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The Government Accountability Office has just issued a report about the cost savings the Postal Service may have achieved with POStPlan, the initiative that reduced hours at 13,000 small post offices and eliminated their postmaster positions.  As the report makes clear, the plan has not saved the $500 million a year that the Postal Service had projected.  It’s hard to say, … Read More

This is the final week of POStPlan implementation.  On February 7, the last of the remaining 13,000 post offices will have their hours reduced, and the last of the remaining postmasters will leave their jobs. The Postal Service postponed the Reduction in Force (RIF) separation date for all remaining impacted POStPian postmasters from January 9 to February 6.  That gave … Read More

The Postal Service has announced that the Reduction in Force (RIF) separation date for all remaining impacted POStPian Postmasters has been extended from January 9 to February 7, 2015. According to a letter sent to these postmasters (dated Jan. 5), there are also new options for some of these impacted employees.  At offices going to two or four hours per … Read More

The Postal Service has implemented POStPlan at about 11,400 post offices so far.  That leaves approximately 1,630 offices where the window hours have yet to be reduced and the original postmaster is probably still on the job.  You can see a list of these remaining offices here.  (Note that while this list was made using USPS lists, it is not official … Read More

The Postal Service has announced that the timeline for implementing POStPlan is going to be extended.  Initially, all 13,000 post offices included in the plan were to have their hours reduced by the end of September 2014, and any full-time postmasters still working at those offices would have lost their full-time jobs on October 1 as part of a Reduction … Read More

Yesterday the Postal Service gave the Postal Regulatory Commission a copy of the Household Diary Study, the annual report on mail use and attitudes.  The study says this about how people are using their post office: “In spite of a declining frequency of visits over the past five years, the use of post offices for mailing services continues to dominate … Read More

The Postal Service is well along in its implementation of POStPlan, the initiative to cut hours at 13,000 post offices and replace their postmasters with part-time workers.  Since beginning the process a year ago, the Postal Service has reduced hours at about 8,300 post offices.  Another couple of hundred will be reduced over the coming weeks. In the request for … Read More

The Postal Service is plowing ahead with its community meetings on POStPlan.  As of Friday, it had held 6,741 meetings, and it has scheduled an additional 474 through March 15. That’s a total of 7,215 meetings — well more than half the list of 13,000 post offices that are seeing their hours reduced.  Before last week, implementation was complete at about … Read More

The Postal Service has already held over 5,400 community meetings for POStPlan, and it has scheduled another 860 for the rest of January and the first week of February.  Within a few weeks, some 6,340 post offices will see their hours reduced to six, four, even two hours a day.  That’s nearly half of the 13,000 post offices on the … Read More

The post office in Great Cacapon, West Virginia, is on the POStPlan list, and in January its hours will be reduced to six a day.  A nonprofit organization named AdvoCare has filed a formal Complaint with the Postal Regulatory Commission challenging the Postal Service’s decision to cut the hours. The Complaint finds several faults with how POStPlan is being implemented, … Read More

After nearly two years of planning — going back to early 2011, when the Postal Service first proposed changing the rules about staffing post offices without postmasters and redefining “consolidation” — today POStPlan became a reality.  November 17 is the official implementation date for the first group of 500 post offices on the list.  Starting Monday, they’ll be open six, four, … Read More

The Postal Service has provided NAPUS with a list of post offices impacted by the first phase of the implementation of POStPlan.  Some 13,000 post offices will be reviewed under POStPlan for reduced hours or discontinuance.  The list provided to NAPUS contains the first group of 5,742 post offices.  The NAPUS list is here; a Google table version is here; … Read More

The Postal Service began implementing POStPlan a couple of weeks ago, and in a post last week we reported on problems that had already begun to emerge: surveys sent only to box holders, meetings scheduled during the workday, using the post office lobby as the meeting place.  A few more news reports have come out, and several people wrote in about … Read More

Last week the Postal Service began notifying citizens across the country that their post office would either have its hours reduced or be closed completely.  Reports from the field indicate that the Postal Service will not be rolling out POStPlan in a very gradual way.  It appears that any post office with a postmaster vacancy will be reviewed immediately, and … Read More

Last Thursday, the Postal Regulatory Commission issued its advisory opinion on POStPlan, the Post Office Structure Plan, and the Postal Service isn’t wasting any time implementing its plan to reduce hours at 13,000 post offices. On the same day the PRC published its findings, the USPS Postal Bulletin published changes to three operational manuals, laying out the details on POStPlan.   According … Read More