As Don Cheney pointed out:
With all the other commotion going on, most eligible postal employees have overlooked this. I’m amazed anyone would retire right now without waiting to see what comes out of Congress by November 18th, the new deadline for USPS to make its $5.5 billion payment. The administration will not back USPS’ proposal to alter labor contract provisions that prohibit layoffs, however. Officials on Monday expressed support for continued use of buyouts and early retirement offers, which they said could be funded in part with the FERS refund. The administration also is taking a closer look at the agency’s request to withdraw from federal benefit programs, they said.
The measures already are drawing mixed reactions from Congress, which has several bills in play to bring the Postal Service back to fiscal health. House lawmakers earlier this month introduced legislation that would extend by 90 days the Postal Service’s deadline to make its retiree health fund contribution and are working on proposals that would allow USPS to offer retirement incentives and adjust its retiree benefits payment schedule, for example. Govexec.com
Don also highlighted recent statements by Senator Tom Carper and Congressman Carney:
Carper, Carney confident Postal Service will be saved
By Frank Gerace
September 30, 2011
Senator Carper and Congressman Carney are confident lawmakers can come up with a plan to save the Postal Service.
Carper tells WDEL News he and his colleagues will “go by the rules in determining which facilities to close.
Fellow Democrat Carney puts the blame for the agency’s current financial woes on the federal government.
Carper says one thing the Postal Service wants to do to cut costs is offer eligible workers early retirement, similar to what’s been done in the auto industry.
Hopefully postal workers will get another bite of the early retirement with incentives apple very soon.
I GOT 29 YEARS IN. SHOW ME THE OFFER,BROTHER AND I’N GONE WITH THE WIND!!!
To all of you naysayers who state there is 1 supervisor for 4 employees, well not in my office. I am 1 of 2 supervisors with 56 employee (41 carriers in 2 zones 13 clerks and 2 custodians and 1 Voma). Yes I work 12 to 14 hours per day making sure I have enough staffing to ensure mail delivery. Do I do this to make my pockets fat? No I do it so I can complete my work do street supervision, do my reports, clean clock rings, handle customers on the phone, email and in person, and most important, so I don’t get called to the carpet for having “after 7’s”…that is carriers on the street after 7pm. I don’t harrass my employees, as a matter of fact they enjoy working under my supervision and their performance proves it. You all need to stop the whining about too much supervison. At my level, we are understaffed!
Add five years to my service time that i can use toward retirement and I am gone otherwise I will have to work it and collect, annual leave, sick leave, health benefits, holidays, etc. It only makes sense to offer five years added to service time, you save a boat load of money that way and you get rid of senior people. J.
The only solution is to fire all management and labor to take over. Labor was doomed when you voted to trade the right to strike for cost of living allowances.
YOU SUCK WITH ISSA’S TEABAG OVER YOUR BLIND EYES.
Sorry, the PO was doomed from the day it began and the PO Dept stopped being part of govt. We make a ton more money now while in the 60s & 70s we made a ton less. No middle ground.. employees of all levels priced themselves out of a job,,, (called employees as there are no ‘workers’ or ‘labor’ at the PO). I was there 38 years and retired over a decade ago,,,,, and you guys still WHINE instead of looking for solutions!
I am a Postmaster in a level 11 office. I work alone in my office. I have 26 1/2 years. I will gladly take a VERA. Then there will be no Postmaster in the office and the USPS will be able to close the office. They keep talking about closings but no one seems to remember the savings of closing all level 11 offices and below in the nation. The savings would be seven tenths of one percent of the budget. It seems to me like they want to get rid of these offices just to reduce the small headaches. This will hurt rural America. But I will go if the offer is made. I love the community I was raised in and I will miss my job. I love being a Postmaster. We are going back to the 1980’s as far as distribution. There is no overstaffing in our area. We have Postmasters working six days a week (in level 13’s and below) and clerks working their tails off in larger offices due to short staffing and not hiring PMR’s.
Offer me the VERA please.
Management at USPS is a farce!Get rid of all the free-loading managers!They are paid way more than the workers,and do nothing!The public is lead to believe that the 220,000 employee downsizing is for all employees,when in fact it is only for the workers….not the dopey,lazy managers that are sucking us dry!!!!!!These loafing dufuses wasted $29M alone in Fiscal 2010 by WILLFULLY violating the labor contracts because they are too lazy and stupid to figure out each day how to manage their workforce!!!!!Start doing your stinking job as a manager!!!!!!!!!!!!
