With the U.S. Postal Service facing the specter of back-to-back deficits and the loss of 700 administrative jobs over the next four years, Postmaster General William J. Henderson is changing its management team.
The changes, which Henderson announced only through a postal employees newsletter, made no mention of a previously announced elimination of 700 jobs nationwide or the expected back-to-back deficits, become effective Monday, Oct. 23.
Last month the PMG revealed the USPS expects to end fiscal 2001 with its second $300 million deficit in as many years. Last month the USPS posted its first deficit since fiscal 1994 when it recorded a whopping $1.8 billion loss. The next year, however, it posted a $1.8 billion surplus which in turn led to subsequent profits totaling more than $5 billion. Those profits were used to repay money the USPS borrowed from the U.S. Treasury between 1990 and 1994.
In August the USPS won permission from the Office of Personnel Management to eliminate 700 non-union administrative jobs across the country through buy-outs and early retirements over a four-year period in order to save $4 billion.
Henderson told postal workers in the newsletter that the changes “further accentuates the importance being placed on revenue growth and our overall business strategy.”
While Allen Kane, senior vice president and chief marketing officer, takes over the newly created position of senior vice president, future business design, and chairman of the postal service’s Business Operations Planning Committee, Deputy PMG John Nolan succeeds him as chief marketing officer.
Henderson explained in the employee newsletter that Kane “will be responsible both for guiding the development of an integrated plan to increase [the postal service’s] competitiveness and the creation of a comprehensive vision [for it] in a new regulatory model.”
Regarding the Business Operations Planning Committee, Henderson said that “every part of our organization must examine what has to be done to maintain or achieve competitiveness in the new business environment.”
By the end of the week Henderson is expected to announce the formal promotions of Jack Potter and Richard Strasser to senior vice president chief operating officer, and senior vice president, chief financial officer, respectively. Both had been serving in those posts on an acting basis since late spring.
The appointments were immediately hailed by Association for Postal Commerce president Gene A. Del Polito and the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers executive director Neal Denton.
“Now, for the first time since becoming PMG, Henderson has a good [management] team in place,” Del Polito said while Denton observed that the appointments “reflect the PMG’s leadership and his ability to put qualified managers together.” The Alliance, he said “is comfortable with the changes.”
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