Postal Service increases diversity of executive corps

Women and minorities are better represented at the executive level of the Postal Service than they are elsewhere in the government, according to a new General Accounting Office report.

The Postal Career Executive Service (PCES) consists of politically appointed officers and career executives. In its report, "U.S. Postal Service: Diversity in the Postal Career Executive Service" (GGD-00-76), GAO compared PCES' diversity with that of the the governmentwide Senior Executive Service, as well as with the Defense Department's civilian executive corps. The report was requested last year by Rep. Chaka Fattah, D-Pa., ranking minority member of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Postal Service.

"Over the last five fiscal years-September 1995 through September 1999- women and minority representation among PCES executives has generally increased by about 4 percentage points, while white men's representation has correspondingly decreased," the report said.

The news comes just a little more than a year after a February 1999 GAO report (GGD-99-26) found that white and Hispanic women and Native Americans were underrepresented in high-level executive and administrative positions at the Postal Service.

Women and minorities accounted for 35 percent of the PCES workforce in fiscal 1999, slightly above their 32 percent representation in the SES and much greater than at Defense Department executive levels. At DoD, women and minorities account for 18 percent of the civilian executive workforce.

Black men, black women and Hispanic men were better represented within PCES than in the career SES and civilian DoD executive workforces. Nonetheless, most of the change in minority representation of PCES executives over the last five years has come from more white female executives, the report said.

Higher grade executive and administrative schedule (EAS) employees usually comprise the pool of candidates from which new PCES executives are hired. Women and minorities represent about 42 percent of the potential PCES candidate pool and, in 1999, were hired for about 42 percent of the executive positions.

The Postal Service has been working on diversity issues for several years. In 1997, a private contractor completed a study showing that the agency was a leader in affirmative action, but recommended ways the Postal Service could improve diversity.

Since then, USPS has taken several steps to make diversity a priority. Postal executives, for example, are held accountable for diversity in their performance evaluations. The Postal Service had launched training and career development programs, and created a diversity oversight group to monitor career development tracks for effectiveness.

Postal Service officials concurred with GAO's findings, saying they would continue to try to make progress in their diversity initiatives.