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How Are Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's Changes Affecting Workers?
- SpikeDad 6y agoJust like you'd think a Trump sycophant would implement. Reducing services, removing equipment and cutting back on employee hours. Mail is piling up in Iowa (where the person being interviewed is located) and from other reports all over the country. Well maybe not in Texas or Florida where Trump depends on vote by mail. Of course it all started as revenge against Amazon but it's nicely transitioned to manipulating the USPS for political benefits. In other words, business as usual.
- benbenolson 6y agoAny proof that these changes wouldn't affect Texas and Florida USPS services, or that any of these changes are for political benefit?
- redindian75 6y agoHe tweeted. He tweeted that mail-in voting is GOOD in Florida, and somehow totally different from mail-in voting in other states. He encouraged people to do vote by mail in Florida.
- Simulacra 6y agoConsidering the postal union is one of the strongest democrat supporting unions, can you point to any whistleblowers or leaked documents, or any proof that this is politically motivated?
- addicted 6y agoMy spouse’s small business is seeing delays in deliveries the last few weeks it didn’t even see at the height of the pandemic. And she had something get lost a week ago, something that hadn’t happened in over a year (small sample size though). We do know that the local USPS has cut back on the hours their employees are working, which is strange considering USPS is busier than ever.
- rkhassen9 6y agoIn the last two weeks, key financial docs got sent back as wrong address. Charles Schwab and our bank - we only know because they called to ask us about it. We’ve been at the same address for over 10 years. Never had this issue before. Anecdotal, perhaps, but odd timing nonetheless.
- dawnerd 6y agoAccording to their last quarterly only parcel volume is up, the rest is down - so it kinda evens out. There was a few weeks at the start when everyone was panic buying every puzzle they could on ebay that the post office felt like the week before Christmas though. https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/0807-usps-reports-third-quarter-fiscal-2020-results.htm https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2020/0807-...
- coderintherye 6y agoI spent ~$50k/year on USPS deliveries and also have had almost zero problems prior to the past 4 weeks. Now, we've got almost a dozen lost and delayed packages
- jimkleiber 6y agoI guess what confuses me is that, even assuming good intentions by the new Postmaster General, why and why now? I believe the main stated reason has been that the USPS loses money and they want to make it break even or profitable. Assuming that's the reason (and not election interference), why should such an infrastructure be breakeven or profitable? And why now, during a pandemic? There are plenty of government services that aren't even close to breakeven. I imagine USPS actually might be one of the most self-sustaining federal departments. Why should this particular one be profitable? Why should this one be privatized, out of all of them? The USPS has been one of the most stable, reliable, and predictable forces in my life. Their informal creed speaks volumes to me: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." I'm open to hearing arguments for why the USPS should be profitable (or privatized) and why now is a good time. I'm finding a very hard time imagining why.
- gok 6y agoPrimary argument is that most of the entire rest of the world has moved to profitable, privatized mail carrying.
- xenospn 6y agoGot any sources for that claim? The transition in Israel, for example, resulted in what can only be described as a national joke.
- nostromo 6y agoGermany. They’ve done so well after privatization, they now operate globally and are the world’s largest courier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Post
- rlkf 6y agoDHL operates in my home country, Norway, where they are the bottom of the barrel. If I can, I avoid shopping online at places that uses DHL; they're that bad.
- jgacook 6y agoSpare me the puerile libertarian arguments for a privatized postal service. There is no good reason for it to be privatized and many Americans lives will be negatively affected by such a change. 1) There are already private mail carriers (FedEx, UPS, et al.). They do not have an obligation to deliver mail in a timely manner anywhere in the continental US and overseas territories. This is fine if you are a city dweller, but private mail carriers notoriously do not guarantee "last mile" delivery. This will cut off many isolated rural communities for whom the USPS is a lifeline to the outside world. 2) USPS receives no tax dollars for their services. They are completely self-sustaining. A Republican congress forced an insane burden for the USPS to pre-fund 75 years worth of pension obligations: there are future postal workers who have not been born yet that the post office must plan pensions for. No other government entity has such an obligation - this is the only reason the USPS is in a financial problem and it is a manufactured crisis. There is no "small government" argument here since your tax dollars don't fund them. 3) The USO pledge states that the USPS must offer affordable rates to customers. Privatized companies have a market incentive to keep prices low, yes, but in practice there is no way that there won't be price collusion/fixing if a handful of private carriers become market dominant. Antitrust is laughably weak in the US right now. 4) DeJoy is using the manufactured crisis from pension obligations as a canard for slashing worker benefits and overpay to the bone. He is intentionally gutting the USPS so the Republicans can point at it and whine about how socialized enterprises don't work as well as private ones. This is why all mail is so delayed right now: postal workers rely on overtime to ensure that all mail is delivered in a timely manner.
