The United States Postal Service is the latest federal agency looking to reduce its staff, according to a letter sent to Congress by the Pos
Next time you're around when the mail gets delivered, ask your delivery person if they're understaffed or not.
But don't hold them up too much, they have a lot of work to do.
Y'all NEED to let your conservative family members know about this because the USPS is a LARGE employer of military veterans and has AMAZING benefits.
They employ over 100,000 veterans. Your conservative uncle needs to know those jobs are threatened.
Your regular reminder the USPS does not use tax payer funds
The relevance of “should they” can be debated
The truth of “they don’t” cannot be in good faith
So I ask you — why does it need to be cut? To whom does that benefit? Do you agree with them benefiting?
Postal worker here, with 12 years in the post office! Here are some thoughts:
this early retirement plan is actually a pretty typical retirement incentive—but that's assuming they don't cut the jobs as soon as they are empty. It's a lot cheaper to pay someone with five years' experience than 40, which is why these incentives happen! But it's also much easier to revert jobs that are vacant (removing the job without filling it) than it is to cut a job that's held by someone.
two of our big unions (APWU and NALC) are both mid-contract negotiations currently. THIS IS NOT A GOOD SPOT TO BE IN RIGHT NOW.
A lot of our offices are being audited right now (mostly scheduled pre-Trump). Ours is happening this week. This will determine what jobs get kept vs. cut. If you're friendly with your postal workers, ask them if their office is being audited soon and if so, when, because that would be the day you should go and buy stamps and mail stuff and ask questions.
A *lot* of my more conservative older white man coworkers (many of them vets!) are realizing that their retirement plans are dependent on the stock market not being horrific, because our retirement money is mostly in the Thrift Savings Plan (which is in the stock market). They are angry. This sucks for them but it's radicalizing some of them to be a little LESS trump-positive.
The post office employs an incredibly diverse workforce and only requires folks to have a high school degree or the equivalent, no felonies, and proof that they can legally work in the US. This means a huge number of immigrants and POC and queer folks are able to make a really good living (after a few years you're pretty much guaranteed $60k/year) and certain kinds of people HATE THAT.
I love my job. This isn't a very organized post, but just some relevant thoughts, I think?
