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Item: Postal service offers fired letter-carrier hero another job, but … it cuts his pay in half and eliminates vacation and benefits/Alecia Warren, CDA Press
More Info: But the post office’s gesture doesn’t have the 21-year-old elated. The casual clerk position is a big step down the ladder for him, he said, after climbing the ranks through the post office for three years. “It will basically cut my pay in half, take away union, take away vacations, no other benefits,” he said. But doubting he could find anything better with the state of the economy, he accepted.
Question: Is this sufficient amends by the U.S. Postal Service for a wrong-headed decision to fire a young hero?
D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.
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JeanC on February 12 at 9:22 a.m.
There is a reason a lot of us refer to the Post Office as the Post Orifice.
Joker on February 12 at 10:04 a.m.
No.
I think the U.S. Postal Service blew it. The guy deserved a pass on his little auto accident. But in typical government “rules are rules” mentality, they managed to piss everybody off. Nice going Newman.
Charlie on February 12 at 1:43 p.m.
No good deed goes unpunished. Way to go snail mail.
hhuseland on February 12 at 11:03 p.m.
This whole thing amazes me. That the regulations are not just guidelines, but written in blood, is wrong. As an aside, I talked to one postmaster today. He said that his phone is ringing off the hook from people asking for the Coeur d’Alene P.O. phones number. He agreed that the whole thing was stupid, as most of us would probably agree to. If they have to hire him back in a half pay situation, they should in keeping with their holy regs, bump him back up briskly to where he was before. that would satisfy the idiots that sit in the bureaucratic offices, and the victim as well. In this day and age where the post office is wavering on the edge of failure, they have proactively done two things. Fired a hero that had just bumped the public relations side of the postal service to heights nearly unachievable in recent years, but then announced another stamp increase, which of course is why people are choosing not to use them in the first place.
With the advent of free bill paying through most banks, sending out payments is passe. So might the post office, if it keeps up the trash.