From Forbes:
US Postal Service (USPS) consumers are seeing declining service standards. They know their packages don’t arrive on time. What they may not realize, however, is that this may also cost them their vote.
38 states require absentee ballots to be received by election day. However, USPS rules have changed and that first class letter mail, like absentee ballots which were once consistently delivered the next day in the same community, are now routed through distant regional processing centers. These centers are often in different states and hundreds of miles away.
If that isn’t bad enough, despite setting more relaxed quality and delivery standards, a recent post office inspector general’s report showed a 51% increase in mail processing delays. In short, USPS has lowered the bar for success and then dramatically missed the new lower bar.
For USPS, these potentially troubling circumstances have long been a reality. The quasi-government organization continues to fall short on its core monopoly services. Specifically, the USPS continues to post deteriorating performance standards for all classes of standard and first class mail, which has led to well-documented and adverse consequences. These delivery failures have caused bills to not be paid on time, have left patients unable to receive the medication they need, and a myriad of other troubling circumstances. Read full article
Postal Service responds to Steve Pociask’s opinion piece
Steve Pociask’s opinion piece “Delayed Postal Delivery Means Wasted Absentee Votes,” (http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevepociask/2016/09/29/delayed-postal-delivery-means-wasted-absentee-votes/#13bc4c417426) is filled with errors.
Mr. Pociask has spent the past few months distributing incorrect and misleading blogs about the Postal Service. Here are the facts on his most recent article:
- The Postal Service has been working closely with state and federal election officials throughout the year in preparation for this election season and we are fully prepared to deliver election mail and ballots to ensure that every vote counts.
- The Postal Service is advising voters to mail ballots early in locations where state laws permit voters to request their ballot the day before Election Day and also require the ballots to be received by election officials by Election Day. This will ensure that the ballots are mailed in time to be delivered by the state election law deadline pursuant to our normal delivery standards.
- The Postal Service implemented the second phase of its Network Rationalization program in 2015, which initially resulted in some service delays. However, in 2016 we have made significant improvement in all of our major service categories, and as we finish our fiscal year, we are providing record levels of service in many categories.
- The Postal Service receives no tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.
As we move further into the busy election season and even busier holiday season, more than 600,000 dedicated Postal Service employees will be working hard to process and deliver the nation’s mail. We remain confident that we will provide a safe, convenient, efficient, and effective way for a vast number of Americans to exercise their right to vote.
OIG is spot on with this. The USPS thought it could take all the combined brainfarts of its failed craft employees who left their craft because they were worthless at it and make gold. You already had a skyrocketing worker injury dilemma you were dealing with and your solution was to find even more ways to put more work on the backs of a work force pushed to its limits physically and mentally. What did you expect? Oh, its not a problem they all become an owcp issue after a while anyway. You’ll just replace them with minimum wage CCA’s
Congrats USPS you’ve managed to sabotage the sorting process, finally literally overburdening your workforce, but its ok because you’ve invested heavily in monitoring the results of your incompetence. I am so glad im retired now, to all craft employees i leave you with 37 years of accumulated wisdom in a few words ‘Only YOU can push your joints to do anything.’ DO NOT BE BULLIED into destroying your bodies. I am retired now, but can’t even pick up a gallon of milk without throwing my back out. I was too dumb to listen to my body when it mattered. If you have anything start hurting or aching report it to the office and have it seen by YOUR doctor of choice with actual X-Rays and MRI’s to determine the extent of wear and tare on that part of your body. Maybe all it needs is a few months of limited duty to recover, don’t wait until you’ve caused permanent damage and then its your problem not the USPS after you retire.
Congress and the horrible Leadership are purposely destroying the Post Office. Just like want their doing to our Country.
KUDOS TO CAN. RES!..GREAT COMMENT!
So the Postal Service is advising people to mail their ballots early. Before the changes in mail standards, First class mail was delivered the very next day it was mailed! Mail dropped in a collection on Monday was delivered Tuesday. Not any more. I have had people tell me it took two and even three days to receive mail sent in town.
In lex ky the mail is being delayed understaffed
Equipment issues
Untrained management
Most importantly they dont seem to be interested in fixing the issues or cant figure out how
I carried mail for 37 years ill tell it like it is. Mail forwarding is only a dream now. This stupidity of printing out a random label and expecting the letter carrier to remember said label for period of one year on city routes with some getting 20 labels every single day is nonsensical. Now with routes changing every year and labels moved every which way there is no hope for the forwarding system, unless some miracle machine will be doing it before the carrier gets it. The letter carrier has had their in station time completely stripped, the carriers job has been turned almost exclusively to that of delivering on street and screw the customer on all the in sation time required additions to the carrier job.
The intentional delay in the mail stream should constitute a lawsuit for failing to honor the integrity of the mail forwarding process the customers deserve and expect. Management are really pimping the public and the out of touch employees employed there. During our employment various responsible employees were tasked with the duties of making certain containers of mail is moved forward for delivery. From all indications that isn’t being done. When a container of mail hasn’t moved from the resting spot during the day shifts then its encumbered upon the employees to deal with the Supervisor and the Union for the movement of mail within the present shift. A large number of postal employees has been disciplined for delaying mail or accused of the same then fired. Now management is delaying the mail with no consequences and believe it Congress has secretly permitted it to happen.
