The Postal Service wants you to know about the rules that apply to former employees.
After leaving USPS, former employees may accept a new job with any employer. Depending on what their postal duties were, they may be prohibited from interacting with their former postal colleagues for a certain time period.
For example, former employees may not communicate on behalf of their new employer with former postal colleagues on matters that they worked on together involving outside organizations or individuals.
Former employees also must wait two years before communicating with USPS about matters their former subordinates worked on during the employee’s last year of postal employment.
Some former senior managers have a one-year cooling-off period before they may communicate with the Postal Service on behalf of a new employer regarding any matter.
Former employees may work behind the scenes on postal matters on behalf of a new employer, which means that they do not communicate with or appear before USPS while performing their work.
Former employees must not use nonpublic or proprietary Postal Service information in their new positions.
Because the determination of whether post-employment restrictions apply is fact-specific, the USPS Ethics and Legal Compliance team encourages current and former employees to seek guidance by calling 202-268-6346 or sending an email to ethics.help@usps.gov.
