Posted on 10/02/2009 7:18:04 AM PDT by Dutchgirl
Last week, Democrats on Capitol Hill pushed forward with a $4 billion bailout of the US Postal Service, which continues to lose money while business declines. One reason that the Post Office has such a large deficit may be their labor practices. The Federal Times reported earlier this month that the USPS pays out an average of 45,000 hours per week of “standby time,” where literally postal employees sit around and do nothing:
The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a massive deficit caused by plummeting mail volume, spends more than a million dollars each week to pay thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing.
It’s a practice called “standby time,” and it has existed for years — but postal employees say it was rarely used until this year. Now, postal officials say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of standby time every week — the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than $50 million per year.
Mail volume is down 12.6 percent compared with last year, and many postal supervisors simply don’t have enough work to keep all employees busy. But a thicket of union rules prevents managers from laying off excess employees; a recent agreement with the unions, in fact, temporarily prevents the Postal Service from even reassigning them to other facilities that could use them.
And let’s not forget — ObamaCare will be just like the Post Office!
If nothing reveals the inefficiency of government or government-subsidized operations, this should. Under the rules, the Post Office cannot shift employees to other facilities; they have to hire new workers in one place while workers sit idle in another. Small wonder that the USPS finds itself in a multibillion-dollar hole.
How do the employees like it? They don’t:
“It’s just a small, empty room. … It’s awful,” said one mail processing clerk who has spent four weeks on standby time this summer. “Most of us bring books, word puzzles. Sometimes we just sleep.”
Employees interviewed said they hate the practice, which relegates them to hours of boredom each day. Postal managers don’t like it, either — but they say declining mail volume makes it necessary. …
Employees are often forbidden from doing almost anything while on standby time. In some facilities, the employees aren’t allowed to do anything they couldn’t normally do on the job. That means no books, no playing cards, no watching television.
Maybe the government should have borrowed them for the Cash for Clunkers program, eh?
why dont they put some of those workers at one of the many, many closed windows at the post office!?
Isn't that what Obama thought the job description of being President was?
If you read the Federal Times articles, these employees are mainly at the sorting centers. The post office is actually short staffed on deliverers and retail centers, but the union contracts these “workers” have prevents them from doing anything other than the jobs they were hired for. They’re not even allowed to read training manuals in the rooms because it’s “standby time” not “training time.”
yeah, 10 windows & 2 clerks...drives me nuts!!!!
Why dont they put some of those workers at one of the many, many closed windows at the post office!?
Probably because they’re union and it’s not in their job description.
Remember that, during Christmas, those windows are manned and FULL. At least at my PO and every one I’ve ever been to.
They’ve wisely built some additional capacity into the system, but have managed it poorly.
They should be out doing the census.
Oops! Read no more. That's all you need to know.
I had a friend who worked of the post office. The union absolutely ran the facility. It was an open battle between management and labor. It was like the Hatfields vs the McCoys. It had been going on for so long no one remembered who started it. There was plenty of blame to go around. There were people in management who no business being in charge of anything and the union kept election stewards, etc. who had a score to settle. Consequently nothing got done about the problems and they simply piled one on top of another.
i wish my union gave me a job description. i guess not all unions have so much power.
cant read that external website at work. i’m lucky i get FR!
Marking
In the meantime, I have to wait in line almost every time I go to my local Post Office — while one or two clerks’ positions are usually unmanned!
They make the windows and delivery personnel short on purpose. Then, having set up the ‘shortage’ for the public to see, their union runs radio ads complaining about how they don’t have enough help.
I am being a little sarcastic but there is more than one union in the USPS. Can't cross into another unions territory.
At my post office ( during the holiday season), I have seen them close a window when folks are standing in line out the door; so that the postal employee can take a break. ( no replacement while they are not there)
Comments from the crowd were not kind!
Congress imposed a stroke-of-the-pen union bailout in the form of a $5.4 billion ANNUAL mandatory retiree health benefit payment by the Postal Service, and there's still people out there who wonder why they lost $2.8 billion last year?
A penny-per-gallon increase in fuel costs results in $8 million a year higher expenses for the Postal Service - has everyone forgotten last year's $4.75-a-gallon diesel fuel? That's $1.7 billion dollars a year above today's $2.60 per gallon California price.
And this author is quibbling over $0.05 billion in standby labor. Unreal.
Congress shouldn't "bail out" the Postal Service, they should REMOVE the Congressional and Union boots from its neck.
also known as ‘eating out of someone else’s rice bowl’ in union circles.
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