After threatening the closure of over 40 post offices around the state, the U.S. Postal Service has pulled back and put a new proposal on the table: post offices will stay open, retail hours will be cut, and postmasters will be offered early retirement.
The USPS estimates that the move could save more than 500-milllion dollars a year while saving rural post offices, and Wyoming Postal spokesman David Rupert says offices will still be manned by postal employees.
“Many of them would be part-time basis, they wouldn’t have the full salary, nor would they have the full slate of benefits, so that’s where a lot of the savings would come from,” says Rupert.
Retail hours would be cut at nearly 80 post offices in the state. However, Rupert says the move does not fix long-term issues with the Service.
“We continue to ask and press congress for some long term solutions, including 5 day delivery we also have a pre-funding requirement,” says Rupert. “We have to pre-fund a retiree health benefits, the next 70 years of it, on a 10 year schedule. So basically we’re paying for the healthcare for employees that haven’t even been born yet.”
Rupert says this year alone, the USPS is facing a loss of nearly 8-billion dollars.
