Postal Service mismanagement caused by vacant supervisor positions allowed vehicle maintenance to cost nearly $22 million more than necessary, a government watchdog found.
Vehicle maintenance facilities had 109 unfilled managerial positions in 2014, which allowed mechanics to be paid for more than 580,000 hours without a matching work order, according to a Postal Service inspector general report released Monday.
“Administrative and supervisory vacancies” caused “a lack of oversight in monitoring mechanic work hours,” the report said.
In other words, mechanics were paid without proving they worked since there weren’t enough supervisors to oversee them.
Consequently, mechanics were paid for nearly 5.6 million hours, but more than 580,000 of those didn’t have a matching work order, investigators reported.
Postal Service policy allows 3 percent of the total work hours to go unmatched. However, the inspector general’s findings represent more than 11 percent of the total hours.
The extra 8 percent — more than 431,000 hours — cost the Postal Service an additional $21.8 million annually.
“Vehicle maintenance facilities were not operating at peak efficiency and were not efficient when compared to the established targets,” the report said.
Conversely, investigators found that managers worked only 24 percent of the total hours at the maintenance facilities — 6 percent under the Postal Service’s goal — due to the vacant positions. Though this intuitively seems like a cost saving method, it actually caused insufficient oversight to track mechanics’ hours.
Postal Service officials challenged the financial affect the inspector general determined, though they agreed with the overall findings.
The Postal Service paid $1.1 billion in 2014 for maintenance at 316 facilities that served more than 211,000 vehicles.
