Postmaster General Fired After One Year on the Job : Ex-Airline Official to Get Post

The Postal Service Board of Governors today replaced Postmaster General Paul N. Carlin with former American Airlines Chairman Albert V. Casey, a Postal Service spokesman said.

An official announcement of Carlin’s departure was scheduled for Tuesday morning.

Spokesman Ralph Stewart would not say if Carlin, who has been head of the quasi-governmental agency for a year, will stay with the Postal Service.

The board met in closed session at Postal Service headquarters to make the decision on Carlin’s future.

Carlin has resisted the board’s efforts to reduce the size of postal headquarters staff and the number of employees at regional and district offices.

He frequently said such changes would be “disruptive.”

Carlin Criticized

In a December issue, Van H. Seagraves, publisher of Business Mailers Review, a Washington-based newsletter, said Carlin had been criticized privately by board members for failing to master issues such as mechanization of mail sorting and for inability to make tough decisions.

Carlin is 54. Casey, who will succeed him in the job that pays about $83,000 a year, will be 66 next month.

Prior to heading American Airlines, Casey was president of Times Mirror Co. He left that post in February, 1984.

Casey retired from American in March. In the early 1960s he was an executive with Railway Express, a freight hauler.

Replacing Carlin, who came up through the postal ranks, is one of the strongest actions taken by the Board of Governors, which has run the Postal Service since the old government-run Post Office Department was reorganized out of existence in 1970.