New Postmaster General (big Trump donor) actively working to destroy USPS

[CousinIT]

(NOTE: this is not a media report. There is no investigative reporting on this subject that I know of and the below is not that, either. I do not know this person. I do not know what this person does or if he or she works for USPS. I do not appreciate this person's twitter handle and it makes me suspicious - so take this with a grain of salt. Still, I KNOW Trump will order his GOON to destroy the USPS and particularly mailed ballots, so figured this is worth sharing.

ORIGINAL Twitter thread:

Link to tweet

UNROLLED Twitter thread: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1282435701737287680.html


I do NOT say this to be alarmist, but the new Postmaster General is actively working to destroy the product, service, and integrity of the USPS. PLEASE, if you care about your mail service, especially at a time when it allows you to stay home in a pandemic, read this thread.

First: Louis DeJoy, Trump's appointee to the position, took over in May of this year. DeJoy has no institutional experience within the postal service, a rarity, but not unheard of, for the PMG. He has a background in logistics, but is first and foremost a MASSIVE Trump donor.

It is no surprise that a right-wing hack who donated massive amounts of $ from a sector parallel to USPS would want to dismantle it and ruin it from the inside to decrease customer satisfaction and give it away piece by piece to donors. But this is about HOW he is doing it

Earlier this month, offices began receiving directives from up top billed as ways of increasing efficiency and reducing excess cost. Some, admittedly, might work. Some are a clear product of people who don't understand logistics. And some will wholly destroy mail delivery

The directives, shown below, even if implemented at peak efficiency, would pale in comparison to the repeal of the 2006 PAEA that required 70 years of retiree prefunding. But right-wingers don't want to touch that, because they WANT that poison pill

For literally the first time in my decade long career, and even in the careers of every single carrier in my office, including 40 year vets, we are being given orders to DELIBERATELY. DELAY. FIRST. CLASS. MAIL. Not just your credit card bills or magazines, but packages and checks

This is unprecedented. USPS has, for all its failings and troubles, always been first and foremost about pushing out every single piece of mail we can every single day. The only directives we've ever had counter to that have been to hold bulk mail for a day to speed up 1st class

On an EXTREME rare occasion, we have simply run out of hours in the day to get something delivered with our staff, and brought back things as late as 12:00 or 1:00am when delivery was simply too dangerous, and staffing too low. We have NEVER delayed mail with staff available
It is antithetical to the premise of the entire agency: Every. Address. Every. Day.

Now, in a futile effort to curb overtime (which could be addressed be hiring additional staff, or better training new staff to reduce turnover), we are simply saying "the people of the US will simply have to deal with indefinite delays for their mail."

This serves NO legitimate purpose to the agency other than to destroy customer confidence and make it easier to sell off the postal service. Many Americans may not notice the disruption, but many millions more, including small businesses, rely on DAILY interaction.

We do not just deliver mail. The carriers routinely pick up dozens, if not hundreds, if not THOUSANDS of daily pieces of mail from their routes, depending on season. Mom and Pop etsy shops, big box retailers, and everything in between, get daily pickups.

Now, at the behest of Louis DeJoy and his halfwit posse of sycophants, these people will be arbitrarily cutoff. Not only NOT getting daily guaranteed service, but not even being certain of WHEN that service will come.

Realistically, every carrier knows there are folks around their office who abuse OT. But as the directives above incorrectly suggest, we are not generally using OT to accomplish "basic" everyday tasks. Our routes are measured for 8hrs on a normal day. Not every day is "normal"

If my route average 65 parcels, 1600 letters, 300 magazines/flats, and 0 every door direct mailers, and I come in on a Monday and those numbers are suddenly 115/2900/750/2, I'm sorry, but 8 hours isn't happening, and that's just plain reasonable.

So if that route is now going to take me 9.5 hours for the day, the directive is stating that every house after the 8 hour mark, 1.5hrs worth, is just not getting delivered. That could quite easily be more than 200 deliveries depending on delivery method. Just cut off.

So what happens to it? It's brought back to the office, and the carrier will begin his NEXT day picking up where he left off, before starting Tuesday's deliveries. And if Tuesday happened to be above average volume? Welp, now he's gonna be bringing back TWO hours of mail

The issue will simply snowball, until the rare day pops up where there is a considerably LOWER volume of mail, and the carrier may have 30-45 minutes worth of "undertime" to alleviate some backlog.

So what happens if you live near the end of someone's route? Well, I certainly hope you weren't mailing out something that needed to be postmarked, or that your small business doesn't thrive off guaranteed time deliveries. I REALLY hope your outgoing mail wasn't your taxes.

And if you think all of this isn't bad? Many of the larger urban offices throughout the country, and even in rural areas are understaffed. 100+ routes, and 80ish carriers to carry them. Those 20 extra routes? Even assuming you have some non-career employees, they won't be enough

So you may literally end up with entire undelivered routes in offices. Whole swaths of a city, just sitting back in the office, waiting for a light enough day for this mail to get delivered by additional help that was temporarily reassigned.

To beat a dead horse, you could VERY easily solve much of our financial burden by repealing 2006's PAEA. You could hire more employees to fill staffing and delivery needs, which would also reduce OT.

Some directives in these memos, such as pushing carrier start times to better align with when clerks have finished morning distributions, absolutely make sense. As does removing people from temporary detail assignments to keep them where they are needed.

But this blanket smashing of OT, just because it offends your principles that someone might be making a little extra money for extra work? It's smashing a square peg into a round hole. And there's no way a career businessman doesn't know that.

This is deliberate. This is sabotage. This will DESTROY the Postal Service as generations of Americans have known it. If you care ONE iota about the integrity of this CIVIL SERVICE (NOT a business), please, for the love of god, help us #SaveThePostalService

Another source for the directives is in this link below, as the tweet I quoted has been deleted/protected, and understandably so, by the original user.
https://www.facebook.com/nalc385/posts/187627762779669

If you're asking how to help, contact your congresspeople and tell them to pressure our OIG to investigate curtailment of mail. If you're voting Biden, demand that he fill the vacancies on our Board of Governors so they can remove DeJoy.

[MichMan]

1. My letter carrier friend states otherwise

They have been working 10-12 hour days

[CousinIT]

2. I know I often get mail delivery at various later hours

ie: after 5:00 - and have gotten it as late as 9:00 or 10:00 pm so your friend is probably right.

[Cha]

3. We've been getting mail on Sunday.. like today and last Sunday

too.

We Need our USPS! Fuck trump and his goal to destroy it.. We Need Biden!

[I_UndergroundPanther]

4. Ever since republicans snuck

The poison pill into legislation,we have known republicans will lose the vote. After all most people don't want the government run by white collar criminals.

I suggest,put extra postage on every letter.

And turn in your ballots as early as possible so it gets to where it has to go for the election. We cannot let republicans take away our votes.

Support the post office any way you can.

Our voting rights depend on it

Also the postmaster DeJoy trump scum bucket asshole if he delays delivery of ballots could be charged with interfering with the vote and possibly fraud.