Posted on 08/28/2020 8:44:31 AM PDT by Hojczyk
The U.S. Postal Service has racked up billions of dollars in excessive overtime from its workers over the last several years, even as its employee numbers have gone up and its mail delivery has declined, according to a new audit likely to raise questions about congressional Democrats' demands for a bailout.
Overtime pay has become so predominant at America's premier mail delivery service that more than 4,000 postal workers last year actually earned more in OT pay than their base pay, a 429% increase in highly compensated overtime earners since 2014, the agency's internal watchdog reported this week.
"A mail handler in the Northeast Area earned $141,153 in total overtime pay by working 3,329 regular overtime hours, which resulted in $205,018 in total pay" the report noted. "This was equivalent to more than three times the amount of this employee's base salary. For perspective, this amount of overtime would have required this employee to work an average of 17-hour days, consisting of eight regular workhours and about nine overtime hours every day for 365 days a year,.
Despite such remarkable findings, the Postal Service said it is not sure whether it should try to work to reduce massively rising overtime.
"Increasing complement with the intent of reducing overtime may not be the best long term solution," the service said in response to the IG report. "The appropriate use of overtime continues to give management the greatest latitude to utilize its resources at the least possible cost while controlling future salaries and benefits of new employees."
(Excerpt) Read more at justthenews.com ...
If they poop in your yard, they’re still getting paid!
Bookmark.
Ouch. What the hell is going on here and how/why did the GOP not bring this up at the hearings?
The postal service is the poster-child for why “government” is not good at running things.
Primary skill set being the ability to sort.
“Primary skill set being the ability to sort.”
Machines sort it all today.
Primary skill is LIFTING and of course DROPPING things labeled fragile !!
It’s a union shop environment. ALL union shop environments try to milk overtime.
I think the Postal Employees Union is scamming all of us. I recently ordered a product on the internet, and had it shipped to my PO Box via USPS. I started tracking the package early, and it looked like it was going to be delivered two days early. I saw the status as the package being in my local facility, then I get a message saying the package has been delivered. I go to the post office and NOTHING. Come back home and the tracking now shows it’s only in the Kansas City facility. Somehow they manipulated the tracking history to move it halfway back across the country and remove the previous history.
Now, 3 days later still NOTHING. It is now 3 days late. I think the union thugs are deliberately dragging their feet to piss us off so we’ll demand they get more money.
A lot of sorting is still done by hand. At least at your local post office setting up for delivery.
Biggest problem they have is they never know what Jeff Bezos is going to dump on them day to day.
Is their pension based off of how much money they make in their final year, including overtime? A lot of government pensions are.
they are a lower part of the “Deep State” and don't even realize it.....
I remember the mailman coming into our little office and talking for a half an hour. Day after day....cuz he could get inside...not like a home. And yes, the mailbox was outside.
I had a contract at Boeing about 20 years ago where my lead really liked me. I had gone through a bitter divorce (after 20 years of marriage) and and was paying thousands a month in alimony and child support.
So, I was the only person they interviewed for the job and it paid $75 an hour for normal COBOL work and time and a half for overtime. Even though there was not a lot of work, he let me work a ton of overtime.
Saved my butt financially.
This is why the Postmaster is trying to get overtime under control. He told the Congresscritters that instead of using overtime to run one package to an address just so it could be on time, they will put it on the load for the next day. I sometimes see four mail trucks per day on my street, one for regular mail and the others for packages. That is not an efficient method of delivery.
I was a supervisor at a large defense agency in St Louis years ago. Overtime was baked into the culture and scheduled religiously. Shops would sometimes assign certain people overtime because they “needed the money”. When a push came down from headquarters to reduce overtime things got ugly. The employees had adjusted their spending habits to having consistent overtime pay.
...
Maybe the USPS should hire someone away from Amazon.
There’s a famous episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation where the Enterprise is locked in an epic battle with the Borg. The Borg adapt so rapidly that none of the Enterprise tactics will work for very long.
Finally they win when Data identifies a low-level system that is lightly protected and uses it to put the Borg to sleep.
I see parallels. The Deep State tried to take Trump out with a full frontal (DOJ and Intel) and they failed. They are trying again using less protected low-level systems (Public Health and the Postal Service).
Oh wait! That 3400 hours of paid time was to a union employee.
Now we know that is was all honest.
Heh——good one.
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