GET ON WITH IT
Something doesn’t add up. Congress has introduced legislation authorizing the use of the retirement overpayment as incentives for eligible employees to retire. The postmaster general repeatedly tells everyone who will listen that he plans to reduce the work force through voluntary retirements without replacing the employees, while tens of thousands of eligible employees who meet the retirement eligibility await the announcement that incentives are being offered. Yet, the USPS’ revenue is not sufficient to meet its expenses. OK, if all of these things are true, why hasn’t the Postal Service offered incentives to reduce the compliment? Natural attrition has slowed to a trickle as normal retirement has been deferred awaiting the incentive. An employee would be foolish to retire without an incentive, if it is expected that shortly they will be entitled to $25,000 extra for doing what they plan to do.
The normal excuse of the Postal Service not having the funds to pay the incentive does not make sense because they have enough money to continue paying the employees every two weeks in an amount that is four times the incentive that is being considered. It is clearly contradictory that they can continue to pay the employees who are waiting to retire $60,000 a year because they cannot afford to pay the employees $12,500 in 2012 and 2013. Added together, the Postal Service is willing to pay these employees $120,000 over a two year period instead of $25,000.to incentivizes them to retire. The math just does not add up.
Assuming that the Postal Service uses available resources as an excuse to delay paying the incentives, it won’t wash. It is obvious that they have more than sufficient resources because they continue to meet the bi-weekly payroll. The simple fact is, if they have a financial problem they cannot afford “not to pay” the incentive(s) as soon as possible and cut their losses.
If the issue is service and the removal of X number of employees from the rolls will adversely affect 1, 2 and 3 day delivery, this will not change when and if Congress passes legislation. Either they need 550,000 employees to process, transport and deliver the declining volume or they do not. If they can get by with 30,000 fewer employees, they save big bucks by reducing the complement as soon as possible. Delaying the incentive(s) will not result in some employees retiring and missing the opportunity of receiving free money. The simple logic is “get on with it.”
Bill Burrus>
Burrus Journal
Hey Robert D….your already there…..you cant be that stupid!!!!! Get the hell out and live your life!!!! they ain’t gonna buy you out because your only working for $3.00 an hr……What are they putting in your coffee???? Go be a door greater at Wallmarts 2 days a week 4 hrs a day to make up the difference. my MRA is 56 as is yours. You should have left last year. If you can’t retire now you can never retire!!!! The longer you stay the better management likes it!!!! WAKE UP PLEASE
What about the clerks,I have 31 years and I am 65,I want 30,000 buyout,or 5 years added.
Letter Carrier AKA (MULES) In my 24th year of delivering the mail. With 4 years of Military behind me as well. Long Island District is out of control to say the least. It wasn’t always this bad or I would have quit when I first started!!! I had a good job prior. Delivering the mail was always hard work but rewarding. It got bad somewhere around 5-7 years ago when Management totally lost they’re minds!!! The micro managing is out of control!!!! Every freaking morning it’s booming voices of how under time we are and how much we suck as a group!!!! WTF???? I find myself working for jerks that should not be in charge of a goat!!!! And they are all the same! One leaves and another one arrives with the same moronic plan! I wish I could be a fly on the wall where they get this sort of training. Boot Camp was not this rediculous!!! It finally got to the point as I was driving to work my heart would start pouding wondering what kinda BS was gonna be thrown at us today. Finally I went to a shrink to give me some Xanax to get me throuth the day.
The more I hear and read about the status of the Postal Service the less I know what the future holds. I feel bad for anyone who has more then 5 years to go!!!! Myself I have less then 2 years and doubt that the job will last long enough for me to retire.
We are told that it takes the same amount of time to deliver 4′ of mail as it does 20’…..again WTF!!!!
I just needed to vent. Hang in there brothers and sisters and hope for the best……
Hard working letter carrier:
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa,
and by the way NALC also has their own secret slush retirement fund that you CAN’T be a part of you lemming you! HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa all the way to the bank!
