That is an incredible amount of people that may be losing their jobs, even if its half that at 60,000 thats still a great amount of people. USPS will continue to lose money as mail volume drops. In the next 10 years mail will not exist! Everything will be in digital format, you can laugh and think mail will be here for another 50 years but its not. As everything goes digital why even have mail, paperless billing, the ability to read digital magazines and other worthless pieces of junk mail can now be all read with the click of a button. There is no turning around the amount of losses the USPS will rack up over the next years ahead. U.S. NEWS AUGUST 11, 2011, 7:46 P.M. ET Postal Service Considering Cutting 120,000 Jobs Associated Press WASHINGTONâThe financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs. Facing a second year of losses totaling $8 billion or more, the agency also wants to pull its workers out of the retirement and health benefits plans covering federal workers and set up its own benefit systems. Congressional approval would be needed for either step, and both could be expected to face severe opposition from postal unions which have contracts that ban layoffs. The post office has cut 110,000 jobs over the last four years and is currently engaged in eliminating 7,500 administrative staff. In its 2010 annual report, the agency said it had 583,908 career employees. The loss of mail to the Internet and the decline in advertising caused by the recession have rocked the agency. Postal officials have said they will be unable to make a $5.5 billion payment to cover future employee health care costs due Sept. 30. It is the only federal agency required to make such a payment but, because of the complex way government finances are counted, eliminating it would make the federal budget deficit appear $5.5 billion larger. If Congress doesn't act and current losses continue, the post office will be unable to make that payment at the end of September because it will have reached its borrowing limit and simply won't have the cash to do so, the agency said earlier. In that event, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said, "Our intent is to continue to deliver the mail, pay our employees and pay our suppliers." Postal officials have sought congressional assistance repeatedly over the last few years, including requests to be allowed to end Saturday mail delivery, and several bills have been proposed, but none has been acted on. In addition the post office recently said it is considering closing 3,653 post offices, stations and other facilities, about one-tenth of its offices around the country, in an effort to save money. Offices under consideration for closing are largely rural with little traffic. And in June the post office suspended contributions to its employees' pension fund, which it said was overfunded. In its 2010 annual report the post office reported a loss of more than $8 billion on revenues of $67 billion and expenses of $75 billion. And even while total mail volume fell from 202 billion items to 170 billion from 2008 to 2010 the number of places the agency has to deliver mail increased by 1.7 million as Americans built new homes, offices and businesses. The latest cutback plans were first reported by the Washington Post, which said a notice to employees informing them of its proposals stated: "Financial crisis calls for significant actions, we will be insolvent next month due to significant declines in mail volume and retiree health benefit prefunding costs imposed by Congress."
We need to quit throwing good money after bad, by financing a dying industry. Lay 100,000 off, close 2/3's of the offices and go to 3 day delivery.
It is an easy way to close the the budget gap. Most of the jobs lost will be through attrition though. Both sides on the politcal fence can't afford to lose votes in 2012. Just let E-bay take it over. Akuma
S2007S Registered: Aug 2006 Posts: 12876 08-11-11 08:04 PM That is an incredible amount of people that may be losing their jobs, even if its half that at 60,000 thats still a great amount of people. USPS will continue to lose money as mail volume drops. In the next 10 years mail will not exist! Everything will be in digital format, doubtful. they said the same thing about checks. they are still here
Nevertheless... taxpayers will still be expected to pay for ex-postal employee government workers' retirement plans and health care.
With electronic billings, third party carriers like Fedex and UPS it is time for a complete overhaul of the USPS. Never good to see this many people lose jobs but the taxpayer just cannot continue to fund a loser.
"never good" why not. these jobs should not have been created in the 1st place. government jobs are created on the back of private sector.. in case you don't know the public sector is the cause of most economic problems in the private sector.