By David Reinbold

Outsourcing labor or hiring contractors is a practice that is becoming increasingly popular, but several local United States Postal Service employees are speaking out against the practice, nervously and quietly.

To help the Postal Service boost revenues in a global market where sending information is more convenient than ever, it created an initiative in 2002 to cut costs and save $5 billion over the next five years. Riding on the wave of successful cost cuts, the USPS set a new goal to save an additional $5 billion during fiscal years 2006 through 2010.

How does one of the largest government employers keep mail landing in boxes while eliminating the people who deliver it? Hire contractors and outsource labor at a much lower rate than a full-time position, according to local workers and their representatives.

The majority of outsourced labor is now within rural areas only, due to an agreement struck by the National Association of Letter Carriers and the Postal Service in 2007. The agreement states that no new contract routes can be created within city areas, leaving rural areas and offices like those in Centre County free to outsource. Centre County is covered by almost all rural carriers.

State College is considered a city area, and parts of Bellefonte have city carriers.

The contracted routes inside State College that existed prior to the agreement will still exist. Most often, these include housing developments, apartment complexes and high-rise apartment buildings.

A report from the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association states there are 32 total rural routes in Centre County. To cover those routes, Centre County post offices employ 33 full-time carriers that are assigned to a consistent route and who receive a living wage that contributes to a healthy tax base and benefits such as healthcare, a pension, sick leave and vacation time.

Another 25 rural-route workers are part-time or contracted, meaning they receive lower wages and no benefits, until recently didn’t undergo background checks, suffer from higher turnover and are known to subcontract to family and friends when they can’t get the job done.

“Those contracted routes are going out to the lowest bidder,” said Gary Thornbloom, a recently retired rural carrier from Centre County. “When these people would make a mistake, nothing would be enforced because it would happen all the time. It was an exercise in futility.”

The terms of a contract are between the workers and the office that employs them, said Joe Duschel, Pennsylvania Rural Letter Carriers’ Association secretary and treasurer. It’s a practice open to inconsistency at best and abuse at worst.

And what does the Postal Service gain from this slash and burn approach to postal jobs?

It remains unclear. A July 2008 report from the United States Government Accountability Office found the evidence about the United State Postal Service’s cost benefits associated with outsourcing labor was inconclusive.

Not surprisingly, the report criticizes the Postal Service for not keeping proper records of the cost benefits of outsourcing.

“The [Postal] Service lacks information and data about the results of its outsourcing efforts that could be used to determine whether they are effective and to support future outsourcing in the face of possible challenges,” the report stated. “Without information on results, such as costs, savings, or efficiency gains, Service managers, stakeholders, and Congress are not able to assess the risk and value of outsourcing and accountability for results is limited.”

“The information contained within the GAO report states specifically that there is no evidence to support outsourcing for the postal service as a way to save money,” Duschel said.

Meanwhile, what used to be solid, secure jobs are teetering on the brink of extinction.

“I’m always fearful that my job could be cut,” said a Bellefonte-area postal employee who requested anonymity for fear of reprisals. “I think it’s created a hectic work environment. People don’t want to give management any reason to question your performance.”

This postal employee’s fears are not unfounded.

“I think that a working rural carrier would be reticent to talk to the press,” Duschel said. “They would be afraid that their comments could be construed as painting a negative picture of the Postal Service that would not be appreciated by their employer.”

And union or not, protection is limited when jobs are cut. Since 2002 the Postal Service has eliminated more than 100,000 jobs across the country. A lot of these cuts, however, have been made in urban areas where jobs have decreased more than 8 percent over the last 10 years.

The Bellefonte-area postal employee’s request to remain anonymous underscores the realities that many other postal workers face each day: Turn a blind eye to less than palatable practices or be prepared for an even more chaotic work day.

“It’s all about making money and meeting quotas,” said James, a city carrier in State College who requested his identity be concealed. “Managers, supervisors, postmasters, they all get what’s called a ‘pay for performance’ raise every year. If they can eliminate a route and break that work up amongst other employees, they’ll do it because it looks good on paper.”

National Association of Letter Carrier’s Local 1495 President Kip Naugle agreed.

“That’s the general gist of what they’re trying to do. Cut their costs of delivery down,” said Naugle in a telephone interview. “The Postal Service has a cost factor for every delivery.”

“It all comes down to wages and benefits of full-time employees versus privately contracted labor,” James said. “It also comes down to the pay differences between city carriers and rural carriers.”

“City carriers get paid by the hour and rural carriers get paid by the route,” Naugle said. “Rural carrier’s wages are formulated by many factors such as volume, distance and they don’t get overtime.”

Naugle said that rural carriers only get raises when their particular route is evaluated, which may occur once or twice annually. They sometimes provide their own vehicle and fuel, although they do get reimbursements if they do this.

“The reimbursement is a joke,” Thornbloom said. “They give you somewhere in the high forties [cents] per mile. They did their own studies in the Erie District that showed it took about 90 cents per mile to run a route.”

Contracting out also comes in the form of services offered inside outside businesses. The employees who handle the mail within these facilities are employees of that building—in one local case, Weis Markets employees.

Nonunion supermarket employees also suffer from high turnover and low wages, unlike long-term postal employees who know their customers and their jobs.

“Those people are not postal employees,” Thornbloom said. “It’s a question of standards: Do you want these people to have undergone fairly extensive background checks? Or, do you want your mail handled by the lowest bidder?”

Centre County currently has two post offices inside Weis Markets. One is located at 147 Martin St., State College; another is at 110 Rolling Ridge Dr., State College.

“The postal office provides stamps, packing products and in some cases equipment to weigh and determine proper class of postage,” Duschel said. “The actual facility provides the labor.”

The privatizing that has become the standard inside the Postal Service have been plaguing customers and employees for a long time. With fuel prices gouging any gains the Postal Service may have made, it’s also not expected to change any time soon.

Contracting out civil service testing is also a new development in the outsourcing antics of the Postal Service, popping up in markets around Harrisburg. It is unclear when this new implementation could hit Centre County, but Duschel remains less than optimistic about the situation.

“Well, I think at this time we already have a difficulty in the hiring process in that sometimes it takes too long,” Duschel said. “When you identify a candidate it sometimes takes two or three months to get them on the job.”

Duschel said that it is not uncommon for prospective employees to throw away a Postal Service position because of the lengthy hiring process, which may also contribute to the propensity of the Postal Service to grapple at hiring part-time contract employees, where the hiring process is considerably swifter.

“It’s too long and I don’t see this as making that process any shorter,” Duschel said. “We shall see, but it is an ongoing problem.”