A formal complaint filed last week with the Office of the Inspector General of the US Postal Service by a postman in Portland, Maine, alleges that City Postmaster James Thornton is illegally ordering the delay of first-class mail. class to prioritize Amazon package delivery.
“Without consultation or input from any of the postal unions, postal customers or the mail community, [DeJoy] has launched a series of actions that will weaken the Postal Service and will be an insult to all postal workers. ”
—American Union of Postal Workers
The complaint, first reported on Tuesday by the Portland Press Herald, comes weeks after Louis DeJoy assumed the post of Director General of the US Post Office and wasted little time implementing “major operational changes” and cost-cutting measures at the agency that critics warned would delay delivery of the mail and would leave USPS unable to compete with private sector competitors.
Before being unanimously appointed by the USPS Board of Governors in May, DeJoy was a major donor to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The Board of Governors is controlled by those appointed by Trump.
Mark Seitz, the 16-year Postal Service veteran who filed the Inspector General’s complaint on July 13, told the Press Herald He suspects that Thornton’s orders to prioritize Amazon parcel delivery over first-class mail came in response to pressure from the USPS national leadership.
“Thornton is deliberately delaying thousands of first-class and priority packages so that Amazon’s fourth-class packages can be delivered,” says Seitz’s complaint.
the Press Herald He summed up the changes Thornton is making at the Portland Post Office:
Postmen generally sort a small amount of mail in the morning before starting their routes. If the mail is not sorted by the time the carriers leave, they return at noon to pick it up or an assistant carrier will step in and make sure all the mail is delivered on time. Now, according to the postmen inside the Portland Post Office, employees are told to stop sorting at 8:30 a.m., an hour and a half before most carriers leave for their routes. , and then shipped home to cut costs, leaving first-class unsorted packages in the office overnight.
According to the postmen in Portland, it’s first-rate medications, paychecks, and other mailings that stay in the office overnight. They say Amazon packages are prioritized by order of the postmaster and other supervisors in the building.
Seitz’s allegation, according to Press Herald“It was corroborated by two other postmen who said they wanted to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.”
The operational changes described by the Portland mail carriers resemble a new initiative that the USPS officially launched on Wednesday titled “Accelerated for Street / Afternoon Sorting (ESAS).”
According to the new program, according to a USPS document published on Twitter by The interceptionRyan Grim, “City carriers will not sort any mail during the morning operation.”
“They will register, they will recover the mail that was withdrawn the previous day,” the document read. “Unclassified first class apartments will go directly to the street with the carrier and will be routed in the delivery sequence while on the street. Upon returning from street delivery, carriers will order all mail, as directed by the During this time also handle any auxiliary tasks previously performed in the morning. “
In response to the new initiative, Grim tweeted that “we are seeing the deliberate destruction of the Post Office unfolding in front of us.”
NEW: Trump’s postal service is testing a new program that will take already delayed first-class mail and delay it even further, by ordering carriers to no longer sort and package newly arrived mail in the morning and then deliver it. Instead, they must wait until the end of the day. pic.twitter.com/AEJYgBP1vJ
– Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) July 22, 2020
When asked about the new directives, an unidentified mail carrier said HuffPost Journalist Dave Jamieson said, “These orders are immoral to me.”
“Is that our new motto? ‘If we don’t do it today, will we do it tomorrow?'” Said the postman.
The changes occur when the USPS is in the midst of a congressionally manufactured financial crisis and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused a sharp decline in mail volume. Congress approved $ 10 billion in emergency relief funds for the USPS in March, but the Trump administration has refused to release the money as it seeks to force changes in the agency’s finances and operations.
In a message to the 200,000 members of the United States Postal Workers Union, the organization’s National Executive Board accused DeJoy of advancing the Trump administration’s privatization agenda by trying to “undermine the service to the point that people He no longer trusts and does not support it. “
“Without consultation or input from any postal union, postal customer, or mail community, it has launched a series of actions that will undermine the Postal Service and will be an insult to every postal worker, every postal ship, and every postal customer, “said the board.
“The Union of Postal Workers in the United States is vehemently opposed to any action that slows down and undermines mail processing, delivery, and retail services, and therefore drives business and revenue away from the Postal Service,” the message. “United among us and with the people of the country, we will defeat those who seek to dismantle and sell the public Postal Service.”
.
