US Postal Service looks to cut 40,000 jobs in first layoff in history

Posted by DarthDilbert at 11/10/2008 03:20:00 PM

"We lost 2 billion dollars and like any other business we have to stay afloat." And to keep from sinking, the United States Postal Service is considering cutting thousands of jobs nationwide. Lavelle Pepper with the post office in Shreveport says they too are feeling the affects of the same disease hitting the country... a struggling economy. "We employ about 685,000 people. If we do layoffs it would include clerks, carriers, mail handlers across all crafts." Pepper says the postal service is looking to eliminate 40,000 jobs nationwide. There's not an exact number on how many of those could be from the Ark-La-Tex. Pepper says workers who are not part of union with six or less years of service would likely be the first on the chopping block. "We've identified 16 thousand people that are not covered under contract. We'll see what those numbers add up to."

Why stop there? That would represent only a five percent cut. If they were to triple or quadruple that number then it would be accomplishing something finally. Better yet, privatize this bloated agency and let the free market decide.

KSLA-TV

2 comments

# posted by Blogger Ditto : 11/11/2008 09:26:00 AM
I disagree with you big time about the Postal Service being bloated. At the Post Office where I work, we have 2 custodians doing the work of 5. We have at least 6 city routes they haven't filled with full time carriers so the other carriers are having to split those routes up and carry them in addition to their regular routes. On the rural route side, we aren't fat as far as substitute carriers go and, I've heard they're not hiring new ones.

The Postal Service does have some serious problems. I think one of the biggest problems among its employees is the "they can't fire us" attitude. This means they can pull all kinds of stuff they could never get away with in the civilian world. We have one sub who won't carry routes the sub doesn't like. If the sub get assigned to one of those routes, the sub claims they're sick and doesn't show up. You can imagine the problems this causes. So far, the sub's attitude that they can't be fired has been justified. The sub has been written up 8 TIMES and they still haven't gotten rid of this sub. I heard of another full time carrier they had where I work where that carrier got 3 count em 3 last chances before they got rid of that carrier. This is ridiculous.

Hopefully, the layoffs will wake up some of these problem employees up though I have doubts it will. The axiom of "you better take care of your customers or someone else will" holds true to the Postal Service too. For a long time, it had a monopoly on mail delivery and it didn't have to worry about its customers. It was the only game in town. That has changed though I think the Postal Service is still paying for the complacency it showed its customers then. The Postal Service is trying hard to meet the needs of its customers but, "you can't fire us" employees aren't helping things. The coming years promise to be difficult for the U.S. Postal Service.
 
# posted by Blogger darthdilbert : 11/11/2008 01:40:00 PM
FedEx had $38,973,000,000 less revenue than the post office in 2007, but were able to finish with a profit of $2,016,000,000 while the post office had a loss of $5,142,000,000. FedEx did this with only 35% the number of employees that the post office has.
 

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