Summary: In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the U.S. Postal Service's (USPS) disciplinary policies, focusing on whether they provided a USPS-wide program of discipline with uniform disciplinary actions for similar infractions.
GAO found that: (1) USPS policy did not indicate which infractions were considered minor, how many discussions to hold before taking disciplinary action, or whether discussions should precede disciplinary action for subsequent but different infractions; (2) about 68 percent of the supervisors required discussions for each new infraction regardless of past discussions for different infractions; (3) some employees received more opportunities to correct their behavior before receiving discipline than others, since supervisors handled discussions differently; (4) employees who engaged in the same category of misconduct and who had the same number of prior infractions often had different penalties; (5) although there was no precise instruction for how to consider prior infractions, 59 percent of the supervisors considered all disciplinary actions regardless of the infractions; (6) 82 percent of the supervisors did not consider unresolved prior infractions, 55 percent considered the original penalty, and 45 percent considered the revised penalty; (7) although policy required progressive discipline, it did not provide a definition of a specific progressive sequence; (8) about 50 percent of the supervisors believed that progressiveness was limited to a letter of warning, followed by suspensions of increasing length, followed by removal; (9) arbitrators cited lack of progressiveness as a basis for reducing about 10 percent of arbitrated grievances; and (10) there was no specific instruction that required officials who reviewed proposed suspensions and removals for document adequacy to examine penalties for consistency.
