USPS in its response to the OIG Alert wrote after January 2015 delayed mail volumes were reduced and service performance improved. Also, USPS wrote they may be required to continue Phase II Network Consolidation
USPS Office of Inspector General Management Alert August 13, 2015
The purpose of this alert is to bring to your attention the need to immediately address the timeliness of mail processing following the January 5, 2015, service standard revisions. These revisions were expected to affect about 14 billion pieces of total mail volume and up to 16 percent of First-Class Mail®. These revisions enabled the U.S. Postal Service to expand the mail processing operational window, allowing mail to be processed over a longer period of time than previously. They also paved the way to reduce the number of machines and locations required to process the mail.
The service standard revisions included the elimination of single-piece overnight First-Class Mail service and also shifted a portion of mail from a 2-day service standard to a 3-day service standard.
These changes took place during a major effort to align plants with mail volume, which is known as Network Rationalization. Phase I involved consolidating 141 mail processing facilities between 2012 and 2013. Under Phase II, begun in January 2015, the Postal Service planned to consolidate 82 additional facilities by October 2015. However, many stakeholders have voiced concerns that delayed mail is increasing and service is declining as a result of major network changes. In May 2015, the Postal Service’s chief operating officer (COO) announced that, in response to customers’ concerns about the need to stabilize service performance, the Postal Service would delay implementation of Phase II consolidations. However, the COO did not provide a definite date for resuming the consolidations.
Mail was not being processed timely throughout the country. We found in the first 6 months of 2015 delayed processing increased by about 494 million mailpieces (a 48 percent increase), as compared to the same period last year (SPLY) (see Figure 1).
Several factors caused the delayed mail processing:
Weather: Postal Service management stated a large number of winter storms disrupted service from January through March 2015, particularly for mail requiring air transportation. Further, management asserted weather related delays increased significantly for February through March 2015 compared to February through March 2014. Additionally, winter storms shut down highways on the East Coast and closed a contractor’s hub in Memphis, TN, delaying mail across the country.
Network and Operational Changes: Significant changes to the Postal Service’s mail processing network took place over a short period of time. These included the service standard revisions, the mail processing consolidations, and the operational window expansion. While some of the operational impacts were anticipated, other impacts were not fully understood prior to these network changes. The Postal Regulatory Commission encouraged the Postal Service to study the effects of service standard revisions during the initial implementation phase to make informed decisions before moving forward with full implementation.
The service standard revisions impacted the schedules for nearly all processing and transportation activities nationwide. Specifically, the revisions allowed the Postal Service to expand its operational window, which allowed mail to be processed much earlier and resulted in over 5,000 employees transitioning from night to day shifts. This required staffing realignments and training of mail processing employees on new jobs. The Postal Service could not immediately shift mail processing clerks’ and mail handlers’ scheduled workhours to mirror the processing times of the new operational window. Moreover, the job bidding process established between the Postal Service and its unions can take several months to complete, and larger plants had to re-bid hundreds of jobs to those with start times concurrent with the new processing times.
Recommendations
We recommend the vice president, Network Operations:
1. Continue to monitor and mitigate delayed mail processing as appropriate.
2. Assign appropriate staffing and conduct training to ensure timely processing of the mail.
3. Ensure appropriate transportation is in place to help meet the new service standards.
4. Establish criteria for determining if the network has stabilized and ensure the criteria are met prior to resuming the Phase II consolidations or conducting any other optimization efforts.
USPS response:
Re: Phase II Network Consolidation
The activities associated with Phase II Network Consolidation are the only activities deferred at this time. Some optimization efforts, particularly within individual facilities, may be required to continue to meet business or customer requirements. Target date for completion: January 16, 2016. Full USPS OIG alert
put a fork in it, this place is done. hiring people with no college level business training and putting dolts in place to play act business manager is insane.a loss of over 80 Billion dollars since 2009 is criminal behavior. lose the socialist model and replace it with a capitalist tool model-problem solved. 110,000 po uneducated mismanagers making over 75K out the door……is a start! the federal govt will soon be 20 Trillion in debt……..my guess is that sooner or later the corrupt govt will have to kick this can out the door. jimmy carter did as much to airline workers with the Deregulation Act of 1978……..just a way for the govt to get out of the transportation business. what makes the postal service so special….nothing. I give it 5 years before a major kick in the ass! let it sink or swim, either it will be a Delta or a Pam Am.
