USPS to Layoff 13,000

We have talked in the past about the precarious situation in which the workers of The United States Postal Service find themselves.  Some of you may recall our coverage from late last year that projected a truly mind-boggling number of layoffs but for those of you who missed out on it here is an excerpt that will get you up to speed in no 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 as it turns out the number of layoffs coming to the workers of The United States Postal Service will not be as bad as the management had initially predicted. On the bright side the service will not be laying off 20,000 people, but that does not mean that the news is all good. The United States Postal Service is still getting ready to cut back on a whopping number of jobs. When the service closes 48 of its mail processing centers of the summer they will be cutting back on about 13,000 workers in the process.

If that number is enough to boggle your mind you are not alone. The layoffs, which were initially protested and had legal action taken against by the union for the workers will likely cause mass layoff notices to go out to the workforce and labor boards in many states. Those notices, which go out when more than 50 workers are being cut from a single location, may delay some of the layoffs, but as a number of the layoffs are slated to happen over the summer the notices may simply be filed in time to not deviate from the plan and keep all of the layoffs going on track.

Sadly these closures will not be the only ones that will be impacted by the cuts to the postal service jobs. Megan Brennan, the chief operating officer of the Postal Service, laid out the plan for the incremental closures to come in the next couple of months in the press release, “We will be conducting consolidation activities this summer at only 48 locations. As a result, nearly all consolidating activities in 2012 will occur in August and then will resume again the early part of next year.”   She then went on to explain how the company has saved jobs in the past through attrition rather than employing more workers than were needed, “The Postal Service has reduced the size of its workforce by 244,000 career employees since 2000 without resorting to layoffs,” said Brennan. “We are a responsible employer and we will work with our employees to ensure a smooth transition to a much leaner organization.”

Customers can expect some changes to their mail delivery, but the post office is not outlining those at the current moment.