Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Savings: What have we done? What should we do?

Over the past several years, cost management has been central to USPS, achieving $9 billion in cost reductions.


The strategies to get these savings included:

 Reduced employee complement by more than 200,000.
 Negotiated back-to-back agreements with the National Association of Letter Carriers so we can quickly adjust carrier routes to reflect diminished volume.
 Froze salaries of all Postal Service officers and executives.
 Reduced staffing levels at postal headquarters, area and district offices by 15 percent two years ago, and then again this year by 20 percent.
 Sold unused and under-utilized postal facilities.
 Closed 77 Airport Mail Center facilities.
 Closed 10 Remote Encoding Centers.
 Closed nine processing and distribution centers.
 Adjusted Post Office hours to better reflect customer use.
 Consolidated mail processing operations across the board, including elimination of tours at many mail processing plants.
 Reduced Districts from 80 to 67.
 Eliminated the Southeast Area.

From where you sit, what else do you think can be done? Share your thoughts here.

30 comments:

tekgems said...

I would end/cancel any leased property and look at purchasing property with cash, or with very low interest rate loans. I looked at the property reports and too many locations are leased.

UPS has one main distribution hub in my location, but there are at least 5 different under utilized post office properties in the area.

Offer better "tracking" service on packages so businesses and receiving customers can feel confident in using the post office.

Anonymous said...

All these cuts at the P&DC's are being gained on the back of the AO's. Too many PM's are out delivering mail instead of running their own offices and there seems to be no relief in sight. If my office had 1 TE (not allowed as other larger offices are already over compliment) then I would save thousands a year in carrier overtime and I would get to stop donating my time to deliver mail when one of carriers is down and there is no help available from other offices. We need to start forcing PTF's to travel and work outside their own offices. Too many of them just want to work 2 - 4 hours, pay their insurance and go home. Those of us who are PM's worked hard to get where we are; the PM's I know worked 50+ hours a week for years to get here and now we're being forced to do without needed support personnel. I've always loved my job but I'm getting discouraged. My job should be customer service and carrier management; not mail delivery and repeat SOP's and certifying that I read said SOP's. Give me a break; I know how to do my job well - Let me do it!

Anonymous said...

After looking at all that's been cut, why do I get the feeling those of us remaining are left behind to rearrange the deck chairs on the "Titanic"?

Anonymous said...

Do away with postcard class, the lowest price on any mail would be 44 cents, It takes just as much time, maybe more, to handle a postcard as it does a letter. Have a surcharge for substandard (small) mail that can't be machined. We sent some water bills through the other day and they came back as a bundle, couldn't be DPSed because they were too small.

Anonymous said...

I completely agree with doing away with postcard class. Business mailers will get a discount on the 44 cents anyway, and personal postcards should cost the same. I also agree with the elimination of post office spaces that are leased. I believe it would help our business if we advertised more. The flat rate commercials are great, lets expand on that idea! Put ads on the side of LLV's that give basic postal education in an entertaining way.

Anonymous said...

Offer a decent early out package to craft with 20 years or more.

Anonymous said...

Stop using state lines to divide mail processing areas. We have a Mail Processing Facility with offices in the next state that are between 1-6 miles across the state line, the office with CIOSS machines is 30 miles away, and yet that SCF is being sent 60-75 miles farther north to a mail processing site in that state.

Anonymous said...

Since USPS wants to close at least 2000 offices this year, why not offer Postmasters in the smaller offices the choice of early retirement?

We also need to consolidate more district and area offices for even bigger savings.

WAYWARDCATS said...

If we would've been serious a long time ago about managing our personnel who were no longer contributing to our business due to long-term illness or injury we would've reduced expenditures as well. Many of these folks should've and could've been given disability retirements or positions where they could again contribute to the organization.

Anonymous said...

Bust the unions like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers. This is unskilled labor, period. Hire back a new workforce at 1/2 to 3/4 of the current hourly wage.

jasmine krotkov said...

It was really necessary to view postal operations from the point of view of a for-profit institution; that allowed us to eliminate a lot of waste and focus on collecting, processing and delivering the mail efficiently. When it comes to re-defining small post offices as stations and branches, and editing Title 39 in order to evade the rules that are in place for closing facilities that serve rural customers, however, its time to take a step back. It was once recognized that serving rural communities would never be a profitable business, and so the modern Postal Service was formed to perform this task for the nation as a whole. Is that no longer our mandate? Is it no longer necessary to support communication services in rural communities to knit our country together? If not, then fine: close it all down. But before we do that, we should really consider what we want from a Postal Service, and what other uses we the people might have for one of the largest retail networks in the world.

Anonymous said...

