Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said Wednesday the reduction in service would be the equivalent of 22,500 employees who would no longer be needed to process and deliver mail.

“Right now the Postal Service, we run in excess of 10 percent overtime, almost 12 percent and we’ve done this on purpose by not hiring and using attrition to take advantage of people leaving without having to resort to layoffs,” said Donahoe during a press briefing in Washington. “We think by eliminating overtime and by looking at some of the flexibilities we have with the part-time workforce, and potentially working with the unions on some buyouts, we’ll easily hit that.”

USPS already has cut its workforce by 306,000 people over the last 13 years, so Donahoe said they have been preparing for this eventual cut back in service.

Donahoe said these changes in overtime and part-time workers would mainly impact carriers, mail processors and handlers as well as supervisors.

Overall, with these changes Donahoe said he expects the attrition rate among postal employees to increase to as much as 42,000 people in 2013, up from about 27,000 to 30,000 in any given year.

“Most of the projected $2 billion in cost savings will occur as a result of a more efficient network and a reduction in the size of our workforce,” Donahoe said. “We are projecting we will be able to reduce about 45 million work hours making these exchanges. The key areas of cost reduction, of course, will be Saturday mail delivery, Saturday mail processing and transportation.”

via USPS employees to see less overtime, more buyouts under 5-day delivery plan – FederalNewsRadio.com.