USPS About 2,000 postal workers accept buyouts

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About 2,000 administrative staffers at the U.S. Postal Service are taking buyout offers and leaving as part of a plan to eliminate 7,500 managerial and postmaster positions.

The employees — working in the finance, marketing, sales, customer service and operational units — applied for a $20,000 buyout package by Monday’s deadline, according to Tony Vegliante, the Postal Service’s top human resources official. He said many of the employees work at USPS headquarters in Washington.

The buyout sum will be paid out in two installments this November and in Nov. 2012.

USPS announced plans this year to eliminate the jobs through buyouts, layoffs and by eliminating currently vacant positions. Many of the remaining 1,100 administrative jobs that need to be eliminated will be cut through vacancies.

“As vacancies have come open in the last few months, we’ve not filled them and we’ve counted them towards the reduction,” Vegliante said Thursday. “It’s a matter of incentivizing people to leave and a matter of putting people in jobs that we need in the future and taking them out of ones we’ve decided to reduce.”

Another 2,800 front-line supervisor positions should be eliminated by July and 2,000 postmaster jobs will be eliminated by next March, Vegliante said, noting that the cuts should result in about $750 million in savings.

The Postal Service employs about 571,000 full- and part-time workers, but has cut about 234,000 jobs in the last decade as workers left of their own volition or accepted early retirement offers.

As part of the cuts, USPS is also closing seven district offices and a regional headquarters in Memphis.

The Postal Service is anticipating at least $7 billion in losses by the end of its fiscal year in September as mail volume continues to plummet.