I am a PM in a small office. I have 26 years in with 11 of them as a PM. I worked those 50+ hours doing anything that was needed. Now the PTFs are job specific and can not work outside their craft. I learned so much from doing all the jobs and seeing the "other side". Now everyone wants to close the small offices and retire us old-timers. I loved my job(and still do smoe days) and want to stay working for a while yet but it is becoming harder and harder to go to work. Micro management, SOPs, logs, reports, then reports about the reports are making this job very stressful. They promoted me to manage so let me manage! If those of us with many years in retire, the company will lose many dedicated, exerienced workers. Who will the newbees call when we are all gone? No one in the District offices anymore with experience either or the time to answer questions. Just time to disipline.

Anonymous said...

We seem to be looking at employee cuts from the bottom up…..instead of the top down. Why do we have a VP of shipping products? Do we really need to pay someone $150,000 a year to figure out a new box design? Look at the duties of an MPOO and you will find they are basically assistant district managers. How many assistant district managers do you need in each district? They review office reports, approve some leaves, monitor office performance, and micromanage postmasters who don’t agree with their way of thinking. If your district has 10 MPOO’s, they are costing us about one million a year (pay and benefits), and they don’t handle the mail. That would require the districts to give up trying to micromanage so much and concentrate on the actual duties that they should perform. For example, rural carrier Christmas OT does NOT need to be controlled by the area! That million could be spent to keep the smaller offices in place. They closed a couple of districts….but what happened to the work load? In most cases it got pushed down to the postmasters. If the work exists, then keep the employee. If you remove the employee…do away with the work as well. Why remove a HR employee and have that work performed by a PM who is already doing 50+ hours. The PMs are not provided the same training as these employees are but are expected to perform at the same level of expertise. Allow the PMs to manage as the regulations state.

Anonymous said...

Absolutely, allow PM's to manage. We are micro-managed and treated like 6 yr. old children. We know our jobs - let us do them. Cut out the MPOO's and increase efficiency, save money and improve job satisfaction for PM's.

Anonymous said...

Someone will have to explain to me the reason for a buyout for those employees who are all ready retirement elibible? A person is all ready qualified for retirement...and we pay them more money to leave early? Why not simply take away any penality deductions...or simply defer the payments until their normal retirement date. Perhaps they need to put a retention cap on employees.....say 25 or 30 years. The military does this so it constantly has a stream of fresh bodies to train, promote and deploy. The average age of a postal employee is over 50...and we aren't hiring anyone new...someday we will have a massive exudus and no trained employees to take our place. I know someone will say...I don't want to retire yet...or I'm not ready. We are all here at the need of the postal service...not the other way around.

Anonymous said...

How about conserving energy.... lights out or dimmed when no one is working, turn down the heat and raise the temps if there is AC, stop using a plastic trash bag EVERY time there is 3 pieces of paper in the wastebasket, fix leaking bathroom pipes...
you get the picture BUT no one is listening...

Anonymous said...

My understandng of the current incentive is the average employee who is eligible earns $100k per year. So, the payout each year is only 1 month salary, a BIG savings to USPS.

one PO employee said...

I would like to address the small town PMs who are desperately trying to save THEIR jobs instead of helping save the PO money. They are incredibly self-serving: the same way most Postal employees seem to be. I live and work in a small PO in a rural area and I can name at least 7 POs that should have closed at least 10 years ago and I think it's safe to assume that is the case in a lot of rural America. Back when people traveled by horse there were rural POs very close together. As people began moving about with cars the need for POs shrank and they were closed. Now people think nothing of commuting 40 or 50 miles or even more just to their jobs. They have taken their spending habits in that same direction and many small rural towns no longer have even a grocery store. If your town doesn't even have a grocery store in it then the people are traveling to the nearest town that does so they are not going to be inconvenienced to mail their package on the day they go to town to buy groceries. They can still receive their mail and mail letters through their rural carrier so they are not being denied their mail service. The best way the Postal service could save money will be when ALL employees stop being so whiny and self-serving and look at the big picture. There are many good ideas posted here and I do hope that Postal Management is looking at them. The comment about having the PTF's travel and work in other offices or the plant is a very good one. They should contribute more than a couple hours/week. If that it too much of a burden then they can find another job. We all have to pull together and share work duties. Oh! And drop the bonuses. That is really when customer service took a nosedive. Now we chase reports instead to prove up for our bonuses.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the one PO employee. I too realize there really is no reason to keep the very small PO's open. Most could do with Stamps by Mail and yes they can still mail packages from their home. My carriers bring them in all the time. Times have really changed since the inception of the Postal Service. Electricity, vehicles, machinery they have all impacted on the changes of the Postal Service. I started with the Post Office back when everything was still sorted manually. How I miss those days but boy do I ever love DPS!! I do hope the Post Office is around in 100 years, but unless changes are made it might not be.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, I can't agree that we don't need the very rural, small PO's.
My PO is 60 miles from the nearest town, most houses are several miles from their mailboxes on the highway and quite a few of my customers don't have computers or the internet. Trying to mail packages thru the HCR carrier would be a nightmare. I know most PO's aren't this remote and the majority of Americans are now city dwellers, but for the few of us still in the "outback", shutting our PO's is devastating.

