Quote:
Originally Posted by KatzPajamas
Having worked closely with budgets in both private and public sectors, I know a few things to be true.
Private sector rarely fails to meet budget. It is constantly monitored and adjustments are made quickly and efficiently... a stitch in time saves nine.
Public sector is much more relaxed...que sera sera! When the need to cut back is recognized, it has gone on far too long. However, the reaction is most often, to look to the state-the source of funding-to fix the problem.
Go back and read RichieLion's post again.
Why and how does the United States Postal Service continue to lose money and yet remain open?
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Federal Times
9/7/2009
"The U.S. Postal Service, struggling with a massive deficit caused by plummeting mail volume, spends more than a million dollars each week to pay thousands of employees to sit in empty rooms and do nothing.
It's a practice called "standby time," and it has existed for years — but postal employees say it was rarely used until this year.
Now, postal officials say, the agency is averaging about 45,000 hours of standby time every week — the equivalent of having 1,125 full-time employees sitting idle, at a cost of more than $50 million per year.
Mail volume is down 12.6 percent compared with last year, and many postal supervisors simply don't have enough work to keep all employees busy.
But a thicket of union rules prevents managers from laying off excess employees; a recent agreement with the unions, in fact, temporarily prevents the Postal Service from even reassigning them to other facilities that could use them.
So they sit — some for a few hours, others for entire shifts. Postal union officials estimate some 15,000 employees have spent time on standby this year.
They spend their days holed up in rooms — conference rooms, break rooms, occasionally 12-foot-by-8-foot storage closets — that the Postal Service dubs "resource rooms." Postal employees use more colorful names, like "holding pens" and "blue rooms.".............
http://www.federaltimes.com/article/.../DEPARTMENTS02