Quoted Text

Postal Service
to close offices,
eliminate jobs
    WASHINGTON — Battered by the economy, the post office is offering early retirement to 150,000 workers, cutting management and closing offices, 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.
    And another 150,000 postal workers will be offered early retirement.
    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 offi ce 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.

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Quoted Text

Postal chief says post office running out of money, needs help
The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — The post office will run out of money this year unless it gets help, Postmaster General John Potter told Congress on Wednesday as he sought permission to cut delivery to five days a week.
    “We are facing losses of historic proportion. Our situation is critical,” Potter told a House panel.
    The agency lost $2.8 billion last year and is looking at much larger losses this year. Reducing mail delivery from six days to five days a week could save $3.5 billion annually, Potter said.
    Potter also urged changes in how the post office pre-pays for retiree health care to cut its annual costs by $2 billion.
    If the Postal Service does run out of money, the lingering question, Potter told the House Oversight post office subcommittee, is which bills will be paid and which will not. Ensuring the payment of workers’ salaries comes first, he said, but other bills may have to wait.
    Potter first raised the possibility of delivery cutbacks in January, but the idea has not been warmly received in Congress.
    “With the Postal Service facing budget shortfalls, the subcommittee will consider a number of options to restore financial stability and examine ways for the Postal Service to continue to operate without cutting services,” subcommittee chairman Stephen F. Lynch, D-Mass., said.
    Lynch said the financial stability of the Postal Service is “critical to the American expectation of affordable six-day mail delivery.”
    Even if the agency succeeds in reaching its planned cost cuts of $5.9 billion, there could still be a $6 billion deficit in 2010, Potter said.
    “Without a change we will exhaust our cash resources,” he said. “We can no longer afford business as usual.”
    Asked if layoffs would occur, Potter said it is possible but he hopes avoidable.
    Last week, the post office said it planned to offer early retirement to 150,000 workers and is eliminating 1,400 management positions and closing six of its 80 district offices in cost-cutting efforts. Potter said he expects 10,000 to 15,000 workers to accept the early retirement offer.
    Dan Blair, head of the independent Postal Regulatory Commission, suggested that other savings are possible through closing small and rural post offices — something Congress has resisted in the past. He added that it may be necessary to increase the limit on the amount of debt the post office can carry.
    The post office had a $384 million loss in the first quarter of the fi scal year — October through December — which ...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....amp;EntityId=Ar00403

It's not running out of money it is becoming obsolete......the only problem is that not everyone is here talking and communicating like we are.....
there is a HUGE segment of the population who is/will be 'left behind'.......anyone remember Demolition Man??? the underground society???