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Subject: Now the Postal Service Is Out to Deliver Jobs; 'Transition Centers' to Help
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 92 05:41:19 EST
Message-ID: <48.1992Nov9.054120@AmeriCast.com>

Now the Postal Service Is Out to Deliver Jobs; 'Transition
Centers' to Help Displaced Employees Find New Positions Amid
Restructuring<By Bill McAllister<Washington Post Staff Writer=

The sixth-floor suite at L'Enfant Plaza offers a panoramic view
of the Potomac, but with its rows of 140 look-alike desks, the
office projects all the warmth of a library study carrel.

"The only security you have career-wise is knowing what you want
and how to get it," advises a small, neatly printed sign. Says
another: "Your current assignment must be considered temporary.
Your network contacts are permanent."

Welcome to what some postal workers are calling "Camp Runyon," or
more starkly, "the concentration camp."

Beginning this week, the L'Enfant Plaza suite and two other of-
fices in the Washington suburbs will be the temporary home of the
first wave of hundreds of postal workers displaced by a massive
restructuring of the Postal Service. The restructuring, ordered
by new Postmaster General Marvin T. Runyon, has eliminated appox-
imately 30,000 jobs, many of them in the Washington area.

In a scene that could resemble what thousands of Defense Depart-
ment workers might face next year, the postal workers this week
will begin to troop into these "postal job transition centers,"
hoping the counselors there can find them either another postal
job somewhere in the United States or a private job anywhere.

"It is traumatic for everyone, in every organization," said Carol
Cutler, an employee of Lee Hecht Harrison, a New York-based em-
ployment firm that has overseen the transition of thousands of
private workers thrown out of work. The firm was hired by the Po-
stal Service to aid in what postal officials clinically describe
as "outplacement."

"The major difference is that we have promised not to have lay-
offs," said Joel S. Trosch, a former assistant postmaster general
who is serving as the manager of the transition centers. That
commitment, which Runyon made last week along with the promise
not to cut any worker's pay, should ease some of the pressure on
the workers whose positions were eliminated.

Still, few of those arriving  are expected to be happy when they
sit down at their new desks on Thursday. To help change their at-
titudes, counselors will spend Monday and Tuesday in seminars
with groups of 12 to 15, letting them do what Cutler described as
"venting."

Trosch and Cutler, optimistically showing off the Washington
center on Friday, said they could successfully speed the workers
on to new jobs. Displaced workers have been offered an option of
remaining with their current departments temporarily or reporting
to the Washington transition center or others - at Merrifield in
Northern Virginia and at the Postal Service training academy in
Potomac.

At L'Enfant Plaza, a staff of three counselors from Lee Hecht
Harrison had already begun to post a series of job notices on
bulletin boards in a small library room. Nearby were 16 personal
computers, fax machines and copy machines to help the workers
draft and send their resumes to companies.

A computerized job bank also will be available and the displaced
workers should have first crack at a series of new field jobs
that were announced Thursday in a continuation of what Runyon has
described as the agency's "leaner, flatter structure."

The centers will offer daily seminars on job-hunting skills and
there will be a studio on the fifth floor where workers can be
videotaped, as part of a program to brush up their interviewing
skills. Trosch held out the possibility of training sessions for
workers who would like to become postmasters and training for
workers who need to learn a new computer program, such as Lotus,
to enhance their chances of getting a job.

"Our intent is to get people with the skills to compete," he
said. The workers will be able to compete for any vacant federal
jobs with their time in the Postal Service qualifying them as
career federal employees for jobs that are closed to outsiders.

Postal workers will not be allowed to remain forever at the
centers and continue to draw their current salaries, Trosch said.

"Our objective is not to have directed reassignments," he said.
Directed reassignment is postal jargon for being ordered to a po-
stal job.

If the job is outside Washington, the Postal Service will pick up
the tab for the move, but involuntary moves are a last resort,
Trosch said. "Somewhere down the line, we're going to have to
look at that," he said.

But for the moment, postal executives say they remain committed
to Runyon's goal of placing the workers into some of the jobs
that were vacated by the more than 46,000 workers who have taken
early retirements under the restructuring.

Postal spokesmen have estimated that approximately 550 headquar-
ters workers lost their positions as a result of restructuring.
Many other postal workers in the Washington area - the spokesmen
said they do not know how many - also have been displaced in the
process.

The American Postal Workers Union, one of the largest postal un-
ions, charged last week that the changes have left the Postal
Service "approaching nationwide chaos" as the Christmas mailing
season approaches. It cited Runyon's decision to give senior
workers until Nov. 20 to retire and noted that in addition, "the
operational lines of authority and communication are still in a
state of flux."

Frank Brennan, a postal spokesman, rejected the union's com-
plaint, saying the latest statistics indicate that although mail
volume has climbed over year-ago levels, the mail is moving fas-
ter than it was a year ago.<05:06 11-09C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

For more information, send-email to American Cybercasting Cor-
poration (usa@AmeriCast.COM)