U.S. Postal Service

More than 800,000 people work for the U.S. Postal Service, making it the nation's largest civilian employer. During the Postal Service's history, relations between labor unions and postal management have often been confrontational. Postal employees work under a highly structured system of rules and autocratic management style. Working conditions at plants and post offices reportedly have contributed to tension and frustration, and the number of violent incidents involving postal employees has increased since 1983. The results of GAO's review of labor-management relations at the Postal Service are presented in two volumes. The first volume summarizes (1) the labor-management conflict that exists on the workroom floor of the vast mail processing plants and post offices and (2) past and current efforts by the Postal Service, employee unions, and management associations to end the conflict. GAO makes recommendations concerning the adversarial labor-management relations at the national level and long-standing quality of work/life issues on the workroom floor. The second volume discusses in more detail the labor-management environment in the Postal Service. Included are (1) postal management, union, and management association views on the underlying causes of workroom conflict; (2) employee opinions about the Postal Service on a wide range of topics; (3) the work climate in mail processing plants and post offices that GAO visited; and (4) past and current initiatives to change that climate.

GAO found that: (1) labor-management problems have persisted for years at the Postal Service because leadership at all levels is unable to work together without third-party intervention to settle disputes; (2) many postal employees believe that they work in an atmosphere of intimidation and tension and that management is autocratic and does not allow employee input on work processes; (3) mid-level managers, first-line supervisors, and employees believe that the Service tolerates poor performance and that its reward and recognition system is inadequate; (4) negative opinions are more prevalent in mail processing plants than in customer service operations; (5) rural carriers, who have the most independence in performing their work, are the least dissatisfied with their work environment and management relations; (6) postal management believes that employees place their needs over the needs of the Service and unions believe that employees have to be protected from abusive management practices; (7) past efforts to improve relations have failed because of the lack of sustained management attention and the lack of commitment and participation by some unions; (8) on the national level, the Service has worked with postal unions and management associations to build a labor-management partnership and make the Service a more customer- and employee-oriented system, but the Service has not devised a strategy to initiate these efforts at the local level; and (9) the Service needs to change work relations to provide more flexibility and make changes in union contracts and personnel systems.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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