A spate of new initiatives undermines public confidence in the Postal Service, they say, as shipping delays plague businesses and some Portland ballots may have arrived late
Lillian Huggins’ salon, Atomic Hair Studio, had been in business just shy of 10 years when she was forced to close it this spring because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Huggins didn’t feel comfortable reopening Atomic when Multnomah County gave the OK for salons and barbershops to resume business in mid-June for Phase I reopening. She hopes to open eventually, but in the meantime, she’s relying on another skill: sewing.
She started making cloth masks this spring — at first to help her fiancé, a mail carrier who, as Huggins tells it, wasn’t receiving adequate personal protective gear through work. But eventually, she set up an online store, Facehuggins, to sell the masks. She sells them on a sliding scale, asking a minimum donation to cover materials.
With each order, she includes an extra mask with the suggestion that the recipient slip it into their outgoing mail box as a gift to their mail carrier.
Huggins’ concern for postal workers is personal. But she told Street Roots that changes to the way the Postal Service operates have also begun to affect her burgeoning business.
Last week, after hearing from a customer in Canada who hadn’t received a package she mailed July 27, she looked up the tracking number on the Postal Service’s website. Huggins said the package has been in San Francisco for two weeks.
“It should have been there a week ago,” Huggins said. “Or at least it should have been further than San Francisco.”
Another customer in Bremerton, Wash. — who Huggins happened to know personally — asked about his shipment, and Huggins again looked up the tracking information. That time, the tracker said the delivery had been “held at the customer’s request,” which the customer told her was not the case.
These lengthy delays are a new problem, Huggins said.
“Previously, like in March or April, it would get there the next day, like from Portland to Beaverton,” Huggins said. “We’ve been shipping from Northeast Portland to Beaverton, or from Northeast Portland or other parts of Northeast Portland and it will take like a week and a half.”
Concerns have also been raised about whether voters can rely on ballots to be delivered on time for this year’s elections. Jamie Partridge, a retired letter carrier who is an organizer for Communities and Postal Workers United, said election-related mail was still being delivered the day after Tuesday’s Portland City Council special election.
“I got a report from at least two letter carriers today that they delivered political mailers (from Loretta Smith) today, and at least one letter carrier reported delivering ballots today,” Partridge said Wednesday.
The staid and taken-for-granted Postal Service is a hot topic this summer. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in shipping-based businesses like Huggins’ and national interest in vote-by-mail systems like Oregon’s.
President Donald Trump’s newly appointed postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, has already made a massive footprint on the Post since stepping into his new role in June. On Aug. 7, DeJoy reassigned or displaced no fewer than 23 top executives in the organization in a shake-up critics called a “massacre” aimed at undermining USPS in order to make way for privatization and to call into question the effectiveness of mail-in ballots.
DeJoy also said he would implement a hiring freeze, realign the service into three “operating units” — retail and delivery, logistics and processing, and commerce and business solutions — and scale down from seven regions to four.
Members of Congress, including Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), have called for DeJoy’s removal.
But DeJoy’s recent reorganization was not the first assault on the Postal Service, observers say.
On Aug. 5, about 75 postal workers and their allies rallied in front of the Rose City Park post office in Northeast Portland to show support for the Postal Service, defend voting by mail and decry initiatives they say have forced them to leave mail unsorted on carts.
One such initiative is a top-down order called “Pivot for Our Future,” which directs carriers to “begin on time, leave for the street on time, and return on time,” according to a press release from a Community and Postal Workers United, which organized the rally. It’s a Portland-based grassroots network created to fight post office closures, union busting, privatization and cuts.
“We used to have this idea that the mail had to move,” said Daniel Cortez, legislative director of the American Postal Workers Union’s Portland local. Now workers are directed to leave mail on carts that would normally be sorted that day, even if it made carriers start their routes a few minutes later, he said.
Another is a pilot project called Expedited to Street/Afternoon Sortation, which organizers said is being tried at 384 post offices across the country. Eight Oregon zip codes are impacted, includign the zip codes Rose City Park serves (97213 and 97218).
Ernie Swanson, the Seattle and Portland region USPS spokesperson, said: “The intention (of the pilot project) is to provide consistent time of delivery for the customers by casing the mail in the afternoon, in advance preparation for the following days delivery. It allows carriers to return to the office at a consistent time without any impact to service.”
But that’s not what workers say is happening. A mail carrier who spoke with Street Roots on the condition of anonymity said that prior to the pilot project, “casing” — the last step in mail sorting, where carriers organize their mail according to how their routes are laid out — was done in the morning before carriers left the post office.
Now, he said while the idea is to case the next day’s mail the afternoon, that hasn’t happened in practice.
He said due to “the large-scale logistics of it, it’s just impossible to get it done the day before.”
The reality is that they’re effectively left to sort their mail as they travel their routes.
“It is an absolute convoluted mess,” he said.
In December, Street Roots reported on a pilot project called consolidated casing, which did the opposite: non-carrier post office staff sorted mail for the carriers. That also caused carriers to work long days and residents to complain they were receiving their mail well into the evening.
The National Association of Letter Carriers sued the Postal Service over the program, reaching a settlement this June that ended the program at half the test sites — including Portland’s Kenton Station — and set the other 31 sites to sunset the initiative in November.
Partridge, of Communities and Postal Workers United, said the ascent of DeJoy — who spent most of his career working for a private logistics and transportation company — is part of a longer push to privatize the Postal Service, which has operated independently of the U.S. government, but with government oversight, since 1970.
Partridge, who initially spoke with Street Roots before DeJoy’s massive reorganization, said he suspected Postal Service management was working to drive carriers into early retirement — and trying to undermine public trust in the Postal Service at a time when Trump has repeatedly argued against rolling out vote-by-mail nationally to prevent crowding that could worsen the spread of COVID-19.
At the Aug. 5 rally, speakers — including U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), who has co-sponsored legislation that would do away with a 2006 requirement that the Postal Service pre-fund retirement funds for employees 70 years into the future — spoke favorably of Oregon’s mail-in voting system. Speakers also urged rallygoers to sign a massive postcard to DeJoy reading, “Mail Delay, Not Okay! Protect the Vote!”
“It couldn’t really be to save money,” Partridge said. “It’s not making the Postal Service more efficient because the reports we’re getting is that all kinds of crazy things are happening that are making the work even harder and more difficult.”
And vote-by-mail aside, mail carriers say the institution of the Postal Service is a fundamental good.
Jae Burlingame, Lillian Huggins’ fiancé, has been delivering mail in Portland since 2013.
He said a privatized postal service would charge consumers higher prices on shipments — and disproportionately hurt those in rural areas.
“Right now, the Postal Service is mandated to go to every single address every single day. If it were privatized, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case,” Burlingame said.
Street Roots is an award-winning, weekly publication focusing on economic, environmental and social justice issues. The newspaper is sold in Portland, Oregon, by people experiencing homelessness and/or extreme poverty as means of earning an income with dignity. Street Roots newspaper operates independently of Street Roots advocacy and is a part of the Street Roots organization. Learn more about Street Roots. Support your community newspaper by making a one-time or recurring gift today.
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