Six weeks ago, U.S. Postal Service workers in the high desert city of Tehachapi, California, began noticing crates of mail sitting in the post office early in the morning that had to be shipped the night before for delivery.
At a mail processing plant in Santa Clarita in July, workers discovered that their automated sorting machines had been turned off and padlocked.
And inside a massive post-sorting facility in South Los Angeles, workers fell so far behind processing packages that in early August, knees and rodents swarmed over containers of rotten fruit and meat, and baby chickens were dead in their boxes.
Agreements on terms of employees at California postal services provide a glimpse into what some say is the result of widespread cuts in staff and equipment recently imposed by the Postal Service.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, responding to a nationwide outcry over service disruptions and fears of dismissal of voters, said this week that he would delay many planned changes until after the election. But postal workers say significant damage has already been done, including the removal of e-mail machines, which may not be replaced.
While the long-term effect of the cuts on the U.S. Postal Service is not clear, evidence of serious disruptions seems to be growing, according to postal workers interviewed by The Times, as well as customers, lawmakers and union leaders.
So far this week, the Postal Service has implemented a sweeping plan to remove 671 mail sorters, or about 10% of the total, from facilities in the U.S. – including 76 in California. Officials also paid overtime and imposed a new policy that could delay outgoing mail.
The cuts have had a ripple effect in California, slowing down the operation of one of the country’s largest mail processing plants and delaying the delivery of presents, rent payments and unemployment checks. Some people have complained about days going by without receiving any email at all.
At least five high-speed mail sorting machines have been removed from a processing plant in Sacramento, said Omar Gonzalez, the Western Regional Coordinator for the American Postal Workers Union. In addition, two of the machines were removed in Santa Ana and six in San Diego, Gonzalez said.
Processing plants serve more than 1,000 post offices in California, some of which deliver to remote rural addresses that may incur high delivery costs when serviced by private mail carriers.
Within one sprawling facility in Florence and Central avenues in Los Angeles, which serves 92 post offices in the LA area, seven delivery barcode sorters were removed in June, leaving three, Gonzalez said.
Each of those machines, which would handle post-in-ballots, could process a maximum of 35,000 mail per hour.
“A lot of the machinery is already locked again. Some of it has been torn down and moved or trashed,” Gonzalez said. “While we’re breaking the news about the suspension of these changes, it’s just that – a suspension. The attacks and undermining of our operations will, at the very least possible time, in December, restore our entire season.”
Prior to the recent cuts, workers worked at the facility six days a week, and were still struggling to keep up with the volume of packages fueled by an influx of online shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic, Mail Manager Aukushan Scantlebury said. 47.
When DeJoy limited overtime two months ago, Scantlebury and other workers saw their schedules cut to five days a week. Within days, he said, the facility was in chaos.
Packages piled up, blocking the corridors and the heavy sorting machines. Boxes of steaks, fruit and other perishables rotten. Rats strutted across the floor. At one point, Scantlebury said, the “whole building was full of gnats.”
The delays were particularly tragic for live animals, including baby dogs and critters, which are transported through the U.S. Postal Service. Most of the time, mail merchants say, they can hear the birds gliding and rolling in their boxes.
This month, one worker said, she found a box with air holes in a stack of packages. Instead of hearing the soft sounds of baby chicks, she heard nothing.
Workers sometimes see shipments of crickets bouncing around in their packaging, said Eddie Cowan, a mail dealer and president of a local chapter of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union. Now, he said, “you can see in the packages that crickets are dead.”
Sumi Ali, the co-owner of the Ja Plz cafe description company, arrived on July 25 to post a batch of freshly roasted beans to customers. A frequent visitor to the complex, he was shocked at what he saw.
The parking lot was full of half trailers piled high with unsorted mail; the warehouse facility was packed “wall to wall” with mail; and there were very few employees in sight.
“It was like Armageddon,” Ali said. “It was a total maze. You could not walk through the facility without having to move things out of your way. I do not know how they got forklifts there. There was only inch space between containers.”
Since then, Ali said, the backlog of packages seems to be improving a bit. But, he said, the chaos remains as bad, if not worse, than the usual holiday season.
Chamber member Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) said Wednesday that DeJoy informed her that he did not intend to repair the sorting machines or blue mailboxes that have been removed in several cities, nor did he have any plans to overwork enough workers.
As for the November election – the spark that sparked a nationwide fireworks display over USPS cuts – officials and officials in California here are less concerned here than in other states.
USPS spokesman David Partenheimer did not comment on the reductions, but referred to a statement from DeJoy who said the postal service was set up to handle election mail in full this fall.
The postal service also said DeJoy was setting up a task force to strengthen coordination with election officials to handle post-in ballots. The postal service had previously warned 46 states, including California, that some votes might not be delivered in time to count.
In June, Govin Newsom signed a law requiring all ballot papers to be postmarked by election day and delivered by Nov. 20. To be counted – five times longer than the normal California grace period. However, Secretary of State Alex Padilla said the concerns raised in other states are being closely monitored.
“Looking at the administration’s track record with the truth, it seems incredible,” Padilla said in a written statement. “My office will maintain constant communication with the U.S. Postal Service, and will continue to check for signs of service interruption.”
At the Santa Clarita Processing and Distribution Center, two delivery barcode sorters were locked and locked in their cameras and computers in July, so workers could not insert them and start using them again.
For some unknown reason, the devices returned online Wednesday, but a third delivery barcode sorter was missing from the facility, according to a worker who did not want to be named because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency.
Pasadena merchant Stephen Tu has said in the past two months that he has noticed that his first-class packages have been in the Santa Clarita facility for as much as 10 days, while they would normally continue in one day. Tu, who tracks shipments of baby clothes and accessories he sells on EBay and Facebook Marketplace, said he has never delayed these delays – up to 20 days for packages shipped outside Southern California – in the 15 years that he has sold items online.
Tu said his customers sometimes ask him if he has shipped their goods himself. To ensure timely delivery, he said, he is considering switching to private services such as FedEx and UPS.
About six weeks ago on a Wednesday morning, post clerk Kenny Diaz, 35, showed up at work at the Tehachapi post office and saw something new on the job in his ninth year: a plastic bath full of mail that should have gone out for delivery the night before.
Every afternoon, Diaz said, a truck driver picked up the outgoing mail from the post office and took it to a processing plant in Bakersfield. If the post office ran behind, the last driver of the day would wait to pick up every bill, package and letter, he said.
“They were always waiting – they were always waiting,” Diaz said. “Our No. 1 priority is getting the mail where it needs to be. We’d rather delay the truck by two hours than delay the mail by a full day.”
Now, Diaz said, the truck drivers have been instructed to leave on time, regardless of whether any outgoing mail is on the truck. That means some mail arrives a day later at the processing plant, where it could be delayed again, he said.
“Just think of our small town, once a million across the entire nation,” Diaz said. “You can see the domino effect it will have.”
Times staff writer John Myers contributed to this report.
