The financially ailing U.S. Postal Service said this week that it is looking to save $2.5 billion over the next year and a half through significant cuts in administrative and transportation costs and by slicing employee work time.
Postal officials, predicting the USPS will end this fiscal year in September with a deficit of between $200 billion and $300 billion, outlined their plan in a brief announcement. The plan calls for a 25% reduction in administrative costs and a 10% cut in transportation costs.
It also calls for the elimination of 75,000 employee work years. But USPS Bob Anderson told DIRECT Newsline that “doesn’t mean getting rid of people necessarily.”
He said the plan, which is still in the process of being finalized, was “a combination of everything, personnel and absorbing increased work-loads via operating efficiencies” and that its aim was “to capture or reduce the equivalency of 75,000 work years.”
Besides trimming administrative costs through the use of electronic communications, postal officials are exploring the possibility of expanding their alliance with FedEx Corp. to include other delivery and trucking companies.
Under its current alliance with FedEx, the USPS would use the carrier’s large air fleet to transport Priority and Express mail at low rates. In return the USPS would use its letter carriers to deliver residential FedEx packages weighing up to 70 pounds, but not its overnight parcels. And, both would cross-sell each other’s products and services at their respective retail outlets.
Early this month, postal officials acting on the orders of their Board of Governors, launched a series of cost-cutting moves that included an unspecified number of job cuts and a nationwide freeze on 800 capital projects.
Network