It’s like this, the mail handlers in the plants know how to delay mail. They sabotage the service in order to save their jobs. A lot of these clerks have been at their mundane job so long that they have gotten complacent and they don’t want anything to happen to their cushy little job that they will do anything to keep it. There is no reason why a letter mailed on Monday at first class takes 4-5 days to get to the other side of the city. About the only thing you can count on arriving in a timely fashion is if you are an Amazon Prime member and you order with 2 day service. For the most part it arrives 99.99% on time. We might as well change our name to USPS/AMAZON??
For everyone blaming management go to the nearest processing facility and take a look at who is working there and what they do, then you will wake up and say now I know why everything is late. People on the mail plants work like a 6 year old, pathetic and want everything. Getting really pathetic how u all blame management for everything. Look at the workers that work with you. Unions are the problem. Who do nothing for you guys. Wake up people and by the way we haven’t made a pre fund payment in a couple of years and we are still in the red, get off the union talking point that end the pre fund payment and we will be fine. Laters and flats are ending, parcels are where the money is….5 day delivery and 7 day package service here we come….
You should really learn to spell. Laters? I am sure you meant letters.
You must be a supervisor. 🙂
There is a lot of finger pointing but the bottom line is it will never change back. Upper management doesn’t have the mind set to do anything except follow the plan. And the plan is to destroy the service and rebuild it with the private sector running it. Glad I’m retired. After 26 years of watching the service change this last consolidation was the worst I’ve seen yet. The Post Office mentioned transportation effected by a harsh winter. Well if they didn’t have to move the mail 50 miles plus to be processed and back it wouldn’t be late. I never did before but I now pay all my bills on line because I’ve gotten stuck with late charges. In the past a lot of companies would honor the postmark but now they say if it is not in their hands on time then it’s late. Mail it early. And now with packages they have missed delivery dates because they are routed to the wrong place then sent back to the distribution center and sent to the right office. Tracking is great it shows all the screw-ups. Seems the Post Office can’t get much right. Oh has anyone looked into how much they are loosing with Express missed delivery ? My PO hands back a lot so where is the profits going to come from? Oh with the new delivery standard Express over night doesn’t specify which night. Done
Im a retired carrier and glad of it . I think the service is getting worse every day . I ordered tickets for the world cup in Canada on May 27th the post mark said when I got them in July . Lucky for me I called when they didn’t show up and got a will call. They finely came in July when it was already over but both ends of the envelop was opened with no tickets inside.
Nice Job USPS
its funny watching this place replace the titanic as a metafore for a sinking ship. the moronic po bureaucrats hubris is unending!
who cares.
It’s like a broken record seeing report after report of the USPS management fucking up everything they put their hands on. What’s more annoying is the apparent inability or willingness for anybody in the position to do so to actually do something about it.
Congress obviously doesn’t give a shit or they would have stopped the prefunding requirement law, passed laws that would not allow the USPS to reduce standards or shut down plants. So the morons run amok, most appointed through the good old boy/suck up/dirty dealing system that promotes the worst craft people and puts them exactly where they shouldn’t be, overseeing craft people.
There was a stand up talk in our office addressing misdeliveries. What a crock of shit that was. It’s management themselves who bully and threaten new employees, CCA’s and new regulars to case two routes, run a route and a half and still be back on time, and those carriers do it! I can understand CCA’s being frightened, and given the NALC’s lack of interest in protecting them but gladly taking their dues, I suppose I can’t blame them. But regulars should know better. But not anymore. It’s run run run, slam vacant addresses full even when they’re marked as vacant, ignore vacation holds and leave it on the street or not resume delivery, totally ignore COA’s, and have no idea whatsoever how forwarding and mark up mail works. So management can’t figure out now why a stop that has perhaps 40 or 50% coverage on a normal day takes longer when there’s full coverage marriage mail. They really don’t understand, and email supervisors and try to get them to discipline somebody who takes longer than the day before even when they have double the volume. In management’s clueless world, it should take no more time than the lightest day, ever.
