USPS is offering about 21,000 postmasters a $20,000 buyout and has extended the deadline for accepting an offer to July 2, the National Postal Mail Handlers Union has announced.
The buyouts are related to the Postal Service’s decision to keep rural post offices open but at reduced hours, instead of closing many of them and folding their services into local businesses. The reduced service makes a number of positions redundant.
The incentives are available to full-time career postmasters and would be pro-rated for part-time career postmasters. They are not available to postal career executive service postmasters that tend to work in areas with an expanding customer base, explained NPMHU.
The payments would be in the form of one $10,000 installment on December 30, 2012, with another on December 31, 2013. Postmasters that pass on the offer risk being downgraded via the reduction-in-force process, the union said.