They have the money to continue and won’t run out because the pre funding payments have been suspended while Congress decides our fate. Also, about a year or more ago, they were given a bail out from Congress so that they could keep going, but that money is quickly coming to an end. The reason they don’t offer the early out with incentives now is only 1 reason, THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. If everyone left, who would get the ballots out on time? I don’t know about your facilities, but mine is hiring PSE’s and mailhandler casuals like there’s no tomorrow. As soon as they get enough of those to move the mail, they will make the offer, I believe. If this were not an election year, we would have all been closed and done for already. I believe the EARLY OUT IS COMING very soon, look here and you see that they offered to the Postamasters, ours is next.
Something else does not add up. Everyone is predicting the end of the PO because of the Health Care prefunding. Well, what happens after the prefunding is paid up in 2016? No more prefunding payments, and sounds like to me, no health care payments for the next 75 years! So we are in a temporary crisis. Yet, nobody has considered this and how it will affect the future of the PO.
The Union can’t do a thing if management decides to make a move! You are all wasting your dues to fatten up those officers who are getting big bucks doing nothing just like some postmasters who have reached the top tier of their pay scale and does nothing. Stop being fooled by the union and watched those officers retire early since they will definitely not go back to work to sweat it out! Just look at thier bellies how huge it has become because of just feeding of your union dues!!! Spend your dues on yourself instead of giving it to someone who will misspend them anyway!!! HAHAHAHA! You fools!
enufisis said is a damn scab,and full of shit!
Hey Burrus,
While you and I are worrying about whether we’ll retire or whether the APWU will be able to save our jobs, we paid with our union dues something we will never be able to enjoy like our union officers do:
APWU Officers Qualified Retirement Plan is a 401k plan which has $55,398,175 net assets as of end of year, which is drastically more than the average for all Company 401k Plans. The plan has been in effect since 7/1/1971, and is a Multiple-Employer.
Participants
The APWU Officers Qualified Retirement Plan’s 401k plan has 119 active participants , which is slightly more than the average for all Company 401k Plans. The APWU Officers Qualified Retirement Plan 401k plan has 102 retired or separated participants receiving benefits, which is drastically more than the average for all Company 401k Plans.
I urge everyone to contact APWU today for a piece of their pie! You stewards should also contact them! Wonder why nothing is posted bout this on APWU.org. Everyone should ask bout it at the next union meeting.
How’s that working out for ya Bill?
Mr. Burrus, I agree with 99% of what you say, but may I disagree with 1%? I’m Out: I wrote about it on your Journal comments section. After so many months of waiting for the “buy-out,” I finally just retired.
I can’t tell you how happy I am. Today, it’s rainy outside; before, I would have been hauling myself to “the clock” and calling it a gloomy day. Here at home, the trees outside are loving their water and just look lush out there. I just baked a chicken with vegetables, fixed myself a lovely salad, and heated up a cinnamon roll to eat along with it. Homemade sweet tea to drink. I took care of some business on the phone and played video solitare, and made more plans toward the volunteer work to which I am looking forward.
I’m not sick any more (at work I had a constant cough) and the knee I injured when I fell on the cement floor while our team was unloading a trailer is feeling much better, even in this weather. This after I pulled weeds outside — a first for me!
I wanted to have my retirement paperwork in line to be processed before the deluge of retirees happens when the “buy-out” is finally offerred (I have no doubt that at some point it will be.) I want that because already the OPM has a 50,000+ backlog of retirement cases, and process them at about 8,100+ a month. So my difficult decision has turned out well for me, so far.
So Please, Sir, don’t refer to me as “foolish.” You could just word that sentence this way: “Most employees will not retire without an incentive, if it is expected that shortly they will be entitled to $25,000 for doing what they plan to do,” or some such other wording.
I thank you for your consideration, and for your efforts on behalf of all USPS workers during your lifetime.
