When Congress passes a Postal Service law it's always "reform". When things got so bad that the letter carriers went on strike, in the 70's we got Postal Reform and the birth of today's system that operates without any Congressional appropriation (meh, except maybe via borrowing and stamp purchases). But after a while, Al Gore's successful legislative support helped give Americans an alternative way to write to one another and pay their bills, starting a significant slide of volume in the most profitable class of mail at the Postal Service, first class mail. The Postal Service instituted a 5 year plan (caution, PDF) to address this by achieving greater efficiencies, and in 2006, with Republicans in control of Congress and Dubya in the White House, we got us another dose of Postal Reform, this time one that reflected the very flowering of right wing thinking about governance.
Not satisfied that the Postal Service runs without tax payer support, and possibly because a business that otherwise ran as a government agency demonstrated an ability to compete effectively with private sector shippers, GOP nutters, with some Democratic cover, decided that they would suck some of that effectiveness out of the Postal Service by placing upon it an unprecedented and unduplicated burden, shared by no other government agency or corporation: an annual, multibillion payment to the U.S. Treasury, ostensibly to fund future retiree benefits, in amounts that vastly over-fund all actuarial risk. This plunged an august and efficient national institution into unnecessary insolvency. Well, money is fungible, of course, six billion is a nice little piece of change and everyone wants some of that "reform", don't you know.
Over at the Daily Kos Labor Group, Laura Clawson very appropriately raised concerns that loss of Postal Service jobs is particularly harmful to a weak and fragile general recovery of job growth in this staggering economy. I noted in comments there that deep knowledge of how these things work at the Postal Service seems rare, and I understand that. I am an attorney, a litigator and have been for 35 years. I specialize in Labor Law. I represent the Postal Service. I do know how these things work and would like to explain beyond the orange flourish.
There will be no outright layoffs. The name of the game is attrition. When operations relocate, some of the workers do not, out of choice, though, as a general rule, everyone is offered employment somewhere. The Postal Service's collective bargaining agreements are basically no cut contracts. Other, civil service, rights also protect the continued employment of many other Postal Service employes and veterans enjoy the greatest protections of anyone. No company in the country employs more veterans than the U.S. Postal Service.
That said, there are lots of reasons for attrition and the Postal Service is counting upon them. The Postal Service has an older workforce than many other agencies, so, many employees retire every year. Many will retire who choose not to relocate when their installations' operations do so.
There has been a steady attrition in Postal Service workforce size for a considerable time, of tens of thousands of jobs every year or so. That pace will not slow between now and the election. Some features of proposals now under consideration in Congress could accelerate that and a few might retard it a bit.
All the rest of this aside, one fact endures: Due to a combination of recession, the internet as an alternative to mail and cultural factors, the volume and distribution of 1st class mail and other mail handled by the Postal Service has changed and shrunk decisively, dramatically and virtually all analysts say it will continue to do so. The effect of this is that in the name of financial efficiency and in order to match system capacity and available revenue to demand, the Postal Service must restructure its distribution network just as decisively and dramatically. An equally unassailable fact: less mail requires fewer people to process.
Congress isn't acting on the kinds of things that might really save good, Postal Service jobs in what was once the country's second largest employer, after Walmart. The first and foremost thing is to stop the financial bleeding and end the ridiculous retiree pre-funding requirement. Every dime of that money would help save the jobs of middle class American workers. Meanwhile, No one is even talking about re-purposing excess Postal Service employees and facilities and no extraordinary measures are in place for outplacement or retraining of workers left behind.
Call your Representative in Congress. Call your Senators. Tell Congress that real Postal Reform would also protect Postal Service employees' jobs and their value to their communities. Tell them to repeal pre-funding of retiree benefits under the 2006 law and also to provide displaced Postal Service employees with reemployment, retraining or some combination thereof. The Postal Service must and will change, in both size and organization, but it need not do so inhumanely to the very workers who made it the most efficient organization of its kind in the world and an indispensable American institution.