May 09, 2012
Nat. League of Postmasters
PMG Announces POStPlan at Media Briefing
As you are aware, this morning, Postmaster General Pat Donahoe and Chief Operating Officer Megan Brennan held a press conference regarding the Postal Service’s plan to keep rural post offices open while addressing the declining mail volumes and declining revenue. This new program is called the POStPlan which stands for Post Office Structure Plan.
This plan will impact over 13,000 offices. Currently, 9,500 of these offices are served by an incumbent Postmaster. Congress is considering over 25 bills to protect rural post offices but, unfortunately none protect Postmasters.
The POStPlan matches SOV/CSV earned hours to hours of operation. In a nutshell those offices that do not earn full-time staffing will be reduced to part-time offices. All level 16 and below offices will be evaluated on FY/11 SOV/CSV data and levels modified according to earned hours based on revenue and workload.
Some offices will receive upgrades with over 4,500 to be upgraded to level 18 offices while others will be downgraded according to the earned hours. There are some exceptions to the earned hours based on geographic locations.
Those that are downgraded will be called Remote Manage Post Offices (RMPOs) and will report to another Administrative Post Office (APO) under this new plan.
Offices earning 1.99 hours or less on SOV will be reclassified as a 2-hour office staffed with a PMR.
Offices earning 2-3.99 hours will be classified as a 4-hour office and staffed by a PMR.
Offices earning 4-5.74 will be a 6-hour offices staffed by a part-time career Postmaster much like the EPM 6 in the past.
Offices earning 5.75 or more will be level 18 offices.
We have an SOV eLearning training video to assist with this computation on our website. How to compute POStPlan earned hours SOV-CSV eLearning training
It is important to note that no office with an incumbent Postmaster will be impacted for two full years. Hours of operation as well as salary and level will not change during that time.
The Postal Service will be offering an incentive for eligible EAS Postmasters and Vera eligible EAS Postmasters in the very near future. The third option available for impacted Postmasters will be two rounds of limited competition posting and awarding of jobs. This means that only Postmasters will be able to apply for vacant positions at this time and more to be made available through the early out incentives.
This is a very tough time for Postmasters and there will be many questions that come out of this program. The LEAGUE is continuing to work with Postal Headquarters to minimize the impact, answer the questions that arise from the process and work to get impacted Postmasters that have no choice placed in a position. The Postmaster General has stated he will do everything possible to take care of incumbent Postmasters.
There were over 17,728 Postmaster positions at stake and both LEAGUE and NAPUS have done everything possible to keep these jobs within the Postmaster ranks. Although it may seem hollow now, we have done everything possible to keep a post office in every rural community that chooses to keep its post office and to protect universal service regardless of where you consider home in America.
Your National Board, State Presidents as well as Area Coordinators have all been given a more detailed explanation of the POStPlan. They too are available to answer your questions.