USPS warns of shutdown
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
USPS warns of shutdown
By: Tim Mak, Politico
U.S. Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe on Tuesday will ask
Congress to take drastic measures to prevent the Postal Service
from becoming insolvent and going out of business as early as this
year.
Never before has the Postal Service been in such dire straits:
the agency is so low on cash that it may not be able to make a $5.5
billion payment due this month for retirees and could have to shut
down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action,
reports the New York Times.
In a hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and
Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday, Donahue will likely
request that Congress allow the agency to override the anti-layoff
provisions in its union contracts, Donahue will also likely ask
permission to withdraw his 563,000 employees from the health and
retirement plans that cover federal employees so that the the
agency can offer less generous programs.
In order to deal with losses and the increased digitization of
mail, the Postal Service claims that it needs to trim 220,000
positions from its workforce by 2015 - 100,000 should be accounted
for by attrition, but the remaining 120,000 would need to be
eliminated by layoffs.
The U.S. Postal Service will handle 167 billion pieces of mail
this year, down 22 percent from five years ago. The agency also
plans to stop delivering mail on Saturdays.
"It is imperative that we have the ability to reduce our
workforce rapidly… . It is not likely that the Postal Service will
be able to eliminate these layoff protections through collective
bargaining," reads a USPS white paper.
American Postal Workers Union President Cliff Guffey has plans
to call Donahoe's plans "outrageous, illegal and despicable," in
his prepared testimony, according to the Washington Post.
Donahue, himself a former Postal Union Member, plans to tell
Congress that unless rapid action is taken, the Postal Service
could be technically insolvent by the end of the month, even as it
can continue technically continue delivering the mail until next
August.