The republicon tea bagging Coup d’Etat will be over in 2012. So you think it is ok for the Koch brothers to finance 687 tea-bag politicians so he can privatize the EPA that will fine him 3 billion dollars for choking us all with his paper towel factory smoke stacks. He spent over a billion dollars to try and buy our country’s’ government. Yes the Koch brothers are fascists and you won’t succeed in buying our government. The Supreme Court needs to be recalled for allowing it. It should be treason for a politician to accept an unlimited amount of money for a political position. 2012 will be the end of your Coup d’Etat.
Mr. correct I get it from the horse’s mouth
Benito Mussolini quotes:
” Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power”
“Fascism is a religious concept”
“All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.”
“Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power”
Are you threatened by the workers saving the Postal service? Why don’t you move to Italy where the workers hung Mussolini and his family and let them rot in the street for a month?
Ms K, I agree with you.Put these pieces of SHIT mgmt. back on the street and see if they can do what we do! It’s like the old game show name that tune where contestants name a tune with as little notes of the song as possible.Mgmt. tells us that we don’t need as much time as we asked for to deliver the mail.I tell them you do in the time you expect me to do it in!
Sorry people but if the money is right, color me GONE.
Employees elgible to retire should be notified by OPM as to the effective date and options available. 65-70 yrs. with 35-40 service time should leave to give younger employees with families an opportunity to work necessary time to have a retirement. Older employees with age and 35-40 years service time awaiting a buyout. They should be retired by OPM and notified as to effective date otherwise they will be around on life support.
It cannot be saved, take the early outs and incentives and breath a deep sigh of relief and move on with your life, let these dirtbags and assvisors deal with it, its not worth your Health anymore, you cannot change these people, it is time to go , if you have the time in, go, end of a long horror story.
These people, Politicians, Managers, TeaCup swindlers are peasants and simple minds, anyone with any amount of experience know its like talking to your senile neighbor about keeping his yard clean, you don’t resolve anything.
Issa thinks hes the next Clark Gable, auditioning for the Old ladies down in Florida, flat out lieing SOB, it always shows what S*&^T you get with what money can buy.
@ Firepotter. Hey , You need to learn your definitions. By definition, corporations can’t be fascists. Fascism is a totalitarian principle, where the State ( which means Government ) allows the private ownership of companies, but totally controls them. Kinda like what obama likes to do through overregulation of everything. You would be correct if you called him a fascist. By the way , obama is also a marxist. Why, because the definition of Marxism is the overthrow of capitalism, with the eventual attainment of a classless society, with the State controlling the means of production. If you think that obama gives a shit about you, you would be very uninformed. People, in his eyes you are all just Serf’s. Just go read” The road to serfdom,” which was written decades ago about Russia. BY the way, SERF’S is the russian way to say slaves. Slaves to government control.
Management has no idea about what’s going on on the road. Like I said once before IF MAIL VOLUME IS DOWN WHAT IS THERE FOR MANAGEMENT TO COUNT!!!!They abviously don’t know how to handle problems if a customer calls and they have to ask us why the problem exists. District knows how much mail is coming into each office to deliver why do we need mgmt.??Doesn’t DOIS tell them what to do????? It sure knows how to tell them that the hour yesterday is now a half hour today.I hope they all end up on the street again. F__k em. Show me no penalties and I’ll be out the door FIRST!!! THE SOONER THE BETTER!!!!
I’m also ready to hit the road, bring on the VERA, give us 3-5 years and you can keep your money….I’m gone…like a flash out the door….I want away from all this stress NOW!
We are told as employee’s not to talk to the public or the press about the USPS.
I thought freedom of speech was one of our constitutional rights.I truly believe management is trying to get workers to quit or get them fired.They are treating the workers horrible and the customers are getting no service. I am embarrassed and ashamed at the treatment of our customers.They may as well take the service out of united states postal.I pray for an early out without penalties 27 years I have in and am being treated like a two year old by management who knows nothing and barely has 6 yrs in giving direct orders to not give service to the public.
C’mon. You guys know you need me. Who else is going to kick you in the ass to make you do something?