First everyone must remember the Post Office cost the tax payer nothing..Now they want to cut all these jobs…they want to go to five days a week…close a lot of their operations…great..but the clerks and mail handlers that they want to get rid of are being offered letter carrier jobs?..five days a week means they must get rid of one of every six lettercarriers they have now…the fill-in or skipper letter carriers..they are called…so the buyout has to target the senior-civil service-highest paid carriers. But all the plans -stories-rumors say the lettercarriers will not be offered the buyout. But as normal the Post Master and his gang..talk…stall…talk…stall…maybe they all plan on running for congress after they retire…they would fit right in…say everything do nothing
I disagree. The more “buyouts” you offer, the more people wait…. They should never have offered them to begin with. Let people wait until they fall over dead. If employees are that greedy, they deserve no retirement.
They have the money to offer to Postmasters!
They need to change the law so they offer real inncentives to get out. 25,000.00 is a slap in the face when you can make 50,000.00 + and stay. If Congress wants USPS to operate as a company then let them offer a retirement package to get people to leave. 100,000.00 would be a good starting point. I have six years to go at 52000.00 that is over 300,000.00 plus benefits.
Why not stagger the months to retire i am turning 63 Made to much money this year to get all of my social security would like to leave in december and have my social security start in january but they have to give me something to make me leave.
Early out would save money long term. Early out could facilitate closing small neighborhood offcies and eliminate overpaid postmaster positions. Nationwide this would contribute signifigantly to operate cost effective by eliminating postmasters selling stamps and boxing mail. Overpaid craft work; clerks paid $26.00 hour. Postmasters $30.++..
The Unions represent the crafts and if the Unions disagree with the negotiations of the early out: NO DEAL!!
If you excess, they will go!
All true, but you need to add that the Post Office micro manages to the point of total frustration of the work force: constant road observations of carriers, scan point discipline, delaying of first class mail in order to get as much as they can out of the building to name just a few. The new transitional employees are not held to the same standards of quality of service and regular carriers bear the brunt of customer complaints. All this in hopes of pushing people out without having to offer incentives. The more who are broken, the higher the managerial bonuses!
IN THE LATEST VIDEO I THINK THE PMG SAYS WE ARE NOT HIRING. TELL THAT TO ALL THE PSE CANDIDATES WHO CONTINUE TO STREAM IN TO ORIENTATION BUT WE HAVE NO MONEY?!
The obvious answer to all these questions is I’m an incompetent idiot, surrounded by thousands of more incompetent idiots.
Very good article. Looking back,it was reported at the end of last year, that if nothing was done, the Post Office would run out of money by September 2012. Many people, including myself, thought the buyout would probably be announced this last March or April. The Union thought so. But nothing happened. The logic of paying someone 120K for two years compared to 25K doesn’t make sense. There’s got to be something going on that we don’t know about, or else why won’t they announce a buyout to save $$$? I know several people, including myself, that won’t retire until a buyout is given, so the number of people retiring through attrition has got to be pretty low. Just think of the money they could save. This is astounding, why won’t they get it over with and start saving and be on the road to recovery?
The issues are the postal service is delaying so as not to piss off congress with the amount of incentives. Furthermore, carriers are retiring daily, believing and hearing from NALC sources that carriers will not recieve a buyout until 5 day delivery. Congress is also figuring out how to pay for the increased amount of early retirees that will hit the treasuries pocket book. Congress is also trying to figure out how to make the whole issue revenue neutral, because congress can no longer steal and tax from the USPS to subsidize CSRS,FERS, and the FEHB program.The ponzi scheme needs to be reorganized,and federal workers will pay the price with increased retirement costs, all this going down in an election year just complicates the issues. Just vote the republican facists out
Thanks for the insight Bill, and no offense, but even Ray Charles can see what is going on here. Tell us something we didn’t know. It seems that no one cares about the lies and propoganda being disseminated since no one with the power to do anything about it – does. Hell, those in positions of power don’t even acknowledge these facts even exist, when spoken by those such as yourself. What is happening to this country?
You bring up a good point Bill. For several years now we have read about how the USPS is broke and will run out of the cash needed to meet payroll on a variety of former dates…none of which have proven to be true. Personally, I think they have cried Wolf! one too many times. Perhaps the best strategy is to simply call USPS’ and Congress’ bluff and let them reveal their hand. When it turns out to be a liars hand, they will have earned exclusive ownership to the public fallout and wrath. Only at that point can an honest appraisal of the USPS’ financial condition begin.