Postal Workers launch campaign against another DeJoy mail slowdown

Letter carrier Greg Andregic loaded his truck for the day in downtown Pottsville, Pennsylvania, last year. Postal workers are ready to fight new plans by DeJoy to slow down mail delivery. | Jacqueline Dormer/Republican-Herald via AP

WASHINGTON—The Postal Workers have launched a campaign against yet another mail slowdown plan from Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a GOP big giver whom Donald Trump imposed on the U.S. Postal Service about four and a half years ago.

DeJoy presented his plan to the USPS board at an open meeting in early November, the only one, under new rules for such sessions, where the public and postal union members may attend. It was not clear if they were allowed to speak then.

DeJoy’s prime goal, which he buried in his speech, was to save money: $3.6 billion to $3.7 billion yearly. What he didn’t openly admit is savings would sacrifice service.

But APWU got wind of his scheme and is blowing a loud horn against it, the second time it’s had to mobilize the masses against DeJoy’s cutbacks.

Once again, the union proclaims “The U.S. mail is not for sale,” alluding to DeJoy’s real goal of cost-cutting and firing people, all in the name of profits, not service.

The union provided a link where people can protest: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/say-no-to-the-postal-slowdown?source=web

“Millions of people in communities across America will soon feel the impact of an unnecessary mail slowdown unless we act fast!” APWU’s alert, posted in e-mails and on social media, reads.

“Postal management and the Postal Board of Governors (BOG) have announced a plan to slow the mail down, for the second time in three years.

“We need to make sure the Postal Regulatory Commission and the BOG hear our voices before the Postal Service starts slowing down the mail.

“This new scheme would abolish afternoon mail pickups for many communities across the country, especially in rural communities, delaying mail and extending USPS’s ‘service standards’ by another day.

“To add insult to injury, Sundays would no longer count as a day toward the standard, so a letter mailed on Tuesday could be delivered the next Monday and still be considered ‘on time,’” APWU said.

First slowed the mail in 2021

The union explained DeJoy, a right-wing former CEO of the XPO package delivery service—a Postal Service competitor—first slowed down the mail in 2021 by lengthening “on-time” standards.

Mail that used to take three days from the East Coast to the West Coast now is supposed to take five days, for example. Mail from Chicago, the hub of the system, to Milwaukee, which used to arrive overnight, now is supposed to take two days, including Sundays. Often it doesn’t, USPS data shows.

And that’s not the worst case. Lawmakers from Maryland, Michigan and Georgia have been inundated with complaints about slow mail in Baltimore, Detroit and the entire state of Georgia.

With “on-time” delivery crashing to as low as 36% there, during last year’s holiday season, Georgia Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff is demanding the USPS board fire DeJoy and his corporate management team, limit the Postmaster General’s term to five years and make all postmasters general subject to Senate confirmation and congressional accountability.

DeJoy’s “proposals for new standards would make the mail even slower, especially for those in rural communities,” the Postal Workers’ alert says. The USPS board “has the power to stop this. That’s why we are speaking up to the board and postal regulators. You have the power to make a difference. Will you use that power?” the union asks the public.

“The public relies on the Postal Service to be reliable and on time. While other delivery companies are promising same-day and next-day delivery, USPS is slowing down the mail for much of the country. This is no way to save money. It’s a way to drive customers away and out of the mail altogether.”

In his speech to the USPS board, DeJoy enveloped his slowdown in a fog of corporate doublespeak. The right-wing North Carolinian, whose first federal campaign contribution, decades ago, was to notoriously racist Republican Sen. Jesse Helms, said “one key initiative will be the implementation of our new service standards.”

DeJoy said present service standards are “55% of single-piece first-class mail, 83% of presort first-class mail, and 75% of all first-class mail” to be delivered between one and five days after it’s put in the mailbox. USPS data show that under DeJoy’s “Delivering for America” plan, the USPS often flunks even those benchmarks.

The single-piece first-class mail, of course, includes cards, letters, medicines, bills and checks—precisely the items whose lateness has customers screaming.

DeJoy claimed that first-class mail has “declined 80% since 1997.” That makes the current postal route network “outmoded, costly, inefficient, and underperforming”—which is corporate doublespeak for “more efficient” postal routes, i.e. cuts.

DeJoy did not say that Sunday would not count in the new standards thus extending many if not most deliveries by another day.

“Legacy business rules…force USPS to take costly, expensive, and inefficient actions, such as executing a trip in the morning and another trip in the evening every day, to every office, no matter how far the office is from the mail processing plant,” he added. One pickup per post office per day will slow down the mail, too.

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CONTRIBUTOR

Mark Gruenberg

Award-winning journalist Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People's World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.