I wish congress and America would get on board and get a grip of what is really going on with the USPS. Cut jobs? YES cut jobs… cut 75% of management!!! That is the only position within the postal service that is NOT moving the mail. Does every station really need a post master? Why do we need a District manager if we have an area manager? Why do we need a Manger of Postal Operations if we have a District manger? The postal service has a manager for the manager for the manager for the manager for the post master for the station manager for the supervisor… REALLY?!??!? Do we need 1(one) supervisor/manager for 10 yes TEN employees??? And congress wants to cut labor jobs? If all the labor jobs are cut does that mean management is going to sort and carry mail? In my opinion, every manager that has been promoted couldn’t cut it as a clerk, mail handler or carrier and so they got promoted. The worst of the worst are the ones trying to manage the Post Office … They couldn’t do what we do everyday so they got promoted. No wonder they invented micro-manage everything… they couldnt do so they think we can’t. To be quite honest … WE DONT NEED MANAGEMENT AT ALL. Cut jobs? Yes cut management … try 1 supervisor for every 30 or 40 employees. That would be a qualified supervisor… IM JUST SAYING!!
LOOK: Wave the 55year age limit with 2% penalty/year for full benefits and tens of thousands will go.
10,000 + 10,000+ 10,000 +…
give us $1000. per year of service and add 8 years to our time…. and alot of csrs people will be gone…. i do not want to lose my house. offering less, i’d rather stay another 8 years. thank you.
prefund it all’ then when you close it down all the retirees get their full pension.Or if you dont prefund it and when it is closed down all the retirees get screwed. leave the money in the bank
Our supervisors are working 6 days a week 12 and 13 hours a day. What most employees don’t know is they will say they are not getting overtime, but they are getting straight time for all those hours. 2 of our supervisors are getting 25 to 28 hours extra every week and we don’t need them their. They are only harrasing all the employees and making their wallets fat. Is this happening in your office?
I agree with you Raymond – Reagan implemented this law of working until you drop so that his friends can work until they drop. Look at the age of the politicians in congress – unbelievable!!!! Now they want to fix this PROBLEM within the USPS
because it’s workers decided to take advantage of this no age limit. Get rid of management and their freeloading. They don’t use their annual leave like we are forced to. Depending on your level – they don’t pay for healthcare. GET WID OF THESE FREELOADERS – IT WOULD SAVE THE USPS LOADS OF CASH. TOO MANY MDO’S – FOR WHAT. THEY WALK AROUND WITH THEIR HANDS IN THEIR POCKETS DOING NOTHING BUT GETTING PAID.
If I recall, President Reagan changed Retirement age, Instead of 30yrs then I Can retire, He place age restrictions…. 55yrs old. The Gov’t is the one that created the overflow of employees…. So now the problem is that we have many postal employees who now could retire that won’t…. Reagan & Congress created this problem today. Now you have Congressman proposing to lay off qualified retiree, as Services no longer needen to reduce the work force…. which in fact is age discrimination…. Congress should in fact offer a serious incentives and buyouts to workers that was actually forced to work over 30 yrs & over 55 instead of trying to EXECUTE them into Retirement… These are the kind of people elected into office that eventually turn against workers that they suppose to help. WE THE PEOPLE……….
Anyone who is anti-union is a tea bagging crack head that believes that the earthquakes and hurricanes are gods’ wrath against democrats and the middle class. Look at your history. April 1937 Hitler’s 1st act of power was to assassinate the 5 German union presidents. Anyone who doesn’t know their history is doomed to repeat it. So when the corporate fascists succeed at destroying our union and our postal service who will protect and fight for your working contract with management? The SS or the Gestapo? Issa or Ross? The Koch Brothers’who financed 687 of these tea bagging clowns? Pick one Adolf, I mean D Issa
Winters are hard up in Brokeback Mountain, you and Ross need to get the sheep to market and quite screwing around.
What a bunch of winey little babies. Most of you are not even real Caucosoid Americans. It was a mistake to give you any federal benefits. You should have played more sports or learned music. I am making things the way they should have always been. Americans deserve mail delivery without having to worry about whether or not the carrier is going to rob or rape them. In the mean time we will keep pretending you people have a say in the matter. The desicion was made a decade ago by my party. This is what you get for siding with the wrong side during the last big chair elections.
Management has increased 28% since 2000 and the workers have decreased 20%. This is why customer service has fallen. . Now they want to decrease our ranks by 220.000. That leaves about 400,000 to do real work. If management gets their way again this means 1 boss for every 4 workers. It was 1 for 55 when a stamp was 23 cents. Even with HR 1351 passing this won’t keep management from destroying our postal service. They will continue increasing their ranks and paying their bloated salaries with our jobs. Management will still close plants and stop universal service to pay their bonuses’. We still here congressmen telling Donabloe how good of a job he is doing. I don’t see it! I say FIRE DONAHOE! And get rid of the middle man. LOCK OUT ALL MANAGEMENT!
