Call me old fashioned. Although I make my living online, I treasure getting mail. But the crisis at the United States Postal Service (USPS) has reached home.
It started with a conversation, on a blustery cold day in the bitter winter sunshine that colored February 2014.
“I need to trust you,” the post office employee said. “Can I trust you?”
Turns out this was not a problem. Trusting me to keep names out of the press was no problem, but keeping the post office crisis to a local level, well, that is another matter.
Like a letter blown from state to state from the open flap of a mailman’s bag, this local mismanagement allegation quickly grew into a national story.
Our conversation stayed on point: local mail carriers and those manning windows in West Essex, especially in Caldwell, West Caldwell and Essex Fells, were allegedly being run by an oddball management style, ruled by a mixture of forced overtime with a dose of punishment.
“But I would think you want overtime, right?” the reporter asked, wide eyed.
No, not in this case, the post office employee replied. Not in this case.
There was a change of management about a year ago in the West Caldwell and West Essex post office, and along with it, for some reason, the mail was getting delivered late - and sometimes not at all.
“Some of our carriers deliver mail all day, and then get told to go out and deliver another route, which can be about another 200 addresses,” the anonymous post office whistleblower explained.
Other allegations included:
Essex Fells post office workers being told to work in West Caldwell without any proper explanation; confusion from management to the ranks; 12 hour shifts no one wanted and a general feeling of abuse.
Reached in his office, the post office spokesperson answered my questions, saying no, there was not any major reduction in staff; no, they are only “2 down” in West Caldwell, and no, he didn’t have any reason for any of this. And, he added, Essex Fells had to be verbally notified of their change and also would have received a letter, which is protocol.
When I retorted they had not received a letter (this call was on March 18, 2014), he said he would look into it. Did I ever hear back? No.
Then, that night, I decided to reach out via Facebook, Twitter and TheJerseyTomatoPress.com to residents asking: do you have any horror stories about getting your mail?
Reaction was instant, and ran the gamut of not getting mail on the entire block for 5 days (Caldwells) to getting mail delivered at 8:00 p.m., which was not okay and truly disruptive.
After the first article ran, it was picked up nationally. It was then the first anonymous letter appeared in my post office box, mailed of course, totally legitimately with a stamp.
That letter (click here to read and trace series) described a horror story of working in an abusive atmosphere where people were treated like robots and not humans. In part this letter stated “This past winter they held the mail at the post office for three to five days.The reason for that was a punishment for the carriers when they call out or are not performing up to standards. We have never seen anything like this. They came to mess with us and the work expected from us. They think we belong to them once we start our shift; they want us to work like animals regardless of the weather or the condition of the carriers.”
Faced with these allegations, which are truly a federal offense (tampering with mail), I called the offices of Congressman Rodney Frelingheysun, who immediately sent a letter to the Postmaster General of the United States, located in Washington D.C. I also contacted the offices of Senator Cory Booker, whose staff told me they would also assist.
Now, the letters via email from unhappy and allegedly abused postal employees keep coming in to me. A post office carrier who has been working for the United States Post Office for over 15 years in Boston wrote “People are overworked, stressed, and tired, and we have to continually hear from management how we don't have enough work.”
Accusing the USPS of deliberately flaunting the law this writer reported “Management gets around paying health benefits by laying these employees off every year for one week, CCA's who were previously on the roles were called TE's and the changed there name and cut there pay by $7 an hour. I have some carriers in my office who have been temp or CCA's for 6-7 years, it pathetic that the postal service is allowed to treat workers so poorly, but they are and they do. We have carriers who on a daily basis work until 6,7 and even 8pm delivering mail.”
Even worse, USPS workers from numerous states, like the one from Florida, reported sexual and racial abuse; being forced to work long hours as a punishment for calling out sick or being too slow, and more.
A Florida union representative wrote “I just represented 4 new PSE employees (female) that got sexually and racially that it is sickening. Worst case in all my years of being a representative!”
What is going on?
Many members of Congress believe the post office is wasting too much of American’s tax dollars, and should be shut down or at least managed in a totally new manner.
In 2012, about 160 million pieces of mail, many of the pieces ads, were delivered to Americans, but the cost of delivering more and more mail is outweighing the profits.
Sixty percent of the USPS work force delivers mail, which amounts to about 300,000 employees. And, though email and other internet mail has truly taken away the bulk of important communication from the USPS, every time a mail carrier delivers mail to an address remember one thing: there is a cost of labor and gas and overhead attached, even if he or she is delivering a huge sack of mail or one supermarket flyer.
With a $16 billion loss, this is a business that no longer makes sense - as it is being managed now.
Some of the postal workers who reached out had this to say:
We would gladly work less days for less money.
We are delivering a lot of junk mail. Something should be done about this.
With about half-million employees, of which 300,000 who deliver mail, and also a huge fleet of 110,000 mail trucks, can this business ever be profitable?
But the most dangerous fiscal issue may be in the “missing” $75 billion pension funding in the USPS. This issue, however, is complex and will appear in the next article in this series.
Please note: any allegations made via mail to this newspaper are allegations and not proven.
