THE BULLETIN BOARD
September 2011
[September 12th]Issa Would Force Postal Workers to Retire
posted via Issa: Time to 'right-size' the Postal Service workforce — The Hill's On The Money.
The House Oversight Committee chairman said Monday that a slew of postal workers should be retired, and while the Postal Service has "more than a small cash-flow problem," it can be returned to solvency.
"This is an organization that can be profitable, that can meet all of its responsibilities," he said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe."
And requiring workers to retire, if eligible, would go a long way toward reducing payroll pressure, he said.
[September 6th]OPM Director Questions Savings of Separate USPS Health, Retirement Systems
excerpted from an article by Sean Reilly, FederalTimes.com
The U.S. Postal Service's plans to create its own health and retirement systems need more analysis to determine whether they will result in major savings, according to the head of the Office of Personnel Management.
In an advance copy of his prepared testimony, Berry says that the withdrawal of postal employees from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program would not have a significant impact on the program. However, there would be greater challenges in pulling postal employees out of the two main federal retirement programs.
"These are radical proposals that are not well prepared and were sort of dumped on Congress at the last minute," said Jim Sauber, chief of staff at the National Association of Letter Carriers. Although the Postal Service has begun circulating draft legislation, Sauber doubted that passage will happen anytime soon, if ever.
In Washington, he said, "it takes a long time to get consensus even on modest proposals." Although the Postal Service has been pleading for two years for permission to end most Saturday delivery, for example, that initiative has struggled to gain traction on Capitol Hill.
The Postal Service also is pushing ahead with plans, announced in August, to close more than 300 mail processing plants by the end of 2012, saving up to $3 billion annually and eliminating more than 30,000 jobs. To hoard its dwindling store of cash, it is also continuing a freeze on its share of payments into the Federal Employees Retirement System. The legality of that move is in question; the Postal Service and the Office of Personnel Management have jointly asked the Justice Department for an opinion, which could come by year's end. Should the department lawyers side with OPM, the Postal Service may need to come up with more than $1 billion in back payments and interest.
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