Anonymous said...

I agree with the above post, when the next PO is 60 miles away. But we have many PO that are less then 10 miles apart. In fact there are 23 in this district alone!! The clerks need to be made more flexible, let's stop asking...and start requiring people to go where the work is. As long as the clerk is getting paid...why not use them in nearby offices. If they don't want to move around...maybe think about another job. I am a PM and often get called to cover a neighboring office....and I can't cry to the union. It's the unions go away...and become one union who focus on over all benefits and stop the nit-picky grievances for 5 minutes here or there. :(

Anonymous said...

I agree with the above post. No more 5 unions...instead we creat a "postal emplyoee" classification instead of clerk, city carrier, rural carrier, custodian, and mail handler. Employees will go where needed, when they are needed....period. No more crying about the mail handler who "touched" my tray of mail. Or the guy who has to work OT and the other 20 junior people getting paid bypass OT. We need to be thankful for having a job and finding work for us to do!!

Anonymous said...

i agree with leaving the small rural offices open.consolidate if offices are 10 miles apart,but don't close all of us down.we would have to travel 55 miles to get our mail.and alot of mu customers don't have internet.if they are going to offer incentives they need to offer it to everyone who is eligiable.if they offer it to me i would probably take it.

Anonymous said...

Ok so there are always exceptions to everything. Yes the ones that have a near by Post Office should be closed down. As for the post that said doing a parcel through the HCR driver would be a nightmare. That is part of their job! And I fully agree with doing away with the Unions!! Why do you think we have workers that won't perform, because the Unions fights to retain them. I really like the idea of creating a Postal employee with no seperation of duties. Crossing crafts should have been a thing of the past long time ago.

jasmine krotkov said...

All this talk about how far customers are willing to drive to get their mail or how far PTFs should have to drive to work misses the point. Keeping small POs open isn’t just about money. If we closed all the small post offices in the nation, we’d save about 1/7th of 1 percent of the postal service’s budget. Keeping those offices open is a small price to pay for the loyalty of our customers and for the opportunity of serving them in different ways. I live in a rural area where UPS and Fed Ex don’t deliver every day, but the Postal Service does. If I have to depend on a for-profit business to get my mail and packages, I’ll be at a disadvantage compared to my city friends. And why should we shut down all these service locations, where other government agencies could be providing services? Instead of shutting down the little post offices, allow them to take payments for the DMV, to issue permits, to offer internet services and email addresses.

Anonymous said...

I think we have cut the business to the bone trying to save money...what about developing more services and products in order to GROW the business?? We should be looking at our small rural PO's as retail outlets and business centers for their respective communities...a "one-stop shop", if you will. Why do we keep harping on cutting, cutting, cutting? Pretty soon, there won't be anything left to cut, and the Postal Service will cease to exist as a viable business...then where will all of us be?

Anonymous said...

I agree with the one-stop shopping approach. But,instead of a one-size fits all approach, try a limited number of test products in the smaller facilities. We may be able to sell a few greeting cards, but probably not hundreds.

To address the issue of "bonuses" mentioned, union employees have step increases, contract increases, and COLAS. Management ONLY has "pay for performance," still with a lot of faults but far better than the previous system. We get no other increases unless we are promoted, very unlikely for years to come.

Anonymous said...

leave small rural offices alone.If an offie is vacant let the OIC have the job.It is so simple.Does the PMG read our comments? I think he should

Anonymous said...

I am a clerk and totally agree that we should cross crafts! Get rid of the 5 different unions! Consolidate it to one union...unions are there for the employees, not for nit picking. I would love to get more hours and if we were allowed to cross crafts, I would be able to help the post office be more effecient! Why pay someone mileage because you had to borrow them from another office, if there is someone in your office who would like to work? CROSSING CRAFTS would save LOTS of money for the post office!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

I work in a rural small post office.Why not offer the early out incentive to everyone.I would take the early out.I liked working for the postal service.I am not so sure anymore.We are always worried about this and that.No one is thinking of the postamsters or employees that are actually doing the work.I wish the Postmaster General would read the comments posted here.