Postal Service Holds Back on Closures

It’s no secret that many Americans are struggling to save enough for their retirement. Once upon a time, it was common for employers to bear the responsibility for worker’s well being after retirement through defined-benefit pensions. Today, if a worker is lucky, he will have the opportunity to invest in a 401(k) plan, usually with his employer providing matching contributions up to a certain amount. It’s now the worker’s responsibility to make sure he puts away enough each month, and that the investments he chooses are a good value.

(Reuters) - The cash-strapped U.S. Postal Service will offer buyouts this summer to nearly all of its 45,000 mail handlers, part of a plan to consolidate operations at 140 mail-processing facilities in the next year. The mail agency, which lost $3.2 billion in the first three months of 2012, plans to begin this summer moving mail-processing activities away from smaller sites to reduce annual costs.

A few blocks away from my apartment, there's a store that Yelp users describe as “dirty,” “disgusting,” “horrible,” and “saturated with bitterness.”  Yet they are still in business, and probably will be for a long time to come.  What type of establishment could have their customers routinely express such deep rooted frustration, and still get away with it?  The local Post Office, of course. At some point, we have all probably thought about doing something like what Michael Richards' character Kramer tried to do on Seinfeld - get out of the system, permanently.

The challenge of meeting pension payments is starting to put a huge burden on the San Diego and California budgets, leading many of us to regret that more voices weren't raised in objection at the time these commitments were quietly made years ago. For that reason, discussion this week of pensions for U.S. postal workers got my attention.