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When Will USPS VERA Announcements Come, What Will be Offered, and Who Will Be Eligible?

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The volume of traffic on this blog clearly has shown the interest among Postal Service employees on possible opportunities for early retirement and incentives. While the leaks last week indicated that an announcement was coming the end of last week, it did not happen. I apologize for giving false hope to Postal Service employees who are looking to taking early retirement. Now the rumor mill is suggesting an announcement on Monday or Tuesday. As the discussion below indicates, an announcement about early retirements coming early this week fits the Postal Service’s current plan to implement the network restructuring in the second half of June, 2012. Any further delay in announcing [...] Read more »

When Will the Postal Service Reduce Staff?

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The Postal Service has published a detailed schedule of dates that are important for employees whose jobs will be affected by the management restructuring.  Anyone who could be affected should print out, or bookmark this schedule and add the key dates to their smartphone calendar so they are sure act by the required deadlines if they plan to take advantage of early retirement or will need to find a new job within the Postal Service. For those outside of the Postal Service, only those dates on which current Postal employees will leave employment matter.  These are the dates that the Postal Service begins experiencing cost savings from either early retirements [...] Read more »

Is the APWU Contract Good for Creditors and Shareholders?

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Up till now all of the information about the new 4 1/2 year agreement between the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and the Postal Service has come from the union.  With an agreement in hand, the union needs to sell its members that the contract is good for them so that rank and file members approve it.  The APWU has an aggressive effort to sell the contract to members which has included so far the APWU news bulletin on the contract, a PowerPoint presentation, a Web post answering questions, as well as the use of Facebook and Twitter.   Given the amount of information coming from the union, no one should be surprised that press reports in the Washington [...] Read more »

Attrition, VERA, Retirement Incentives and RIF’s

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The Postal News blog corrected an impression of mine that the Postal Service may be changing its approach to reducing the workforce.   Donahoe told the Washington Post’s Ed O’Keefe that the 7,500 positions being eliminated would be cut by attrition. Eliminating an entire area office requires the use of RIF rules- it’s nothing new. Those rules were followed in all of the previous area and district consolidations, and don’t automatically mean that any employees will actually be involuntarily separated from the USPS.  My confusion reflects the difficulty of understanding the options available to the Postal Service to quickly reduce the workforce.  Pat Donahoe’s statement clearly is consistent is with the [...] Read more »

Postal Policy: Now its Congress’s Turn

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Now that the Government Accountability Office report is out it is time for Congress to get down to the serious business of re-evaluating the current business model and regulatory framework.  Congress is starting this process with hearings in the House and Senate, this week and next. In preparing for these hearing, members on the relevant committees have a significant challenge preparing for the postal and other governmental witnesses.Both hearings will focus on reports by the Postal Service, Government Accountability Office and the USPS Office of Inspector General. Federal Budget Treatment of the Postal Service by the USPS OIG The Postal Service’s Share of CSRS Pension Responsibility by the USPS OIG [...] Read more »

Should Voluntary Early Retirement Become the New Normal?

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The Postal Reporter News Blog reported that the Postal Service is quietly announcing the introduction of a voluntary early retirement program in selected cities.  Voluntary early retirement programs allow employees to retire early but do not offer them a financial incentive to do so.  This program requires eligible employees to decide between now and May 21, 2010 with their retirement date occurring in June 2010. Voluntary early retirement is the least expense method that the Postal Service has to convince excess employees to leave voluntarily and the least attractive method for employees who might consider retiring.    Because of the minimal cost of voluntary early retirement programs, it would make [...] Read more »

The Cost of Reducing the Workforce

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The postal industry is in the midst of efforts worldwide to reduce its workforce.   The combination of automation, more efficient operating networks and declining demand all require reductions in production employees far greater than attrition allows. The Detroit News reported that Ford has just announced new incentives for employees to retire or seek new employment.  The incentives that Ford announced yesterday came about 6 months after they were previously offered.  Ford’s incentives are more generous than anything the Postal Service has offered.  Ford is offering a retirement package of $20,000 for unskilled workers and $40,000 for skilled workers plus an additional $20,000 or $25,000 toward the purchase of a new [...] Read more »