USPS Cut, But Open

From Yahoo:
"USPS to Cut Hours, Not Close Post Offices"

After 10 months of angst and outrage that spanned from rural Montana to Capitol Hill, the U.S. Postal Service announced Wednesday that the 3,700 post offices targeted in May for closing will remain open. Instead, USPS plans to reduce the hours of operation at 13,000 rural post offices from a full eight-hour day to between two and six open hours per day, a move that the struggling mail service claims will save about $500 million per year. "This is a win-win," Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said at a news conference Wednesday. "The bottom line is that any rural community that wants to retain their post office will be doing that." Under the new plan, about 9,000 current full-time postal employees will be reduced to part time and lose their benefits after the offices they work at are put got to two to four open hours per day. Another 4,000 full-time employees will see their hours reduced to part-time, but will retain their benefits. These workers will be at post offices whose hours are reduced to six hours per day. Donahoe is also pushing for a plan to reduce mail delivery to five days per week and reform the postal employee retirement system, but has to have Congressional approval to implement either item. Postal reform is currently caught in a tug-of-war between the House and the Senate. The Postal Service aims to start reducing office hours at selected rural post offices starting around Labor Day and have all 13,000 offices now under review operating under reduced hours, consolidated with a nearby post office or local business or closed in favor of rural delivery by the fall of 2014. Since USPS announced their decision to begin cutting post offices in July, 500 have already closed and will remain closed under the new plan. But the 400 offices that had been targeted for elimination will now remain open and operate for between two and six hours per day.

^ Living in a rural, mountain town (my mailbox is over a mile from my house as the USPS won't go on two nearby roads) and I have to drive 25 minutes to the closest Post Office to pick up my boxes and mail anything big. If the USPS would drive on my road, deliver my mail and pick up anything I have to send out then I wouldn't care about the Post Office staying or not (ours wasn't scheduled to close.) ^

http://news.yahoo.com/usps-cut-hours-not-close-post-offices-185030579--abc-news-politics.html