- mikem170 6y ago> A Republican congress forced an insane burden for the USPS to pre-fund 75 years worth of pension obligations: there are future postal workers who have not been born yet that the post office must plan pensions for. No other government entity has such an obligation - this is the only reason the USPS is in a financial problem and it is a manufactured crisis. This is the same obligation that private company pensions need to adhere to, because that is the responsible thing to do, with the difference being that the post office has to also fund retirement medical plans since, unlike a private company, those are mandated by congress and can only be changed with congressional approval. I don't understand why this keeping getting called out, like it is an unusual burden to be responsible. In my humble opinion I think that all government pensions should be funded, because it is not fair for us to artificially lower costs now and expect everyone's children and grandchildren in the future to somehow pay for this generation's unfunded promises.
- Shivetya 6y agoPractically a paid advertisement by the Postal Employees Union. Okay, not practically, completely. Having had two relatives both be Post Masters you can damn well bet the slow down of mail is totally because they are purposefully doing it and not for hours cut. You underestimate the levels they go to. Both relatives recounted days where you would have bickering constantly and having to call in RCAs because two or more permanent employees were bitching over a truck or additions to a route and no mail would go out. This same union had incredible influence over the poor working conditions RCA drivers suffer; these are all those personal vehicles marked up with PO logos and such. All with their guaranteed day but hoping for enough days to pay their bills. All having to suffer the whims of a regular PO employees who treat most of them like dirt. All this just so they can get their permanent position. Which should be done by the RCA with most seniority but this can be sabotaged quite easily by the regulars. Sorry, this piece is election year drivel and you can expect story after story on every subject sure to come up in ads
- djaque 6y ago> Both relatives recounted days... The plural of anecdote is not data. Do you have anything solid to back up your claim that it is the postal union slowing down the mail service as a political move? That's a bold statement and requires some strong evidence for me to believe it.
- DFHippie 6y agoThey are working fewer hours because the administration has forbidden overtime.
- jmcguckin 6y agoThe USPS loses a lot of money. Even ignoring the pension pre-funding issue, it's still cashflow negative. For a supposedly 'private' company that constantly requires bailing out by the US government. The USPS is just another industry that the internet has decimated and mostly replaced. First class mail has fallen so much that only package delivery and junk mail is keeping the USPS (kinda) alive. One of the Postal Services problems is that senior management comes from USPS career employees whose loyalty is to the postal service employees - not the business itself or even its customers. The USPS needs new blood at the top and it needs to start acting like a for-profit business and less like a business that has been captured by its union.
- jgacook 6y ago> The USPS loses a lot of money. Even ignoring the pension pre-funding issue, it's still cashflow negative. This is untrue - without its pension pre-funding requirement it turns a modest profit each year[1]. [1] https://www.nonprofitmailers.org/four-usps-myths/ https://www.nonprofitmailers.org/four-usps-myths/
- emodendroket 6y agoEven if this were not true, it seems to me that a mail system is a societal good that is significant enough that I would be happy to see it funded from taxes.
- yingw787 6y agoFunny little tidbit: my 1940s townhouse neighborhood has no universal front desk and hands out building keys to USPS for each townhouse. The mailbox is inside, and USPS is legally obligated to access it, so I know if USPS ships a package for me it's next to my apartment door. UPS and FedEx do not have access. You have to be there when they drop off the package, or they're tossed into this hole (like a literal hole) next to the door, or they do the "we missed you" thing and sticky a note to the outer door and you pick it up in person. I live a ten-minute drive away from the Pentagon. It's not just remote villages in Alaska that'd be inconvenienced by USPS going away.
- scabbycakes 6y agoI imagine Trump's installed someone in charge of the USPS to destabilize it in a hurry in order to erode confidence in the USPS to be able to handle mail-in voting. Perhaps he'll get the public behind him enough to somehow stop mail-in voting if the next few months the mail system falls apart. Or if not and he loses the election, he'll blame it on the incompetent mail service and demand an election redo or whatever Trumpy things he normally does when he loses. It seems to me that it's everything to do with the election, nothing to do with improving the USPS.
- emodendroket 6y agoI don't know why anybody has to keep entertaining the absurd notion that slowing delivery and making the service "not work" is not precisely the purpose of the changes.
- sircastor 6y agoI live in Oregon, where vote by mail is the standard. While I can drop off my ballot at a drop box (convenient for folks in town, like me) it’s delivered by USPS. This feels like a not-very-subtle attack on my voting franchise. I’m a strong advocate for vote by mail, and it never occurred to me that the USPS would not be there to handle ballot delivery and pickup. I wonder if there are constitutional issues with this kind of change?
- specialist 6y agoIIRC, Oregon requires postal ballots to be received by election day. Also IIRC, Washington's (State) rule is received by certification, which is 21 (?) days after election day. Changing to the Oregon rule is floated most every legislative session. We've successfully beaten it back. But one thing I learned as an election integrity activist is the Powers That Be will keep trying until they succeed. FURTHER: Back in the day, the Undeliverable As Addressed (UAA) rate was %1 for First Class mail. Meaning %1 of postal ballots were not received by voters. And %1 of cast postal ballots never got back to central count. In my county, that's over 10,000 ballots lost in a general election. Anybody worried about USPS's performance should probably be doing their own measuring of UAA and other metrics. Any way. I'm VERY CONCERNED about the USPS monkeying with stuff that ain't broke. Ensuring postal balloting works as expected takes A LOT of effort.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]