What do you expect??? Congress put a 56 BILLION dollar tax on the postal service which they have said it is for a benefit payment for future employees retirement. Employees not hired yet….that won’t need this for 30 years. Payment that every company that offers this benefit is “pay as you go” . Never ever pre-paid. It would bankrupt any business. Which is what certain members in congress that would make huge personal profits want. So in order to pay this bill, the postal service had to sell 1/3 of their processing pants, properties, equipment to try and make a dent in this huge pre-payment Bill. They managed to pay about off 30 billion. However, the remaining processing plants are extremely over burden. Employees are worked to death. The postal motto was changed to ” do more with less”. Mail is moving slower because remaining process plants aren’t designed to handle the huge amount of mail. Single plants are now trying to do the work of three. It’s not working. The same congressmen that forced this ridiculous Bill are now complaining mail is being moved too slow and they still want the remaining 26 billion. Now the money is suppose to be place into an account for the retirement benefit. However, congress has already spent the 30 billion to help off set the deficit. The unions are working with management to CANCEL the employee benefit. This would cost the employees medical coverage in retirement. If the union and postal management go this route. The 30 billion that congress mandated would have to be refunded and the remaining 26 billion won’t need to be collected. However, since congress spent the money already, congress already claimed it wouldn’t be refunded. Congress also claims the union and management can not Negotiate This benefit. The Postal Service isn’t Part of the government. It’s regulated by the government….but it’s not part of the federal budget. It doesn’t get any tax payer funds. It’s not in the federal budget. Everything the postal service gets is through stamp sales. Every contract the service has had with the employees has been negotiated since the 70’s. Congress can’t stop management and the union agreeing to stop this benefit. They want congress to refund the 30 billion dollars so they can build new processing plants to move the mail faster and back to the standards that were in place before Congress manadated the 56 billion dollar bill and screwed everything up. In the end, employees will lose out on their medical coverage in retirement. Forcing many to rely solely on Medicare and medicaid which is only going to increase the Federal deficit when Postal Employees start to retire. Don’t blame the speed of mail processing on the postal service. You can thank Darrell Issa and other congressmen who want to make personal millions by privatizing the postal service. Which, by the way isn’t the answer. Every country that has privatized their government controlled postal service has had rates increased and Service decreased. Canada for example use to be penny to penny the same rate as the USPS until they privatized. They no longer have universal service. You don’t live a major city, you must rent a PO box and get your own mail. It’s a business in Canada and it’s too expensive and less profitable to deliver outside cities. Cost of a first class letter is $1.15 in Canada. They need to make profits for their shareholders. USPS is 47 cents. Ups and fedex prices are 20% more in Canada….there’s not a cheaper postal service to compete with. Every country that has privatized their service has gone this route. That’s EVERY. So do some research on existing prices before you think privatizing the USPS is the wise alternative .
Go blow your hot air in a Canadien web site.
Good response and well researched. It is all too true that Congress had no intention of prefunding retirement benefits, but rather, dip their dirty mitts into it and as you state, then claim they can’t return what they misappropriated, which by the way, is D.C. slang for “stole”.
That part the USPS can’t help and it’s right to be outraged. However, when you add that to the lowering of service standards and then failing to meet them, among other problems, you have a crippled system full of corruption, incompetence and indifference to its own plight by the very people who are tasked with addressing their woes: management themselves.
Where I live, as the post from Lexington Kentucky indicates, we’re plagued by chronic understaffing of everybody except local supervisors and management, who apparently can’t have enough 204-b’s even when they’re supposedly properly staffed. They rob in our town the city carriers who want to be supervisors, leaving us down at least one and usually two routes every day, one route that can’t be posted until the carrier, who is tragically ill and is rightfully using accrued leave time , the impending retirements of myself in January with at least two more next year and probably more and no action being taken to refill our positions, pressure to run, run, run, and yet leave parcels except their darling Amazon.com, delay EDDM mail for a week at a time, and expect superhuman effort when the system simply can’t keep up as it is.
As long as Congress doesn’t try to steal our retirement and benefit money I’m okay, although I wouldn’t be surprised to see them try, and the NALC, given their cowardice on the national level, would be useless. But many friends I work with do have to worry and I am concerned for them.
What makes this worse though is the prevalent attitude with the younger workers that management is their friend, and personally they are good people who are forced to impose the idiocy of their superiors, but have to do what they’re told lest they lose their jobs, too. This means they the CCA’s and new regulars are used to carrying routes and a half every day and consider it normal. They are being ground into the pavement with little attention given to accuracy, proper forwarding or willingness to pace themselves once they go regular. As a CCA I can understand the pressure, but once made a career carrier, they can do something about it by making management understand that Article 8 applies to them, too, make their routes true eight hour routes without being dishonest about it, and force management and the union to adhere to the OT rules as per Article 8, or file grievances.
This is not being done except by one or two carriers, and we can see the wear and tear already. I have a shot back, ruined shoulder, had two hernia operations and could use a third, my legs hurt like hell, and I have no energy. This is why I’m leaving at my earliest opportunity so maybe I can regain some of my health and enjoy retirement for a few years while I can.
Voters, if you have to vote by mail, do it quickly. Management is not “working” with anybody to get ballots out on time, so don’t believe them.
Direct and to the point. However, before we place a band-Aid consider this also; management has delayed mail big time since the early 90’s. Most of the personnel responsible for expediting the mail also assisted in the delay. To keep the numbers up employees are told to scan mail more than needed to increase volume counts. Then employees sitting around because the mail moved to another work hour or location miles away, then returned.