Excerpts from the National Association of Postal Supervisors Legislative & Regulatory Update:
“NAPS President Keating called upon the Postal Service to strip away top levels of management and take other cost-cutting moves, during testimony before a House subcommittee on Wednesday.
His comments came during a hearing of the House federal workforce and postal oversight subcommittee on the financial crisis facing the Postal Service, at which Postmaster General Jack Potter warned that, unless the Congress provides financial relief, the Postal Service will run out of money by the end of the year, September 30.
Keating joined the call for urgent action on HR 22, which would permit USPS to pay its current retiree health benefit costs differently, but went further and pointed to ways that the Postal Service could cut significant costs and improve operations.
He urged the Postal Service to consolidate its nationwide management structure from ten geographic areas to five, calling the current framework “far too large, bureaucratic and costly to be allowed to continue to exist.”
“By reducing and consolidating its top management structure, the Postal Service would eliminate needless bureaucracy, save costs, and operate more efficiently,” Keating said. “It is time that the Postal Service apply the same rigorous cost-cutting scrutiny to the numbers of its upper ranks as it is applying to middle and lower-management.” Keating’s call came after the Postal Service last week announced the closure of six district offices and the elimination of 1,400 processing supervisor and management positions.
Keating also criticized the Postal Service’s practice of buying the homes of relocated employees and called for the end of the practice. “Recruitment and retention incentives can be provided through sufficient other means, without the need for home purchases that cause the Postal Service to rack up significant losses,” Keating said.
Additionally, Keating took aim at the practice of USPS district managers detailing supervisors and managers to positions that, Keating said, don’t officially exist in the USPS personnel structure. Keating said the practice, which involves hundreds of supervisors in ad hoc positions, is costly and harms productivity. “This is only one of numerous problems that NAPS and the postmaster organizations have raised with USPS, in light of the savings and management efficiencies that could be secured. Like so many of our recommendations, they have been ignored by USPS top management,” Keating said.”