The United States Postal Service (USPS) completed its second round of route counts under its new Rural Route Evaluated Compensation System (RRECS) last week. The hated compensation system was first launched this spring to disastrous effects for rural letter carriers, resulting in massive pay cuts for around two-thirds of the rural workforce, in some cases by $10,000 or even $20,000 a year.
Rural letter carriers at USPS work under a de facto piece rate system. Instead of being paid by the number of hours worked, the post office periodically “evaluates” the workload for every route, which it then uses to calculate compensation for each worker. Even before the RRECS evaluation system, the periods in which these counts take place were infamous among carriers for sudden and unexplained drops in volumes, which could be conveniently used to underestimate the true value of a route.
Ruralinfo.net note: Yes I realize what website this is on. I share this because they are the only ones keeping the conversation going with rural carrier about RRECS.