Postal worlds collide

There’s bound to be some talk going on in post offices across the country — for two reasons.

First, there’s the U.S. Postal Service’s quarterly report.

Given the economic and financial pressures on the Postal Service (retiree health care prefunding requirement, declining mail volume, etc.), financial reports that reveal more losses are no surprise these days.

Those factors continue to plague USPS “despite a reduction of over 130,000 full-time equivalents (FTEs) in the last three years,” as USPS CFO and Executive Vice President Joseph Corbett said in a statement accompanying the most recent financial report this week. According to the Postal Service, USPS reduced work hours in the second quarter by 9.6 million hours — or 3.2 percent — and trimmed 6,726 employees from its rolls during the second quarter.

However, there’s that second thing ...

In what could only be called bad timing (or good timing, depending on one’s perspective), across town from USPS' headquarters, a Washington Post blogger was calling attention to the fact that the salaries of top USPS officials now are available on a database run by Gannett Newspapers.

For example, the salary of Postmaster General and CEO Patrick Donahoe, according to that blog post, will end up somewhere north of $276,000 this year “before deferred compensation, performance bonuses and pension payments.” The blog also cites a number of other top USPS salaries.

Donahoe oversees an operation with well over a half million employees, so in the business world, that would be small potatoes compared to the salaries of CEOs of other large enterprises.

Just the same, we doubt that fact will mean much to postal workers whose departures have done little to ease problems with the Postal Service’s bottom line.

Comments, postal employees?