January 11, 2018

Postal Service Offers Early Retirement to Mail Handlers

• Target is long-term, highly paid workers

• Nonprofits may benefit by USPS controlling labor costs

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By Louis C. LaBrecque

The U.S. Postal Service is responding to a drop in mail volume by offering early retirement to certain long-time employees.

The early retirement offer “is part of ongoing efforts to right size our workforce through attrition to match current and projected workload,” David Partenheimer, a spokesman for the Postal Service, told Bloomberg Law Jan. 9.

The offer targets mail handlers, whose job is to load and move bulk mail and perform other processing duties.

Offering early retirement will help the USPS cut labor costs by reducing the number of higher paid career employees, Steve Kearney, executive director of the Alliance of Nonprofit Mailers, told Bloomberg Law Jan. 10.

This is welcome news for nonprofit organizations, Kearney said. That’s because they use the Postal Service to reach potential donors, and shipping costs are less likely to rise if the USPS can cut its labor expenses, he said.

The Greeting Card Association also called the offer a welcome development, for the same reasons.

“The offer is a very moderate step toward addressing real concerns” about rising costs at the USPS, Rafe Morrissey, vice president for postal affairs at the association, told Bloomberg Law Jan. 10.

Offer Doesn’t Contain Incentive Payments

Early retirement is available to mail handlers with at least 25 years of service and those with 20 or more years of service if the employee is at least age 50.

The offer does not contain any cash incentive payments, but the deal means participants will get a higher pension than they otherwise would have.

The Postal Service has just over 500,000 career employees. In May 2012 it offered early retirement and other separation incentives of up to $15,000 to most of the 45,000 employees represented by the National Postal Mail Handlers Union.

The Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management, and the State Department offered various types of separation incentives during the past year. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for shrinking the size of the federal government since taking office in January.

The USPS has been trying to cut its workforce for years, and the current early retirement offer likely isn’t related to the Trump administration’s initiative to cut the size of the federal government, Kearney said.

The postal workers must retire on Jan. 31, Feb. 28, or March 31 to be eligible for the offer. That’s according to a Jan. 4 letter from the USPS that the president of the mail handlers union sent to members.

The union didn’t respond Jan. 10 to requests for comment.

By Louis C. LaBrecque

To contact the reporter on this story: Louis C. LaBrecque in Washington at llabrecque@bloomberglaw.com

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Peggy Aulino at maulino@bloomberglaw.com