Audit highlights $717m of unauthorised overtime at USPS

Unauthorised overtime by workers cost the US Postal Service $717.5m over the past two years, according to an audit by the Office of the Inspector General. In an audit report released in the last week, the OIG said that during the financial years 2010 and 2011, USPS workers carried out 18.1m hours of overtime that was not authorised by supervisors.

USPS agreed with the findings of the report, and has promised to tackle the issue of unauthorised overtime before the end of September.

The OIG said vice presidents of area operations at USPS had to compete the relevant forms to allow overtime, or decide not to allow overtime, before mail carriers leave for their routes.

USPS supervisors needed additional training and refresher courses on monitoring unauthorised overtime, said the Inspector General’s report.

The Postal Service made a net loss of $5.1bn in the fiscal year 2011, after a net loss of $8.5bn the year before. Over the past five years, cumulative losses have reached $25bn.

The Inspector General’s audit warned that with mail volume declining by another 3bn pieces in the 2011 fiscal year, to 168bn overall, the Postal Service could not afford inefficiency in its work force.

“It is critical for the Postal Service to efficiently and effectively manage employee workhours and ensure employees are not performing unauthorized work,” said the OIG.

Postal Service field operations employees worked approximately 1.2bn hours in FY2010 and 1.1bn hours in 2011. Overtime workhours accounted for about 6.6% of this time in 2010 and 7.4% in 2011, with many of these overtime hours not authorized by managers or supervisors.

The OIG said 7.5m unauthorised workhours were logged in FY 2010, while 10.6m were found in 2011, costing respectively $294.4m and $423.1m.