Courtesy of Jr. Deputy Accountant
It’s no surprise the U.S. Postal Service is in for a major overhaul. Falling into an $8 billion hole isn’t an easy fix. Congress isn’t happy. Customers complain about poor service. And basic Postal Service tasks, like selling stamps, get fucked up. So, here we go.
The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is considering cutting as many as 120,000 jobs.
Facing a second year of losses totaling $8 billion or more, the agency also wants to pull its workers out of the retirement and health benefits plans covering federal workers and set up its own benefit systems.
Congressional approval would be needed for either step, and both could be expected to face severe opposition from postal unions which have contracts that ban layoffs.
The post office has cut 110,000 jobs over the last four years and is currently engaged in eliminating 7,500 administrative staff. In its 2010 annual report, the agency said it had 583,908 career employees.
The loss of mail to the Internet and the decline in advertising caused by the recession have rocked the agency.
What impact will a 20 percent cut in jobs have on the mail? Rate hikes for stamps have failed. And the Postal Service is already issuing new stamps at a pace of more than one a week. Do even stamp collectors want that many stamps? And did we mention service issues?
But there’s a bright spot for the soon-to-be-jobless.
An ambitious effort to create 100,000 U.S. customer service representative jobs by 2013 will be launched today by a coalition of high-tech firms and customer service companies.
Jobs4America, a newly formed group that includes Sprint Nextel, XO Communications, the American Teleservices Association and third-party customer service providers such as Accent Marketing Services, Aegis Global and Novo 1, hopes to expand call center and customer service representative jobs that have been outsourced in recent years to lower-wage providers in India, the Philippines and Jamaica.
Look at that. There’s 100,000 jobs right there. Almost makes up for the coming USPS layoffs. Yours for the taking, mailmen. If you think you can handle customer service.