So why should we be surprised that our service standards suck?
Just end the pre funding of health care, eliminate the executive only gym, and the limos! Cut out many levels of stupidvisors,and much of upper management. How much money is spent on lurking around trying to catch an employee so the employee can be disciplined? The Postal Service can, and should, do much better providing great service. With Pat Downthehole gone one would think things would be better.
Im retired from the USPS,and have never seen service this bad in my life. I don’t care what the charts and graphs say. I live in a real world and on August 14, 2015 I received a letter dated July 3, and postmarked July 6, 2015. That’s more than a month late. Its not just me all my friends are complaining about late delivery and lost mail. So they have no choice but to pay bills on line. Whats happening to the USPS, praying for a positive change!!!
Standard changes did NOT allow for longer processing times. Management simply moved all of the T-1 jobs to T-2. We are still processing mail in the same number of hours, just different hours. Outgoing mail left unsorted at the end of the night (never happened before). DPS mail not finished in time for dispatch. Letter and flats left unworked and employees are told to focus on parcels (due to tracking).
This change is a disaster.
Postal management wants workers to leave their jobs so they can be replaced by lower paid employees. Offer me an incentive. Not only would I go but possibly as many as 50 K workers might go as well.
BS.
Ask the old customer what kind of late service we’re getting !
it’s a cinch it isn’t 9 digit Zip service , just shoddy service ! !
how do you increase the delay of mail with 110,000 postal mismanager’s, most making over 75K per year? it seems criminal to me. tell me OIG for a company this size, and the amount of employees, how many real managers could run this place and get it in the black?
USPS are getting ready to set a new cut off time in the 654-655 area from last truck leaving at 6:00 pm to 4:00 pm! this will mean a delay of the last 2 hours of mail volume outgoing from the larger offices and even more delay to those that truck into that last dock dispatch!
Nothing matters at this point, mail-handlers’ and clerks’ Union’s will sue and counter-sue. USPS upper D.C. management will continue 2 downsize and close mail-processing plants. And the U.S. Congress will do as they have so far, Republican or Democratic continue 2 do absolutely nothing 4 us. To paraphrase a 1965 slogan”you don’t believe we’re on the eve of (SELF) destruction. Our best hope now is as it was about the world then, it’s also about the postal service; fifty years later.
It’s all congress fault. They demanded and passed the PREFUND bill. I don’t have a business in the world has ever been demanded to do this ridiculous bill. The $5.6 billion is forced to be paid by the Postal Service. In order to do this they had to cut costs. To cut cost to shut down processing plants. The buildings were closed and sold. Other processing plants were doubled and tripled the workload to cover for the closed plants. These plants were not designed to handle that amount of workload. That’s why they had other processing plant duh! They can’t keep up with the workload. So the mail piles up and is delayed. However the sold plants that were closed brought in money. However the money was not enough. As a matter fact the buildings were sold undervalued. Members of Congress were involved in the sales. Their family members interned resold the properties at a much higher profit then what the post office guy. Now in order to go back to the standards Congress is now demanding. The Postal Service has to buyback properties for new properties at a higher rate and then what they sold them for and it’s going to cost them more money. Congratulations Congress within five years you’re going to bankrupt the post office. Causing a private sector business to deliver the mail at a much higher rate to the American people. You ought to be ashamed of yourself! You greedy congressional inconsiderate liars and cheaters.
Congress is not to blame for what is going on in the USPS,it’s all on management, the PAEA prefund requirement became a convenient excuse for Donahoe’s degrading of service and these actions of attempting to outsource MVS and retail operations.This was already planned years before 2006 under Potter by the devious Mr.Donahoe ,they were going to do it regardless of the PAEA prefund when Donahoe took over as PMG.And that person you are referring to is Sen.Diane Feinstein,who is making millions with her husband from the dirty deal the Postal Service made with CRBE to be their exclusive broker.