Postal Service plan would cut 35,000 jobs

Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe, desperate to cut billions from the Postal Service payroll, said today he will attempt to close 252 mail processing operations around the country-- a move that would add a day to the time it takes to deliver many first-class letters.

USA TODAY staffer Donna Leinwand Leger reports that the cuts proposed do not require congressional action, Donahoe said. The Postal Service cannot wait for Congress to act, he said.

"We are not going to sit back and do nothing on this," he said. "Congress and the administration know the gravity of the situation."

The Postal Service, which lost $8.5 billion last year, has proposed a number of radical changes to keep its business afloat, including cutting Saturday mail delivery and closing thousands of post offices.

Congress has balked at some of the proposals.

As more people communicate via e-mail and pay their bills on the Internet, the volume of first-class, stamped mail has dropped by half in the past decade. "We have to reduce the network footprint and get more in line with the current volume," Donahoe said.

Over the next three months, postal officials will review 252 of 487 processing facilities targeted for closure, chief operating officer Megan Brennan says. Closing the operations would eliminate 35,000 jobs, she said. Local mail delivery, which takes one to three days, would take two to three days, depending on the distance the mail needs to travel and the customer's proximity to a processing operation, she says.

The mail processing changes could save the Postal Service $3 billion each year, primarily in labor costs, Brennan says.

"The Postal Service still is a critical part of the American economy," Donahoe said. "We are not going out of business."