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Postal Service Offers Early Retirement, Will Close District Offices

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Staff and Wire Report

Published: March 20, 2009

Updated: 03/20/2009 07:55 pm

Battered by the economy, the post office is offering early retirement to 150,000 workers, cutting management and closing district offices, including one in Florida, the agency said Friday.

The Postal Service lost $2.8 billion last year and is facing even larger losses this year, despite a rate increase — to 44 cents for first-class mail — scheduled to take effect May 11.

The agency said it will reduce management staff nationwide by 15 percent, with more than 1,400 processing, supervisor and management posts at 400 facilities being eliminated. Another 150,000 postal workers will be offered early retirement.

The postal service will close six of its 80 district offices across the country. The Florida office that will close is in Lake Mary, which is north of Orlando in Seminole County. The others are in North Reading, Mass.; Manchester, N.H.; Edison, N.J.; Erie, Pa.; and Spokane, Wash.

It's unclear how many Tampa employees might take early retirement, but Gary Sawtelle, a Tampa-based postal service spokesman, said the level of service will remain high for area customers.

That's in large part because the amount of mail being sent each year is substantially declining, meaning the post office's workload is dropping as well.

"These actions are being taken because currently in the post office, with our volume of mail so low and trending lower, we are trying to basically adjust our service to that volume … to become more efficient," he said.

Sawtelle said the functions of the Lake Mary district office will be consolidated into already existing districts in Tampa and South Florida. He said it's too early to tell how closing that office will impact staffing in Tampa.

"It was announced today. It's really early on," he said. "This consolidation isn't going to happen overnight."

The agency also made early retirement offers last year but unions discouraged their members from accepting the offers and they were not widely used. The post office did not say if the new proposal would include financial incentives.

The American Postal Workers Union issued a statement Friday saying: "Retirement is a personal matter, and the union defers to the decisions of employees who meet the qualifications."

However, the union said it continues to challenge the Postal Service's authority to offer voluntary early retirement without including severance pay.

District offices handle administrative functions; the closings are expected to take about five months.

The first quarter of the fiscal year — October through December — is usually the post office's busiest, but it still posted a loss of $384 million for the period.

Officials said the economic recession contributed to a 5.2 billion piece mail volume decline compared to the same period last year. If there is no economic recovery, the Postal Service projects volume for the year will be down by 12 billion to 15 billion pieces of mail.

The post office said that over the past year it has cut 50 million work hours, stopped construction of new postal facilities; froze salaries for postal executives, began selling unused facilities and cut post office hours.

Postmaster General John Potter has even asked Congress to consider allowing the agency to cut mail delivery back to five days-a-week to save money.

The post office does not receive a taxpayer subsidy for its operations.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report. Reporter Josh Poltilove contributed to this report.

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