The US Postal Service is implementing a pilot program that seeks to standardize mail delivery times, while leaving more items for the following day.
The test, which USPS will run at nearly 200 sites across the country, follows a set of postal administration policy directives that sought to crack down on late travel in an effort to cut labor and transportation costs. Pilots will run for 30-60 days and, for now, only affect city carriers.
The goal of the initiative, called Accelerated for Street / Afternoon Sorting, is to bring mail sorting into the afternoon so that mail carriers can go their routes earlier in the morning. City mail carriers are now expected to return to their post offices by 2 pm, at which time they will sort any new items and send mail for next day delivery. Carriers will sort certain items, such as packages, in the morning before beginning their routes. They would also be responsible for taking part of the unsolicited mail to “route it in the delivery sequence while on the street.”
The latter impulse could anger postmen, who generally prefer to sort mail at their home post offices or distribution sites rather than outdoors in elements like the current summer heat.
In a memorandum delivered as a “standing chat” to affected employees in recent days, the postal administration summed up the plan as “retrieve, load, and go,” leading to minimal morning office time. The liquidity-strapped USPS, whose bad finances have been hurt during the new coronavirus pandemic, in other recent memoranda instructed employees to go to each phase of their deliveries according to an established schedule, meaning that it is likely that some mail is delayed. The memos also announced that late travel and overtime would no longer be authorized.
Dave Partenheimer, a USPS spokesman, said the agency is implementing these changes now while working on a longer-term strategy to present to its board of governors.
“In addition to developing a broader business plan, the Postal Service is taking immediate steps to increase operational efficiency by emphasizing existing plans that have been designed to provide fast and reliable service within current service standards,” Partenheimer said. “By executing operations on time and on schedule, we will enhance our ability to be sustainable so that we can continue to provide high-quality, reasonable-price service to all people and businesses in the country.”
Lawmakers, both in the House and the Senate, wrote letters to newly appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in recent days asking for more explanations of the changes. In a letter led by Representatives Carolyn Maloney, DN.Y., chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, and Gerry Connolly, D-Va., Chair of the Government Operations panel, four House Democrats said that the Changes would have “negative impacts on service standards and cause significant delays in mail delivery.”
“While we share the objective of ensuring the solvency of the Postal Service, the rhetoric used in the document compares the Postal Service with a private company interested only in the bottom line, rather than the constitutionally mandated public service that it is,” lawmakers wrote in Monday.
They blamed USPS for not consulting their unions and stakeholders, and said delayed mail would be particularly unacceptable in a presidential election year with expected dramatic increases in mail ballots. They asked if the documents reflected the official policy and opinions of the postmaster general, if the changes would affect service standards and if the agency consulted with its regulatory body. The letter followed a similar one from Sen. Gary Peters, a Democrat from Michigan, who serves as the top Democrat on the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.
In its original memos, USPS promised to address “the root causes” that have led to the mail getting out too late in the day, suggesting that the directives would force new efficiencies into the system.
“As we adapt to the continuous pivot, which will have a series of phases, we know that operations will begin to run more efficiently and that delayed mail volumes will soon be significantly reduced,” wrote USPS. He added that the changes “would ensure that we can secure our future as a world-class service provider.”
The National Association of Letter Carriers said last week that it has not yet received any formal notification of a change in operations, but is prepared to “use existing processes to address any service or compliance issues.”
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