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) the Service needs to reorganize its corporate culture, improve labor-management relations, and eliminate its autocratic management style so that it can improve the quality of its postal services, become more competitive in the communications marketplace, and maintain its financial stability; (2) some union leaders are skeptical that the Service will be able to bring needed change to the workroom floor because labor-management leadership is unable to settle disputes, an autocratic organizational culture persists, and postal employees are stressed, disgruntled, and believe that the Service is operating inefficiently; (3) although mail processing and distribution employees are generally satisfied with their pay, benefits, and work, they are dissatisfied with their working conditions, treatment by management and supervisors, and recognition and reward system; (4) the Service needs to improve its city carrier system by allowing more self management so that the carriers can work at their highest performance levels; (5) past efforts to improve labor-management relations have failed because of the lack of sustained management and lack of union commitment and participation; (6) although the Service has made progress in building a labor-management partnership and making the Service a more customer- and employee-oriented system on a national level, the Service has not devised a strategy to implement these initiatives at the local level; and (7) the Service needs to provide its employees with more flexibility in work processes.