USPS could create thousands of parttime jobs

I had breakfast this morning with my friend George, USPS Mail Carrier, retired.  We were talking about postal routes and why some days I get my mail before 1 pm, and most others around 6 pm.  This just changed recently, after at least six years of getting my mail by 1 pm.  The simple explanation is this:  1)  all routes are timed annually to be exactly 8 hours long, a full days work.  1 carrier can only have 1 route.  2) When routes are timed, there might be adjustments for new developments etc, so route changes are made, but still take 8 hrs per day.  These changed routes are put up for "bid." 3) mail carriers "bid" on the routes.  The carrier with the most seniority gets it, with no other considerations (I think).  So carriers change, and how they do their route may change. Now what if, as a transition, USPS split the routes in half?  Some current carriers might like that, especially as an incentive to retire, yet still have parttime income.  If you read the news you know it costs billions of dollars to support a few thousand jobs.  We don't have that now, supposedly.  So...
There's no estimate of how many Mail Carriers there are that I could find, but the USPS is the 48th largest employer in the US with over 574,000 workers in many classes.  A city like Denver was recently cut to 1050 Mail Carriers, as an example (Denver Post article). USPS is currently in the red by billions of dollars.  So what's the idea here?  How can they help themselves and add jobs to the economy, and cut jobs, at the same time?  Well, here goes. 1) they time all the routes for 4 hr routes, currently 24 hrs a week per mail carrier instead of 48(?), and transition to 4 hour routes at a set time in the future.  Basically, they have to give current mail carriers, especially those making a living wage on an 8 hr work day, the ability to maintain that until they retire, so they keep those routes, for a time, at 8 hrs per day.  So this doesn't double the number of mail carriers immediately, but over time.  2) new mail carrier hires only get 4 hr routes,  Whether or not they should be allowed to "bid" on a second route or not has to be studied, but assume not.  So this creates some part time jobs at least, and as you know, business loves part time jobs because they don't have to pay full benefits.  But, I'm suggesting something different about that in the next post, so more to come  in part 2.