Few employees accept USPS early retirement offer

Fewer than 2% of USPS employees who were offered a chance of early retirement in June accepted the offer — far less than postal management expected, report The Federal Times.

Fewer than 2% of USPS employees who were offered a chance of early retirement in June accepted the offer — far less than postal management expected, report The Federal Times.

The newspaper article continues:

The Postal Service offered early retirement to 147,937 employees; they were required to make a decision by 16 June, with their retirement beginning no later than 31 July. Just 2,505 employees accepted the offer — about 1.7%.

That’s down slightly from the last round of early retirements, which concluded in February. About 2.3% of the 22,381 eligible employees accepted the offer.
And it’s well below what postmaster general John Potter expected: In a March interview, Potter said he expected between 10,000 and 15,000 employees to accept the offer.

A postal spokesman, Greg Frey, said the Postal Service hadn’t set any goals for the early retirement offer.

“We don’t set goals for the early retirements,” Frey said. “But we usually expect that about 5% will retire … as the likely estimate.”

Postal officials refused to offer incentives to encourage employees to retire early — a recommendation from several members of Congress who said postal workers would be reluctant to retire in the midst of a severe recession.

The Postal Service has been aggressively cutting costs this year to close a projected $6bn budget deficit. Postal managers say they’re on track to slash 100m work hours. They’ve also asked Congress for permission to switch to five-day mail delivery, which could save between $1.5bn and $3bn, and for changes to the law that governs the Postal Service’s contributions to a trust fund for retiree health care, which could yield $2.3bn in savings this year.