Postal Workers Protest Possible Job Cuts

Going postal just took on a new meaning. While in the 90’s it referred to an employee of the postal service who took some seriously unfortunately actions related to their employment. After the current employment cuts to civil servants the phrase going postal may just talk about what is being done to them, and how they will respond.

In the city of Seattle the postal workers to be cut recently held a protest at Seattle’s Federal Building as part of a The National Association of Letter Carriers that took place all over the nation. The protest is designed to help persuade the members of congress to not allow the cuts of postal employees.

We’ve talked about the cuts to the postal system in the past. For those of you who want to know more about the extent of the proposed cuts here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in not time at all:

“The U.S. postal service is getting ready to do something completely unprecedented in its history. They are getting ready to layoff members of their staff. In what is an expected move for an organization that is just now able to layoff workers for the first time in its history, the numbers are not small. If all goes according to the current plan about 30,000 postal workers are expected to be out of a job at some point in 2012.”

Well it looks like that is not happening any time in the near future.  On Tuesday the U.S. Postal Service has agreed to at the very least delay the closure of some 252 mail processing centers and 3,700 local post offices in rural areas. Not that these centers are getting much of a delay. The closures have only been held off until the middle of May 2012.

Today the post office released a statement saying the they were wiling to hold off on putting people out of jobs in order to give the members of congress extra time to pass a law that would give the post office more control over their finances. Some of the specifics that the Post Office is looking for include more authority over their money, and the ability to be more liquid.

The Post Office is sitting on some serious debt, which is expected to default on Friday to a  $5.5 billion payment that they owe to the U.S. Treasury. On the whole the service is expected to lose about $14.1 billion next year, which would be a record loss.”

While these workers say they will cut the whole of the Saturday coverage as time goes on the situation may be completely unavoidable, as the post offices has mounting debts, serious cuts to the number of letters being carried by the service and competition from the private package services. Given that the majority of the system is now held up by the delivery of bulk mail, the kind of advertising that is thrown out by most recipients, the postal service is fighting to keep jobs that may actually hasten the decline of the service, instead of slowing it.