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According to the agreement, there will be a $10,000 payment to eligible full-time employees who terminate their service through regular retirement, Voluntary Early Retirement, or voluntary separation, to be paid as soon as administratively possible, but no later than two pay periods after separation;

Each full-time employee who terminates employment also will receive a $5,000 payment on Oct. 29, 2010;

Part-Time Regular and Part-Time Flexible employees who terminate their service will receive a proportional percentage of the $10,000 and $5,000 incentive

“This agreement achieves a long-standing objective of the APWU,” said union President William Burrus. Negotiations over the agreement, which was finalized August 24, took two months, Burrus said. “Our goal was an incentive of 50 percent of a year’s salary. Because of the difficult economic times, however, the agreement had to be structured to avoid adding to the deficit. Nonetheless, we feel that the settlement will provide a modest incentive to employees to end their service.

“The USPS financial condition is precarious,” Burrus said. “The congressionally-imposed obligation to pre-fund the retirees’ health insurance fund has caused tremendous deficits over the last two years, and without legislative relief, improvement is not in the forecast.

“Management has been forced to reduce costs, but unfortunately, the cuts have been applied disproportionally to bargaining-unit employees, especially to those in mail processing,” the union president said.

“Because our contract prohibits layoffs, the only means for cutting work hours have been to reassign full-time employees and to reduce the hours of PTFs,” Burrus noted. “Excessing and work-hour cuts cause severe hardships for our members,” he said, “so finding a way to make voluntary complement adjustments became an urgent matter.”

According to the NPMHU, “The NPMHU is pleased to have reached this agreement with USPS, as it may provide a financial cushion, and added peace of mind for Mail Handlers who might be prepared to move on to the next chapter of their lives – particularly during these extremely difficult economic times.”



As many as 30,000 employees could take advantage of the incentive offer. Savings to the Postal Service could be as much as $500 million next year.





More information:

http://www.apwu.org/news/webart/2009/09-099-retirement_incentive-090825.htm



http://www.npmhu.org/Pubs/UPDATE/2009/up090801.asp