LABOR / REACTION : Employees Greet Plan to Cut ‘Lard’ : Postal workers at Anaheim convention welcome decision to thin management ranks, but worry that restructuring could trickle down to the rank and file.

Postal workers praised Postmaster General Marvin Runyon’s restructuring plans to cut positions from management ranks, but some employees worried Friday that the move would eventually lead to cuts in their jobs.

Runyon’s plans were announced in Washington Friday at the same time that 10,000 workers were meeting at the Anaheim Convention Center for the closing day of the American Postal Workers Union biennial convention.

Moe Biller, president of the union, cheered the cut in management “lard,” saying it was a “step in the right direction.”

Most workers agreed that management was too top-heavy. Nationwide, the ratio of U.S. Postal Service workers to managers is 6 to 1. Union officials have complained that the lack of carriers and clerks makes it impossible to improve efficiency.

“We take the brunt of customers’ complaints,” said Leonard F. Trujillo, a passport clerk and president of the 300-member Anaheim local. “We get the blame for it, and the managers are nowhere to be found.”

It is still uncertain what effect the cuts will have in Orange County. At the Santa Ana General Mail Facility, the division that covers most of Orange County and parts of Los Angeles and San Bernardino counties, the official approach was to wait and see.

“We won’t know how it is going to impact us until the dust settles,” said Stacy DiRocco, spokeswoman for the division.

Biller blamed the Postal Service’s $2-billion deficit partly on mismanagement and criticized Runyon’s predecessor, Anthony Frank. Last year, Biller said, the Postal Rate Commission failed to increase the price of a stamp from 29 cents to the rounded figure of 30 cents, missing out on $800 million more in annual revenue.

Biller, who has been with the agency for 56 years, has seen 18 postmasters general come and go. Although he praised Runyon for getting his plans on the table quickly, he said it remains to be seen whether he will follow through.

Every postmaster general “is for motherhood, apple pie and against sin,” Biller said. “They say they will improve relations with workers. They say they will make all these changes and then, ‘Bing! Goodby Charlie.’ ”

The restructuring “may be a little too late,” said Omar M. Gonzalez, the general president of the 4,700-member Los Angeles local.

“There is already so much chaos as it is,” he said. “They have streamlined so much in some locations, they don’t have enough workers to move the mail.”

Union officials said that high stress and uncertainty about the future could force many workers to take the early-retirement package, in which employees would be offered a lump-sum payment equal to six months’ pay. Union officials had sought a year’s pay.

DiRocco, the Santa Ana Division spokeswoman, said that 380 of the division’s 10,768 employees are eligible for retirement.

“That number could double or triple with the early-retirement incentives announced today,” she said.

Runyon’s plans to cut from the top surprised some workers, who feared that their ranks would be the first targeted.

“Every postmaster general comes in wanting to restructure the organization,” said the Los Angeles local’s Gonzalez. “This one is a little different because he is starting from the top.”

Even so, Gonzalez fears that the cuts could trickle down to the rank and file.

“He’s going to say, ‘Well, I did this in management, now there’s nothing left. Now I must go to the work force,’ ” he said.

Staff writer Susan Christian contributed to this report.