98.5 % of postal workers get to keep their jobs.

[richard1rst]

Getting tired of all the chicken littles clucking about 10,000 workers being laid off - out of a work force of 663,000 workers. That is 1.5% of the work force. And for that little number you're clutching your pearls? Seriously?

Couple that with all the complaints about sales being down. Well if we are shipping less then they don't need as many workers in the first place.

[chubbycatcollectibles]

What will we do when the sky actually does fall down?  

[roccotacodad54]

   I get it. I have a postal worker in the family that's around 45 years old.

   I talked to him today and this subject came up. From what he understands most of the people that would be leaving are at or past retirement age. Sometimes really past and just drawing paychecks and benefits without doing much if any real work. He said he's not at all worried about it and thinks it's past due time to shake things up and streamline the postal service.

[inhawaii]

Are you bragging about how little of a good thing they've done?

[richard1rst]

---

@inhawaii wrote:

Are you bragging about how little of a good thing they've done?

---

Well assuming that comment was directed at me, the answer is NO.

What I am doing is "cold slapping" those who seem to have fallen into abject panic.

[fbusoni]

@richard1rst 

I suspect that the abject panic comes from not reading, but merely drawing conclusions from headlines (as we've seen in other threads on this same topic -- which have completely mischaracterized the voluntary retirements as "DOGE firings").

Under ordinary circumstances, humans are not terribly interested in detail or nuance.

This propensity to jump to conclusions seem to increase exponentially when the issues are politically turbocharged... I reckon because there is too much (mis)information to synthesize.

And this phenomenon is especially pronounced in an environment which is intentionally shaped and stoked to maximize fear and uncertainty -- something most Americans thankfully are unaccustomed to.

For example, I have no idea what DOGE is actually doing when it accesses USG computer systems.  (The headlines suggest all manner of malevolence, of course.  I recently read on one very popular online forum that Musk seeks to take over and manage the entire USG through his X platform; this observation received thousands of upvotes.)

What I do know (with great certainty) is that USG retirement, payroll, and social security checks continue to be issued on a daily basis -- even to those federal employees who have been put on administrative leave because of unilateral actions by the administration.

Treasury secretary Bessent recently indicated that DOGE is looking at antiquated computer systems at the IRS - Bessent noted that there are 12 different computer systems at the IRS that run on COBAL for example.

COBAL is a 65 year old computer language, and many of the folks who know it are nearing retirement age or have already gone to that great big IBM mainframe in the sky.   

Are there enough young programmers who know COBAL to replace them?  Or should COBAL be replaced with more recently developed languages?

I can share from personal experience that it takes a great deal of effort to upgrade USG computer systems... once a system is working, typical bureaucratic inertia sets in and there is great reluctance to "mess with success."  

I once worked for an agency whose internal IT system (a content management system) was 15 years old; another agency (with enormous Congressional funding) offered to give us their outdated IT system, which was only 10 years old.   We took it and spent almost 6 months transitioning.   That was back in 2005.   Former colleagues tell me that there have been no upgrade since.    

I know that there are open-source data processing systems that are far more efficient than the one that is being used at my former agency.    Should the older system be replaced?   Probably, but I reckon that the contractor that is managing the current, antiquated system will caution against doing so, for obvious reasons.

Some sort of cost / benefit analysis would be required.  But first, one needs to know what sort of IT system is in place.  I suspect that that is where DOGE comes in. 

[aeparts1]

I work for a small publicly traded company. $11 billion in revenue, around 20,000 "team members".  Slowly growing every year.

6 months ago, out of nowhere, 500+ team members were terminated. There are constant terminations, from the lowest drone to district managers & above. Perform or you are gone. Welcome to the real world.

Once a year I have to do a detailed evaluation of my job & job performance. Justify my employment basically. This is reviewed by my manager, who does a similar evaluation on me. Then, every three months, I get another, slightly less detailed review. I also have to set 2 or 3 goals for the coming year, & describe in detail how I will accomplish them. This is reviewed every three months. Welcome to the real world.

I don't have much sympathy for those government workers who cry because they are asked to describe three things they accomplished at work in the past week. Welcome to the real world.

[meme6253]

Yep, that sky is still falling & at a rapid pace.

[meme6253]

I think you have your groups confused as far as who needs a cold hard slap, Time to wake up & smell the coffee.

[vintage-camerastuff]

Your sky may be falling but not mine.    HALLELUJAH!   HALLELUJAH!

[dryophelia]

With THIS round of cuts, 98.5 % of postal workers get to keep their jobs.

Reality lies somewhere between ‘nothing  to see here’ and ‘the sky is falling’.

[tarotfindsandmore]

 "Having audited the government for 40 years, I can tell you it is about time this is happening!!!"

Amen.  There's an interesting trend that appears to be unfolding here.  Those of us who have worked for/in government seem to have a similar range of responses, ranging from "oh, yeah, it's probably time" to "hallelujah!" while those with no experience in government jobs are Chicken Little-ing.  The latter group just doesn't seem to grasp that, unlike in the private sector, we as tax payers are paying the salaries of these non-workers.  If a private corporate entity sinks money into a useless workforce, that entity eventually ceases to exist.  When the government does it, they just take that lost money from all of us to support the continued bleeding.

People should not be allowed to stay in jobs where their performance is consistently subpar, regardless of political affiliation.  Everyone who pays taxes supports these slackers when the slackers are in a government job.  Even in the USPS where it used to be funded internally from the retail side, we're all paying for the huge bailouts (https://apwu.org/postal-service-reform-act-2022). 

I, personally, would prefer not to pay for services I'm not receiving.

[fern*wood]

---

@tarotfindsandmore wrote:

People should not be allowed to stay in jobs where their performance is consistently subpar, regardless of political affiliation. 

---

I agree with that, but from what I'm reading many are getting form letters stating they weren't performing, without any review of what they were even doing or seeing their evaluations.  Some had  just been promoted.  I'm talking about government employees elsewhere where firings have already happened and not USPS employees.

[tarotfindsandmore]

Please do share the data.  I've stated this several times before, I'm happy to read or review any hard data from reputable non-partisan sources.

That said, I'm not sure how relevant all of that is with regard to this thread or this board so maybe we should move that part of the discussion to the appropriate board out of respect for the OP?

[buyselljack2016]

Back in 2013 (and also some before that) thousands of career employees left the work force with $$ incentives to do so.

USPS survived. Should be just fine with another 10,000 leaving.

One of the biggest USPS consolidation errors was prior to that when they caved to pressure leaving many, many rural small offices open to continue hemmoraging $$ rather than closing/merging them.

They reduced the hours at many, and eliminated the "Postmaster" position but continue to pay, in most instances, full "rent and utilities" for inefficient operation in addition to wages for time spent doing nothing.