Postal Service

In recent years, the U.S. Postal Service has been trying to hold down costs to improve the organization's financial picture. The allocation of clearly insufficient resources, however, can result in management pressures on employees to perform beyond their capacity. It can also exact a toll on labor-management relations and customer service. This briefing report examines U.S. Postal Service work hour allocations to its post offices in areas with high work load growth and its post offices in areas with low work load growth during fiscal year 1990. GAO uses statistical analysis of fiscal year 1990 work hour data for 515 large U.S. post offices to determine whether (1) work hour budget overruns were widespread among post offices in high work load growth areas and (2) post offices in these areas had more frequent overruns than post offices in low work load growth areas.

GAO found that: (1) of the 515 reviewed post offices, 250 stayed within their budgets, and the remaining 265 almost equally split their work-hour use; (2) although post offices in high work-load growth areas generally tend to overrun their work-hour budgets more than post offices in low work-load growth areas, work-hour budget performance data indicate that high growth is not a direct predictor of failure to operate within budget; (3) 34 percent of the 35 high work-load growth post offices exceeded their FY 1990 work-hour budgets by at least 2 percent, compared to 24 percent of the low work-load growth areas; (4) 26 percent of post offices in low work-load growth areas performed under budget by at least 1 percent, compared to 20 percent of the 35 high work-load growth offices; and (5) for FY 1991, USPS provided a larger proportion of budget increases to high growth offices and reduced a larger proportion of low growth offices' FY 1991 work-hour budgets by at least 1 percent.