US Postal Service To Offer 30,000 Workers Buyouts

The US Postal Service may be able to drive up the national rate of unemployment all on its own. The USPS will offer 30,000 workers buyouts. It has 650,000 workers, so that number is not as significant as it may seem at first.

The Postal Service expects to lose $7 billion this fiscal year. It believes that the buyouts could save $500 million, which is not nearly enough to solve its financial problems. According to The Wall Street Journal, workers who leave before January 1 would get a $10,000 payment at that point and another $5,000 later next year.

The program is not more than a band aide on a gaping wound. The service still has to address the facts that many of its core revenue-producing operations are shrinking and that the process is permanent.

UPS (UPS) and FedEx (FDX) have taken a large part of the overnight shipping and package business. E-mail has undermined the practice of letter-writing and, more importantly, letter-mailing. The fax has cut into the business of sending documents through the mail.

The radical cuts that the Postal Service will need to make are almost certainly going to have to be done in the next year. That could involve cutting service back from six days a week to four or five. It may also mean that mail delivery in rural areas, which are harder for the USPS to serve, could be cut even further.

Mail is becoming an anachronism and that means the USPS, as America has known it, will be gone soon. Many people will not even miss it.

Douglas A. McIntyre