Effect of Negotiations Uncertain

While negotiating over such benefits on one level would provide unions an opportunity to improve them, the underlying assumption is that USPS would use such negotiations as an opportunity to cut costs and thus reduce the benefits. For example, under the present bargaining authority, USPS pays slightly more toward premiums of its employees than executive branch agencies pay (USPS also pays more toward employee life insurance benefits). Removing the roughly 700,000 postal employees plus their family members from the FEHB premium pool could put upward pressure on FEHB premiums-since active employees tend to be younger than the FEHB pool as a whole-and taking postal employees out of the federal retirement system would cut off a source of money coming into the federal retirement fund.