WaPo: Postal service, long a gateway to middle class, is facing major job cuts [View All]

[marmar]

By Krissah Thompson, Published: August 13


Dena Briscoe had not yet completed her senior year at Ballou High School when her stepfather drove her to the local U.S. Postal Service office to take the employment test. He was a letter carrier. Her mother had worked for the postal service, too, and her younger brother was hired there.

“It seemed like a secure job, because there was so much mail,” said Briscoe, who began working as a clerk in a Northeast D.C. post office in 1980. “When I first got there, the floor was just covered in mail.”

But now, the family business is in trouble.

There is a lot less mail these days, and job security is crumbling. Proposed cost-cutting measures that became public last week could eliminate 20 percent of the postal service workforce. The proposed cuts are the latest knock against a set of federal jobs that were once a trusted gateway to middle-class stability for families like Briscoe’s. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/postal-service-long-a-gateway-to-middle-class-is-facing-major-job-cuts/2011/08/12/gIQADpXZDJ_story.html