2010 Comprehensive Statement on Postal Operations - USPS.com

Chapter 5: Workforce
As a labor-intensive business, the Postal Service continually seeks to
balance its human resources in order to provide consistent highquality
service to its customers as efficiently as possible. It achieves
this through continuous workforce planning to optimize the mix of
employees, by recruiting a highly-qualified workforce, by providing
competitive compensation and benefits, and by offering effective
job-based training and career development.
Complement Management
Maintaining efficient staffing levels and an optimal mix of career
and non-career employees is essential to achieve reliable service
and financial stability. <strong>2010</strong> saw a continued decline in mail volume
due to the effects of a lingering recession and declines in customer
use of mail due to technology. The Postal Service continued to take
aggressive actions to reduce employee complement in line with the
reduced workload. Actions included adjusting total complement,
the employee category mix, and the locations to which employees
are assigned.
Postal Service Complement 2000-<strong>2010</strong>
Career Employees (in thousands)
800
780
760
740
720
700
680
660
640
620
600
580
114
788
115
776
101
753
98
729
707
100
705
98
Employee Complement Statistics
In <strong>2010</strong>, total complement decreased by 40,395 employees, with
career complement decreasing by 39,220. At the end of the year
there were 671,687 employees on the rolls, of whom 583,908 were
career — the smallest career complement in 10 years. The Postal
Service has eliminated over 200,000 positions through attrition or
retirement in the last 10 years, half of those since 2007.
Realignments/Reductions in Force
Processes begun in 2009 to restructure the Sales organization and
close the New York Metro area office were completed early in the
year. Realignments and reduction in force (RIF) avoidance processes
took place for Stamp Distribution and Material Management, District
Purchasing, District Financial Control and Support, and Distribution
Networks Operations Transportation Contracting. To minimize the
impact to affected employees, RIF avoidance strategies, including
limited area of consideration postings for available positions, salary
protection, and voluntary early retirement, were implemented.
Other localized realignments and RIFs took place throughout
the country as a result of facility consolidations. Bargaining unit
employees impacted by such changes were reassigned according to
contractual agreements.
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 <strong>2010</strong>
696
100
101
685
Career Employees
Non-Career Employees
102
663
623
89
584
120
115
110
105
100
95
90
85
80
Non-Career Employees (in thousands)
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