Quote: WAY TOO MUCH MANAGEMENT!!!! For every 4 craft employees (Carrier,clerk , mailhandler) there is 1 manager (supervisor, postmaster, and above). If you do not touch the mail you are DEAD WEIGHT!!!! over 40 Vice-presidents!! all of whom make around 200K before benefits! That is the problem with the postal service aside from the pre-funding debacle.
Absolutely and you should see local management all of a sudden attempting to make themselves look busy. I had never seem a supervisor working the hot case or sorting out going mail at the back of the station. Where are the bags of blockbuster movies they would walk straight into their office with? Where are the daily three hour hen parties with clerks and mail handlers in the break area. Where are the 6 hour solitary/ surf the web sessions they had. Oh yeah they still do most of this. The pretending is not fooling anyone. Given that this happens at many companies it should not be tolerated with the us mail and especially not in this environment.
Chicago is overstaffed, take some of ours please. Four subs in one station delivering parcels and express all day. More than likely with 20 minute intervals between deliveries. Let’s get these subs some routes by having buyouts for carriers that have gone past their retirement time.
Create a new t6 position for daily operations and have the 6 most senior carriers switch off every day. This way we will be managed by our peers and not make work inbred micro- managers. The current management scam has no accountability and think the postal service needs them. WE DON’T! The other crafts can do the same.
Eliminate 110,000 managers equals 7 billion 150 million dollars in savings. Create 10k new t6’s to replace management costs only 500 million. It can be done. This is what our union should be pushing for. Then we won’t have to negotiate with a middle man like we are with management. It will be with an arbitrator. It goes to arbitration every contract anyway.
Sure glad I got mine before the $hit hit the fan !
Good luck to the rest of you suckers, and ……. more Beef Wellington please !
As a sidebar. Be careful of the “incentives.” Read the ELM on the types of Annuities. The “Supplement” is only given if there is a VERA (involuntary separation) or you worked 30 years of service including 5 years of civilian service. Most people think its automatic for everyone, it’s not. In SF(CA) a VERA was offerred but it did not apply to Mail Handlers.
To Bill @ 4:55. You hit the nail on the head. It’s a great book which leads me to believe that the $5.5 billion per year from the USPS is nothing more than shake down money. In past years I’ve exposed the USPS’s fraudulent business practices to Nancy Pelosi, OIG, DoJ and the EEOC and to no avail no one did anything about it. I even have an AJ’s EEOC Decision that stated the file was to be destroyed in 60 days. As long as the Gov’t gets it $5.5 billion it keeps calling off the dogs while Mismanagement continues to fleece the USPS. The Gov’t needs the $5.5 billion to pay off FEMA’s $3.9 billion to the tornado/flood victims. Those families will not have a home this winter because the USPS stole the money that was to be paid to the Gov’t. The USPS is presently deleting “Run Files” from the various machines to show low volumes while the whole time they are skimming the money generated by the presort/collection mail. Shoooooot Lukey “We just cancelled 1,000,000 pieces but our machines show we only did 550,000 pieces. What happen to the money that was generated from the other 450,000 pieces?” Ooops, there goes my $$$BONUS$$$ for 2012. This is going on all over the country and no one will do anything about it. The Press was given instructions by Washington to not do any investigating reporting on the USPS. This is all a sham perpetrated by the US Gov’t and the USPS. Hopefully someone in Congress and the Senate will do the right thing. I still have faith.
NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS, IN A FEW YEARS THE POSTAL MANAGERS WILL BE CRYING ABOUT BEING IN DEBT ONCE AGAIN. MANAGE THE PLACE, MAKE PEOPLE WORK,GET RID OF THE SLACKERS, STOP DOGGING THE PEOPLE WHO WORK. STREAMLINE THE MANAGEMENT TEAM!
For the first time in USPS history, we now have a PMG who is intentionally ignoring
contracts, postal laws and regulations and demoralizing employees to achieve “privatization”. In my almost 40 years of employment I have never seen such low moral and a feeling of hoplessness. Donahoe is doing all of this under the premise of “saving” the Postal Service but in truth to privatize the Postal Service. And if this can be achieved under his watch, will elevate himself into more than likely a nice seven figure salary. I hope an pray that when all of the congressional dust has settled, the next step will be to relieve the PMG of his position with an individual who does not speak lies.
Not only do we have to much management the managers we have working for the u.s. postal service are under trained or they knew someone with thepower to promote them.And I have also seen employee’s promoted to a hire position because they screwed up at the last position they held.You talk about a waste of money;its a joke to the hire ups its not their worry anymore that employee is moved to another facility asap.Feed Up.
