U.S. Postal Service announces sweeping job cuts, district office closures

[The Northerner]

The U.S. Postal Service announced on Thursday that it will reduce its workforce with layoffs and offers of buyouts and will close seven district offices from New England to New Mexico to help address record losses.

The reorganization, designed to eliminate 7,500 administrative, executive and postmaster jobs this year, came as a commission that is evaluating the Postal Service’s plan to eliminate Saturday delivery concluded that one in four letters would be delayed by not just one but by two days.

The independent Postal Regulatory Commission also said that postal officials underestimated the losses the agency would suffer from handling less mail— and overestimated the cost savings.

Five-day service and a smaller workforce are among the Postal Service’s strategies to become solvent after losses of $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010, the result of declining mail volumes. Projected losses for 2011 are $6.4 billion.

Once buyout decisions aimed at administrative staff are final in April, the agency plans to eliminate the jobs of thousands of postmasters and supervisors, many through layoffs, officials said.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-postal-service-announces-sweeping-job-cuts-district-office-closures/2011/03/24/ABu3EpRB_story.html

[Tesha]

1. Paper mail is rapidly becoming as obsolete as the buggy whip.

If the Post Office closed down entirely tomorrow,
all I'd miss is our subscription to New Scientist.
But I could still read it online.

Tesha

[Shagbark Hickory]

2. Here's an idea. Why don't they undo all the legislation that FEDEX lobbied for!

[Pab Sungenis]

3. Why don't they

put it back in the cabinet under proper government control, which is where it was until Nixon spun it off.

For one thing, the Postmaster General should not be receiving a salary larger than the Speaker of the House.