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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTop Democrats say postmaster general acknowledged new policies that workers say are delaying mail
Hat tip, Joe.My.God.
August 7, 2020
The Washington Post reports:
The head of the U.S. Postal Service acknowledged in a meeting with top Democrats that he instituted new policies restricting overtime and extra mail processing trips, moves that the agency previously downplayed and that postal workers say have caused mail backlogs, according to a letter released Thursday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.).
Pelosi and Schumer met with Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Wednesday to discuss reports of those delays, which have reverberated through this years primaries by slowing the delivery of absentee ballots. Internal Postal Service documents obtained by The Washington Post show that postal employees have been barred from working overtime hours and instructed to leave mail behind if it is processed late.
Read the full article.
Top Democrats say postmaster general acknowledged new policies that workers say are delaying mail
The Postal Service had previously played down the changes that employees say have caused days-long backlogs
By Jacob Bogage
August 6, 2020 at 5:37 p.m. EDT
The head of the U.S. Postal Service acknowledged in a meeting with top Democrats that he instituted new policies restricting overtime and extra mail processing trips, moves that the agency previously downplayed and that postal workers say have caused mail backlogs, according to a letter released Thursday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.).
The Postal Service had previously played down the changes both to lawmakers and the press. In a July 22 letter to Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the Senate committee responsible for postal oversight, Postal Service general counsel and executive vice president Thomas J. Marshall wrote, Neither document . . . should be characterized as being official Postal Service memoranda, and that neither document originated from Postal Service Headquarters.
But Pelosi and Schumer wrote Friday that the postmaster general, a former logistics executive and major Republican donor, acknowledged that the Postal Service had implemented the procedures. They called on him to immediately rescind the directives.
At this meeting, you confirmed that, contrary to certain prior denials and statements minimizing these changes, the Postal Service recently instituted operational changes shortly after you assumed the position of Postmaster General, the letter states. These changes include reductions of overtime availability, restrictions on extra mail transportation trips, testing of new mail sorting and delivery policies at hundreds of Post Offices, and the reduction of the number and use of processing equipment at mail processing plants.
{snip}
Jacob Bogage
Jacob Bogage writes about sports for The Post, where he has worked since 2015. He previously covered the automotive and manufacturing industries for the Business section. Follow https://twitter.com/jacobbogage
dalton99a
(81,570 posts)Grokenstein
(5,727 posts)Restore service or go to jail for life.
Consideration for completely ratting out Don-Don's mob.
crickets
(25,983 posts)This is framing the U.S. Postal Service, a 245-year-old government agency, and comparing it to its competitors that could conceivably go bankrupt, said Philip Rubio, a professor of history at North Carolina A&T State University and a former postal worker. Comparing it to U.S. Steel says exactly that We are a business, not service. Thats troubling.
There it is -- a service that is not privatized and is not for profit is being treated as though it is a business that should be producing profit for the government rather than providing the vital services it always has to the citizen. smh
ProfessorGAC
(65,168 posts)...in large measure on the timeliness of delivery? Of course it's the primary metric.
So, "efficiency" is a liar's excuse.
This has nothing to do with efficiency.
The logistics exec obviously knows the importance of on time delivery is business.
No operational efficiency that diminishes on time delivery is of value.
He knows that.
He's lying.
Progressive Law
(617 posts)Recently I paid $8 to have USPS deliver a 4-page document across town via Priority Mail Service.. it took the USPS 13 days to deliver it.
bucolic_frolic
(43,287 posts)I realize now she was being really good to me, for some unknown reason. No one's looked up a piece of mail since.
But she would track it in some fashion, I got the impression it moves from bin to bin, they have a higher level of tracking that can locate just about any piece on its journey. I had a package lost out west. NM or CO I think. They found it, delivered it in a couple days.
All this tracking to speed things up, is it more to satisfy Amazon and eBay than customers? As long as it get's scanned at delivery, I don't care about the rest. But late scanning penalties abound.
GB_RN
(2,376 posts)Imagine you rely on the USPS to deliver medications to you in a timely manner; especially medications like insulin, that cannot be left sitting in the heat or cold. Meds like that are supposed to be delivered next-day. I've been reading stories lately from people complaining of delays and having to get their insulin re-shipped because it had spoiled, sitting in the heat. This can literally be life/death for some people.
This is all part of a deliberate shift to slow down absentee/mail-in ballots, and just has the side effect of screwing over other people in the process. Not that the Toxic Tangerine and his (Postmaster General) equivalent of Sideshow Bob actually give a shit about those side effects...
kimbutgar
(21,188 posts)Are doing to destroy the post office because mf45 is afraid of mail in voting.
Not getting what you ordered online, medicine, magazine subscriptions etc. its because of politics not logistics.
malaise
(269,157 posts)standards - a government undermining the post office - no words.
MarcA
(2,195 posts)cp
(6,655 posts)instead of a real Postmaster General who knows the USPS.
The Post Office is a vital lifeline for our rural town. We love the USPS!
Star-Thrower
(309 posts)Trump's toady, U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is definitely slowing down delivery. I pay my bills when they come in. But because I keep track I realized that I hadn't received my Auto insurance bill. So not thinking of mail being slow I paid Geico by phone where they have all my info and it gets posted immediately. I wrote the confirm# down and the date paid, which was August 6. I went out to check the mailbox today and found my Geico bill with the date due: August 6 and today is August 11. They are going to screw up everything postal and people are going to GO POSTAL!