WAY TOO MUCH MANAGEMENT!!!! For every 4 craft employees (Carrier,clerk , mailhandler) there is 1 manager (supervisor, postmaster, and above). If you do not touch the mail you are DEAD WEIGHT!!!! over 40 Vice-presidents!! all of whom make around 200K before benefits! That is the problem with the postal service aside from the pre-funding debacle.
It does seem apparent that the USPS will probably offer VERA’s sometime down the road, but they want to ‘scare’ employees out first. In the present economy it is my opinion that most employees that are eligible to retire may be reluctant to do so. As many posters have stated, the USPS is so understaffed, especially in the Retail Units, it would seem a bit hard to believe we could reduce in these areas? With the long lines now, it is also hard to believe that our customers will be content to stay with us. There must be some alternatives,especially in light of the fact that the USPS must truy to ‘keep’ the customers we have right now!
Joe Paul
I think every worker in America should read “RETIREMENT HEIST how companies plunder and profit from the nest eggs of the American workers by Ellen E Schultz”. The internet, government and postal management put the post office in its present financial state. Some of the proposed fixes sound like what was sold to workers who lost big time from their pensions in some very big companies in America. Do we think new healthcare and retirement packages will be better than what we now have? Read the book and I think everyone will see this has been offered to others and they now know they have been had.
Read the book don’t trust these clowns
Iam ready to retire as soon as possible! Show me the VERA!
all the comments above about being understaffed are accurate. throw in the fact that they are overstaffed in management and you come to the conclusion that they just dont care. they really really dont. mail will pile up in offices all over the country. not all first class mail will go out for delivery on a daily basis even after it finally gets to the carriers case!!!.. its coming.. they dont care. its all about the bottom line and saving their own asses… as far as incentives. they knew months ago they would have to offer incentives. when they dragged their feet and waited past sept 1.. you had to figure they would make you work thru xmas… dont think logicially.. they dont.. think like them… life will get easier if you do..those eligible should take the incentive and leave. if you are 55 with 30.. you are still young.. find something else to supplement what you will be losing.. if they waive penalties for under 55.. leave.. and then read above..
It would be great if they could offer a decent incentive package to retirement eligible employees.( up to 1 yr pay based on years of service, paid over 52 weeks) The way most of our elective officials have retirement set for them at the cost of all of us, they should have a little more compassion for people who have dedicated their lives(30-40yrs) to the gov’t. and really work!
I agree laying off more employees sounds ridiculous given the current work load of workers now. They are paying lots of overtime and forcing these workers to come in and do the work. Something doesn’t click! Who is making these decisions. Advertising? Now? Really? What a waste of money that is not there. Sounds like the Gov’t – spending foolishly
democrat talking closing offices? Come on somebody give him some money and get him back in line.
My plant is closing on that very date, what a coincidence. Yes they should give a vera offer. It would be very productiive at FP&D. And about the only conclusion to be drawn is, privitization is the goal of the current leadership of usps.
IF YOU SUPERVISORS/POSTMASTERS WOULD WORK THE WINDOW UNDERSTAFFED AS I DO YOU WOULD NOT BE MAKING THESE STUPID DECISIONS TO CUT MORE JOBS GET WITH THE PROGRAM YOU’RE CUTTING UR OWN THROATS
Gimme some sugar!
We are short clerks and carriers…..working a ton of overtime! Cut employees? Really?
Dear Santa
Make it sweet.
THE ‘REDUCTION’ IN WORKFORCE BLOWS MY MIND! WE ARE ALREADY SO UNDERSTAFFED: CARRIERS AS WELL AS CLERKS. TO GENERATE REVENUE WE NEED MORE CLERKS ON WINDOWS , WORKING HOURS THAT DRAW WORKING CUSTOMERS TO USE OUR SERVICES. AT OUR OFFICE ,WE DO NOT HAVE A CARRIER ON EVERY ROUTE. WE ARE A SERVICE INDUSTRY (WHICH MANY ARE FORGETTING. ) IF YOU KEEP CUTTING SERVICE, YOU WILL BE LOSING MONEY AND CUSTOMERS. ALL THIS ‘CUT, CUT, CUT’ IS THEIR SCHEME TO LOSE CUSTOMERS, MAKE US LOOK BAD, AND THEN PRIVATIZATION WILL COME IN. THIS WILL CLEAR THE WAY FOR LOWER WAGE,NO BENEFIT JOBS AND HIGHER PROFITS FOR THE ELITE. TOO BAD FOR THE NEEDS OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE,