The national agreements between the U.S. Postal Service and two of its unions give the Postal Service greater flexibility to use non-career employees for clerk and mail handler duties. The Postal Service pressed for the new employee categories in its separate labor negotiations with the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and the National Mail Handlers Union, because it wanted greater workforce flexibility in scheduling and aligning employees with the work available. The Postal Service expects this will allow it to reduce labor costs, which currently make up about 80 percent of total costs.
With the APWU, the Postal Service has already begun to utilize the two new employee categories created under their National Agreement, which include postal support employees and non-traditional full-time employees. The provision on new employee categories in the National Mail Handlers Union’s agreement does not take effect until August, but it will allow for similar type of workers to be used. These workers will start at a lower hourly wage and will have limited benefits.
The number of Postal Service career employees has declined steadily over the past decade. As of early 2013 the Postal Service had just over 500,000 career employees, down from 729,000 in Fiscal Year 2003. Recent buyout offers have spurred a wave of retirements and moved the Postal Service closer to its goal of further reducing its workforce by 150,000 employees by 2015. Unlike previous reduction-in-workforce efforts, the Postal Service now has the flexibility to hire part-time employees. By shifting more work to lower-paid employees with less expensive benefits, the Postal Service is hoping to move the needle on its labor costs.
A recent OIG audit report on the use of part-time employees in processing operations found that the Postal Service is increasing its use of these part-time positions, but it has not hired them to the fullest extent allowed by the contract. It could have saved more than $30 million in labor costs last year if it had hired postal support employees up to contract limits.
Time will tell if the new workforce flexibility significantly reduces labor costs. But our early audit work suggests savings are available. What is your experience with the changes in the types of employees and how they are used? Is mail processed as efficiently, more efficiently, or less efficiently using postal support employees and non-traditional full-time employees? Have there been any unexpected effects (positive or negative) of the changes? Has overtime usage increased or decreased as a result of using part-time and non-traditional full-time employees?
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