U.S. Postal Service to Cut 35,000 Jobs as Plants Are Shut – Bloomberg

The U.S. Postal Service, which predicts an annual loss of $18.2 billion by 2015, plans to eliminate 5.4 percent of its workforce by closing almost half its mail-processing facilities to decrease costs.

The service plans to shut 223 of its 461 mail-processing plants by February 2013, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a telephone interview today. The closings will cut about 35,000 jobs, said David Partenheimer, a spokesman.

The service is shutting post offices and seeking congressional approval to end Saturday mail delivery as more people use the Internet to correspond and pay bills. Mail volume fell 6 percent in the quarter ended Dec. 31 and may drop 14 percent by 2016, led by declines in first-class mail, the most profitable, the Washington-based service said this month.

“We have capacity in our processing plants to process about double the letter mail we have in our system now,” Donahoe said.

via U.S. Postal Service to Cut 35,000 Jobs as Plants Are Shut – Bloomberg.