Great list of numbers, and that is what the USPS is about. I retired in 1973 with my 20 and saw many, many things that were outstanding, I also saw many dead beats that set up the overtime work. $70,000 a year for a mail handler with no sorting skills was not uncommon. On the otherside, more then half of the supervisors were promoted from worker, to Union Steward/oficial to Management and were lazy in all aspects.
I worked on the LSM, Letter Sorting Machine, for 10 years, was good at it and for the most part enjoyed it. It was the only place a supervisor had a true numbers count of letters worked. The machines worked us at 60 letters per minute where we had roughly a 1/4 second to read an address or zip code and 1/4th a second to key three numbers and 1/4 a second as it was gone. Mathmatically production for an 8 hour shift was based on letter jams, machine stoppage rotation of operators,(we keyed 40 minutes and then replaced a person n the back to clear the machine for twenty minutes. 3 operators per each station on the machine, 12 stations. total 18 personnel.(yes the math is correct, a STATION was 2 consoles keying and 1 sweeping the back). Some hot dog supervisors in order to increase their production would increase the speed of the machine by 2 or 3 letters per minute. This gave a higher overall production count of 15,000 plus per shift. It also increased the error rate having to rework the same letter several times, or having it sent to be hand worked. It also sent many letters to the wrong destination, causing it to be reworked and returned.
Fortuneately there were enough concientious management personnel that could see thru this, and the violaters were demoted back to craft. I witnessed a number of serious violations by craft workers and management personnel that were swept under the rug but in some areas of work it was best to keep your mouth shut.
The numbers in the above post tell only a part, an important part, but do not show where the money goes. The one part that interests me is the payroll. An old chart that I saw showed that 35% of employees were management or not involved with the handling of the mail, while 65% were the production employees, yet approximately 60% of the payroll was management. Postmasters were all given a "Christmas" bonus based on the efficiency of their office, and if they were the worst performers n their district, they just got a lower bonus and took it out on their supervisors.......dominoes.
If you notice the last entry in the above post post---0 tax dollars-- what is not shown is that The Postal Service is robbed by Congress of hundreds of MILLIONS of DOLARS a year to pay a subsidy to Civil Service Retirement for older employees that retired under Civil Service. Since 1984 there have been no new CS employees, they are all FERS, but I have seen no word of when this rape wil end.
For the most part the USPS is to be admired and anyone that gets a chance to see mail processing in action will be amazed. The customer is perhaps the biggest problem of misdirected delivery, and multi-million $$$$ machines are still not pharmacists when it comes to reading scribbles.
A drop in the bucket

FTroopChief