Fedweek

The U.S. Postal Service, which has grown steadily while most federal agencies faced job cuts or level staffing at best in recent years, now is facing job cuts of its own. It predicts eliminating about 9,000 jobs over the next four years and says it already has left unfilled 11,000 positions that have become vacant. USPS started the government trend toward buyouts during a controversial restructuring in the early ‘90s. That move brought heavy criticism because USPS quickly created more positions than it had eliminated. This time around, USPS will rely mainly on attrition and hiring freezes; buyouts don’t appear to be in the picture. Stated reasons for the cuts: revenue losses due to competition from e-mail and other alternative forms of message delivery, plus resistance to rate hikes.