • Ralf

    I too am a simple city carrier, but with a business degree.(Deans List). However, in the USPS, an education is a curse. Why? Because the business model is from the 1800′s. I am not on the ODL but make 30K a year in OT; Because the USPS has doubled the size of routes, and decreased the workforce. By workforce I mean, those who actually work (Craft). Now, any route adjustment branch has watched the numerous management types swarm in like parasites to mucus, each making 100K . These are what the Business world referr to as “Overhead” defined as “NON-PRODUCTIVE”. We all know how useless they are.But, still they get paid. With 30 in, I say who cares, I have my retirement. I figure it will never be fixed because Congress is just as overpaid and just as useless!

  • bob komar

    DONAHOE HAS NO IDEAS ON HOW TO GENERATE REVENUE(AS DOES HIS klowns). Congress PLEASE, PLEASE,FIRE THIS MAN..AND hire a Business Person..With Credentials to run the po..If you want to Run it Like a BUSINESS and make $..his idea to make $ is to get rid of the people that keep this business running..THE CRAFT!

  • Marilynn Reeves

    In Iowa Park,Texas we just bearly had enough help before they did away with my full time job of 33yrs. Took PTF postion and now have to do 4 hrs in 2 hrs. As hard as we all work service has suffered and the customer is the looser. Many more mistakes made and we are all wearing out so office moral is also down.

  • LavJean

    I also work for the PO, and get this: they give me a two hour lunch, while managment does clerk work. I am at work ten hours a day,and get paid for eight. I go to lunch two and one-half hours after I get there. At the end of the day a 204b is there to watch two clerks. They do all the close out for the window. The 204b is a carrier with no window training or experience. Waste of money? You tell me.

  • Kwa

    We don’t have enough clerks now. Management want to reduce the clerks more. The carriers can’t get out on time which causes OT. Our postmaster has PTF. Carrier doing 204 b work to justify another manager job. Some days we have more clowns than bodies working the mail. Carriers being harassed to work faster so managers can receive bonuses. Which puts us in harms way.

  • Kwa

    The 204b is just the postmasters pets that whines that i don’t want work late or on Saturday. PTF that can’t work more than 8hrs. So non OT employes have to work when we are not. On OT list. Puppets managing puppets watch people doing their jobs so we give them bonuses for the work that real workers have done. That sounds fair. Managers waste money by violateing our right. They don’t count that part of budget.
    If Disney was run by PO. Managers it would be broke. Goofy works for PO.

  • Paco the mailman

    Changes came down from the district. FSS was implemented in Oct of 2011. Changes became chaos, chaos became daily standart procedure, OT and V time became the daily norm. Six months into this experiment and the district wants to k now Que pasa? Seven PM’s were send to our office three months later, nada has been done. We are the SME (Subject Matter Experts) Did anyone asked us (the craft employees) anything? NO! They know everything. Any planned savings from the deleting of eight routes have been lost in the OT, V, time and morale. Why is our OT at 13%, why is it that we are so under-staffed? Their answer is MANDATE.. While the 204b is calling other offices to help deliver mail…All of this while we EXCESSED 12 employees before the FSS implementation.

  • LavJean

    The Senate may bring to a vote bill 1789 on Monday 3/26/2012. I will be watching. The corrosion continues if they have listened to the PMG.

  • Jim71

    The new FSS system is a joke! Melt down all the purple pod castrs and the flat sort machinery and cut your losses! Go back to breaking down pallets in the local post office. They’ll save billons in carrier OT!