Tag: U.S. Postal Service

Postal Service sees chance to turn the page after tumultuous year

The United States Postal Service is at an inflection point after a year of withering scrutiny and questions about the direction of the critical agency.

Bipartisan legislation in the Senate, paired with the appointment of three new board members by President Biden, is giving the Postal Service a path to modernize and cut costs after its finances and operations were thrust into the spotlight during the 2020 elections.

Sens. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) last week introduced the Postal Service Reform Act, which would roll back some of the agency’s financial commitments and aim to improve its service and accountability to the public. Continue reading.

Senators reach bipartisan deal to overhaul USPS finances, tighten accountability requirements

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An identical version of the legislation is advancing in the House, where it is said to have enough support to pass

A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation Wednesday to lift significant financial burdens off the ailing U.S. Postal Service while tightening accountability requirements for mail delivery, a major stride for an agency that has tussled with its balance sheet and reputation for the better part of a year.

The bill, identical to a version that has advanced in the House, would repeal $5 billion a year in mandatory retiree health-care expenses and require future postal retirees to enroll in Medicare. Advocates say the measures would save the agency $30 billion over the next decade.

The bill would also see the Postal Service develop a public online mail delivery performance dashboard where customers could view the agency’s on-time delivery metrics by Zip code each week. Continue reading.

Postal Service to announces plans to consolidate 18 mail facilities

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The U.S. Postal Service announced plans to consolidate 18 mail facilities across the country on Wednesday.

“Consistent with optimization and efficiency efforts paused in 2015, USPS will complete movement of mail processing operations at 18 facilities,” an announcement by the agency states.

The consolidation of these facilities is part of a 10-year infrastructure plan aimed at “financial sustainability and service excellence.” Continue reading.

Millions of Christmas presents may arrive late because of Postal Service delays

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Unprecedented package volume has paralyzed the agency, leading managers to divert vast shipments of mail across the country

Competing crises are slamming the U.S. Postal Service just days before Christmas, imperiling the delivery of millions of packages, as the agency contends with spiking coronavirus cases in its workforce, unprecedented volumes of e-commerce orders and the continuing fallout from a hobbled cost-cutting program launched by the postmaster general.

Nearly 19,000 of the agency’s 644,000 workers have called in sick or are isolating because of the virus, according to the American Postal Workers Union. Meanwhile, packages have stacked up inside some postal facilities, leading employees to push them aside to create narrow walkways on shop floors.

Some processing plants are now refusing to accept new mail shipments. The backlogs are so pronounced that some managers have reached out to colleagues in hopes of diverting mail shipments to nearby facilities. But often, those places are full, too. Meanwhile, packages sit on trucks for days waiting for floor space to open so the loads can be sorted. Continue reading.

USPS ‘gridlocked’ as historic crush of holiday packages sparks delays

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Private carriers FedEx and UPS have cut off new delivery orders for some retailers, rerouting surging mail volumes through the overwhelmed Postal Service.

A historic crush of e-commerce packages is threatening to overwhelm U.S. Postal Service operations just weeks before Christmas and runoff elections in Georgia that will decide control of the U.S. Senate, according to agency employees and postal industry tracking firms.

As Americans increasingly shop online because of the coronavirus pandemic, private express carriers FedEx and UPS have cut off new deliveries for some retailers, sending massive volumes of packages ordered past deadlines to the Postal Service.

That has led to widespread delays and pushed the nation’s mail agency to the brink. Postal employees are reporting mail and package backlogs across the country, and working vast amounts of overtime hours that have depleted morale during another surge of coronavirus infections nationwide. Continue reading.

USPS Special Agents Find Massive Amount Of Undelivered Mail At QAnon Postal Worker’s Home

United States Postal Service (USPS) special agents reportedly discovered large amounts of undelivered mail after raiding the home of a mail carrier who aligns with the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon.

