When I was hired as a Mailman in 1966 I was hired by a Postmaster who was appointed by whichever political party was in at that time. After the strike in the early 70’s and the switch from the United States Post Office to The United States Postal Service all promotions were “in house”. That was the beginning of the end. Most everyone wanted to be a Postmaster or at least a supervisor. Guys were ratting on each other and/or stabbing each other in the back to get promoted—and it worked. Problem was—the most capable were not the ones promoted. Still that way.
In 1984 all government and Postal employees were put into Social Security. Prior to that they were in the Federal Civil Service Retirement System. Like me, they never paid a dime into Social Security. The new hires (post 1/1/84) were put into the Federal employees Retirement System. They are GIVEN 1% of their pay in a 401k type account plus they have the opportunity for matching funds. Plus Social Security. This can mount up but the “average” Mail Carrier/Clerk will never have an 80,000 dollar + pension.
After 33 plus years actual service plus 2 years military service time, plus nine months of accumulated sick leave I have a pension of almost 2,000 dollars a month. NO Social Security.
My opinion—Eliminate Saturday delivery, Close tons of small Post Offices where the one or two people who work there make more in a year than they take in in a year, eliminate tons of jobs that have NOTHING to do with delivering the mail.
There may be a very few Letter Carriers or Clerks who are making colse to the $80,000.00 a year referenced to earlier in this thread but that would require a TON of overtime. High basic pay right now is about 54,000 a year. And—they pay a good amount of their health benefit plan. We always did. My Mailmans’ contribution to his family plan is $147.00 per pay period—every two weeks.
Why was the USPS forced to pre-fund their plans? It makes me think someone was looking forward enough to see insolvency becoming a major problem, probably as it was know that paper mail was going to decline drastically and no-layoff clauses were in effect in contracts.
You know what your talking about.
What did that strike in 1970 lead to?