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February 6, 2015 – Arizona Daily Star – Tucson business leaders said they are experiencing significant delays in mail delivery since the U.S. Postal Service changed its service standards Jan. 5.
The service change is part of the second phase of the Postal Service’s effort to consolidate 82 facilities — including Tucson’s main processing station at 1501 S. Cherrybell Stravenue — around the U.S. as cost-cutting measures.
In the first phase, which occurred in 2013, all mail originating from Tucson, even if it was being sent to another Tucson address, was sent to Phoenix to be processed.
The Postal Service said the change last month in its service standards in the United States resulted in a one- to two-day delay in first-class mail delivery.
In a press conference Thursday with Tucson Councilman Richard Fimbres, business owners, union members and area chambers of commerce, George Kalil, whose family owns Kalil Bottling Co., complained that the mail delivery in Tucson is taking even longer than the one- to two-day delay that the Postal Service said would occur.
Kalil, for example, said when his secretary called the Cherrybell station to inquire about his late mail, a worker told her that there was a five-day delay at the Phoenix-based facility.
The Postal Service denied there are any additional delays as a result of the service change.
“There have been no delays of mail for Tucson-area delivery at the Phoenix Processing & Distribution Center,” said Peter Hass, a postal spokesman in the Western region.
There are about 350,000 pieces of mail from Tucson being processed at the Phoenix facility on a daily basis, he said. He could not immediately comment on how it was dealing with the increased volume of mail.
I see the mess every day at my mail processing center. All the job shifting has untrained clerks doing second pass. Most times mail not done on time , no over time just leave it and hopefully next tour cleans up.
The first week of the new delivery standards, our office did not sort letters or flats for the carriers that work out of our office. Workers have been assigned elsewhere, and there is often not enough staffing to finish the mail on time. Problems with In Plant Support downloading new sort plans over the weekends have caused trouble as well. On Saturday evening to early Sunday mail is sorted on the old sort plan and mail is left in the machine as there is no Sunday delivery. An updated plan is then loaded on Sunday, more mail is then sorted and mixed with the mail already in the machine. When second pass is run (putting the mail in the delivery order for the carriers) thousands of pieces of mail are in the wrong order and are delayed another day. Recently the clerks were told to reset the software to keep sorting the mail, instead of rejecting the out of sequence mail. The carriers for 3 or 4 offices each received thousands of pieces of mail in the wrong order that morning.
Who would read the Arizona Daily Star now a day? It’s the Amazon and eBay who dictate how we run our business, who cares about the dailies?
These delays are across the country. The consolidations are a failure and the upper management can’t see that. They just pat them selves on the back and say look at what we did to save money. Oh and we will change the delivery standards to make up for the delay in mail. The people of this country should be outraged by this . The ones that do complain take it out on the window clerks or carrier. They should be complaining to congress as it seems like it will take an act of congress to get there people promoted so they can quit screwing up the mail.
It is just like management to deny any problems and basically call their business customers liars. We know who the liars are. I would find it hard to find any business or service that is more indifferent to the wishes and needs of its customers than the Postal Service. They are hell bent on doing things their way, regardless of consequence. Congress has had no luck making management go back to the old standards or stop them from closing plants, although part of that problem lay with Congress itself and Darryl Issa, who was spearheading the movement to try to privatize the Service, which will never happen because of the Constitutional mandate.
Of course, for Issa, Tom Coburn, Tom Carper, a turncoat fink if there ever was one, the Constitution is something to wipe their arrogant asses with. Now however, some Congress members are trying to pass laws to force the morons at L’Infant Plaza to do the right thing. Figures – only by force will management do what they’re supposed to do.
Anybody who has been around long enough to witness contract negotiations and the continued indifference to all the labor agreements knows management is simply incapable or unwilling to abide by anything they sign their names to. They destroy their image, have no credibility except for the parade of ass kissing 204-B’s and supervisors who are connected by relatives or some other attribute you can imagine for yourself. The general class of craft who go into supervision almost always are shitty workers, finks against their co-workers, don’t want to do any real work themselves, and use any means available to get in management, and turn the screws on former craft workers and friends without hesitation.
No wonder the Service is so fucked up. We all know there are a few decent people in management – I don’t want to imply every single one of them is bad, and our office has a good PM and city carrier supervisor – but that’s a minority and those offices lucky enough to have reasonable people in local management should be grateful. My office wasn’t always that way. We’ve had supervisors, one in particular who was certifiably insane, and I’m dead serious. We’ve had deadbeat postmasters who only wanted to kiss district ass and hated craft, no matter how good the employee was. Abuse was rampant in my office until our union fought back.
Only by removing this type of person from the management will the USPS ever come close to being an efficient respectable entity. Continued abuses of customer and employee and refusal to do what makes sense will be the status quo unless Congress steps in and lowers the boom. But I’m not holding my breath.
Surprised? And this postal leader even the President of the USA have 5 day delivery waiting in the wing so things go smoother for Americans mail service.
Sorry to say but this is just the beginning of snail mail. Just think of all the millions of people that don’t have a voice in this like the Arizona Daily Star an how they feel about the poor service being delivered by the USPS.
I see the government as a hole going to the dogs, but just my take of it. Consequences of people with $hit for brains placed in position they shouldn’t of had been.
Well we all get to enjoy this Great Leader now.
One other thing, you earn respect from the White House down to the paper boy. If you do not have the 99% American peoples back you are just a ? In my book. Call it consequences.