A total of eight large garbage bags—believed to be filled with undelivered mail—were confiscated from the home of USPS mail carrier, Sean J. Troesch, according to KDKA. Following the raid, the USPS Office of Inspector General confirmed agents had retrieved “several classes of mail,” some of which were first class mail pieces.

“Special Agents recovered several different classes of mail, including business mail, flats, and small amount of first class mail. We expect to perform a piece count of the mail tomorrow, and make arrangements to have the mail delivered to customers as soon as feasible,” the statement said. Continue reading.

Poll: USPS should be run like a public service, not a business, Americans say 2-to-1

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The Postal Service continues to rate favorably despite recent delivery backlogs and President Trump’s ongoing attacks on mail voting

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was brought on, in part, to use his extensive private-sector experience to make the nation’s venerable mail service more efficient. 

But the net effect of DeJoy’s operational changes has been a slowdown in the pace of mail delivery. It may be no surprise, then, that a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll showed that Americans, by a more than 2-to-1 margin, reject the notion that the U.S. Postal Service should be “run like a business,” to use a phrase prevalent in conservative policymaking circles.

Instead, most said the USPS should be run as a “public service,” even if doing so would cost the government money. Continue reading.

The Postal Service scandal doesn’t just belong to Donald Trump. Here’s how Mitch McConnell played a big role

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Once upon a time, most Americans would have been hard-pressed to name the postmaster general. That fabled time was any time before May of this year, when Donald Trump replaced Postmaster General Megan Brennan with Louis DeJoy. And yes, I had to look up Megan Brennan.

What position of power did Brennan occupy before taking over the Postal Service under Barack Obama? None. Brennan started as a mail carrier at the Postal Service in 1986, delivering letters to neighborhoods in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She worked her way through the ranks at the USPS. For more than a decade, she headed up distribution and transportation in the Northeast before taking over as postmaster in her 27th year with the Postal Service.

Compare that Louis DeJoy. His postal-related career was almost as long as Brennan’s. It’s just that DeJoy spent that career practicing what he’s doing now: Tearing the post office down. And DeJoy doesn’t just owe his new role to Donald Trump—he’s hugely in debt to Mitch McConnell. Continue reading.

Coronavirus has put the USPS on the brink of extinction. Will anybody save it?

Since COVID-19 forced people to shelter in place and businesses to adapt or collapse, headlines have sung a dirge for America as we know it. And that was before nationwide protests demanding justice for the murders of Black Americans at the hands of police officers were met with … violent reprisals by the police.

But beneath these existential dilemmas and horrors rests the economic peril facing the United States Postal Service. Think of the USPS as the mortar that holds the U.S. together by performing a simple, invaluable task: delivering mail. Everybody gets mail every single day, which means mail delivery gets taken for granted within the bustle of American routines. But a country without the USPS is a country deprived of arguably its most vital (and certainly its most beloved) office. The Postal Service’s future has looked increasingly grim since March, as elected officials and certain executives in charge have done little to address the problems bearing down on the organization. They’ve even taken steps to exacerbate those problems, including denying the USPS stimulus money in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. Continue reading.

Trump administration considers leveraging emergency coronavirus loan to force Postal Service changes

Washington Post logoPresident Trump has railed for years against what he sees as mismanagement of the agency, which he argues has been exploited by sites such as Amazon

The Treasury Department is considering taking unprecedented control over key operations of the U.S. Postal Service by imposing tough terms on an emergency coronavirus loan from Congress, which would fulfill President Trump’s longtime goal of changing how the service does business, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Officials working under Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who must approve the $10 billion loan, have told senior officials at the USPS in recent weeks that he could use the loan as leverage to give the administration influence over how much the agency charges for delivering packages and how it manages its finances, according to the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks are preliminary.

Trump has railed for years against what he sees as mismanagement at the Postal Service, which he argues has been exploited by e-commerce sites such as Amazon, and has sought to change how much the agency charges for delivery packages. (Amazon’s founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) Continue reading.