Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s devastating and destructive effort to cut operating costs in the U.S. Postal Service has made an already difficult time of year even more chaotic for the beloved agency, threatening the prompt delivery of millions of Christmas packages while overworked postal workers tirelessly working its way through the accumulation of backlogs.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that a “perfect crisis storm” – the coronavirus pandemic, an unprecedented level of online ordering and DeJoy’s operational changes – is wreaking havoc at the agency, which has seen dramatic performance drops since the postmaster general started implementing his schedule over the summer.
“Mail performance plummeted: only 75.3 percent of first class mail, such as letters and bills, arrived within the standard one to three day delivery window in the week of December 5, according to the latest data. Agency Available “, Post reported. “This time, last year, the mail service’s score on time was closer to 95 percent.”
“Increasing slowness,” the Post noted, “It is a local confusion about the cost-cutting initiatives that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy implemented over the summer and then paused in the direction of five federal courts. The Postal Service appealed several of these decisions.”
A Michigan postal worker told the Post that “as bad as you think, it is worse.”
“No packages are moving,” said the anonymous worker.
Mark Dimondstein, national president of the 200,000-member American Postal Workers Union (APWU), emphasized that postal workers are doing their best to ensure that Christmas gifts and other packages – including prescription drugs and benefit checks – are delivered as soon as possible. as soon as possible. As the Post reported, postmen in busy areas are “working more than 80 hours a week, including some who have worked every day since Thanksgiving Day without the weekend.”
“This is a long and difficult fight,” said Dimondstein. “We are asking for your patience, and no late gifts should take away valuable family time and the reason why people come together to celebrate. Hopefully, everything will arrive in time. But if it doesn’t, still get there.”
In the wake of the presidential election, DeJoy – a Republican mega-donor to President Donald Trump – quickly resumed his push for a major operational reform in the postal service, setting aside evidence that his original effort caused massive mail delays across the country before be temporarily suspended by DeJoy himself and federal judges.
DeJoy, who took over the postal service in mid-June, “left his initiative to try to eliminate delayed trips and extra mail transportation, but the courts later ordered the USPS to walk back,” government Executive reported last month. “The USPS will likely try to resume these efforts, with DeJoy saying … the USPS can ‘operate with much more precision’.”
Given that the postmaster general serves the pleasure of the USPS Board of Governors – which is currently dominated by 4-2 by Trump nominees – it is unclear how much the next Biden administration will be able to do to prevent DeJoy from carrying a sledgehammer to operations postcards.
As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month, Biden pledged during the presidential campaign to fill the three seats on the nine-member Board of Governors with the hope of impeding DeJoy’s agenda and potentially removing him from office. Last week, Trump decided to fill one of the council’s three vacancies, naming Roy Bernardi, which is expected to be confirmed by the Senate.
“Like many other things in Washington, DeJoy’s fate could be related to the outcome of Georgia’s US Senate election,” the Journal noticed. “Democrats on the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which oversees the USPS, are eager to fill vacancies on the board and move away from the ‘cost-cutting mentality’ among the Postal Service leadership that contributed to the decline in service. “