![]() An additional 31 others had to close during lunch hours, which are usually the busiest. The local American Postal Workers Union branch in West Virginia told Vice that 26 post offices were forced to reduce their usual eight-hour days to under four hours. Postal unions across the nation have alerted the media about drastic cuts to their retail hours in late July, which USPS described as a measure to reduce costs. A photo of the plant taken in 2019 shows even higher stacks, so these particular piles of mail receptacles are nothing new. Politifact dug into the claims and found that USPS has long had a contract with the Hartford plant to refurbish or destroy old mail boxes. A photo that went viral on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Reddit over the weekend shows looming stacks of mailboxes at a plant in Hartford, Wisconsin, which many users took as evidence of voter suppression efforts in the state. Social media has also muddied the waters. While these local reports are reliable, it’s difficult to determine how widespread or unusual the phenomenon is. In other cases, residents have told reporters about spotting flatbed trucks hauling boxes away and challenges sending outbound mail. In some cases, postal workers’ unions have been able to track the number and location of boxes being taken off the streets and indicated that they are contributing to delays. ![]() Reports of the removals have come from disparate sources. But it won’t have an impact, I don’t believe, on the November election.” And I would say, for planning purposes, given all of the spotlight around the Postal Service, there needs to be funds allocated for the Postal Service to effectively plan and run the organization. “I think the good news is that based on the amount of money that the Postal Service has right now, they will not run out of cash by the election,” he said during a recent call with reporters. But outsiders, such as Ronald Stroman, the recently departed deputy postmaster general who is now a senior fellow at the Democracy Fund, are a bit clearer on that point. Democrats are a little cagey on this right now: When we asked offices in the House and Senate what USPS specifically needed the $25 billion for, they pointed to the request from April and noted the way COVID has generally strained the agency. What this means is that, realistically, the Postal Service needs financial help for its long term stability, but not to handle the election. Meanwhile, Americans began to wonder where the heck their mail was. “I’m actually terrified to see election season under the new procedure,” Lori Cash, president of the American Postal Workers Union Local 183, told the Post in a widely shared story. Soon, postal workers around the country began to report backlogs of letters and packages, and voicing concerns about how voting could be affected. A separate PowerPoint presentation suggested that DeJoy also planned to eliminate overtime, which also threatened to bog down service. In July, however, Dejoy decreed in a memo published by the Washington Post that all trucks would have to start departing on schedule, and that extra trips would no longer be allowed, even if it meant some mail had to be left behind on the shop floor or loading dock until the next day. Postal processing plants often run a bit behind schedule, and traditionally, carriers have dealt with it by either starting their routes a bit late or by making extra trips to deliver all the day’s mail, which can add to overtime and transportation expenses. (He’ll be back for another hearing on Monday.)Ībout a month after arriving as USPS, DeJoy announced an “ operational pivot” meant to save costs. In the first of two congressional grillings, DeJoy on Friday acknowledged a slowdown, but dismissed accusations that his mandates had political motivations. ![]() Meanwhile, Republicans and DeJoy are framing the changes as reforms related to the downsizing that’s been happening for years as mail volumes decline. Since President Donald Trump has explicitly floated the idea of withholding funding from USPS to discourage mail-in voting, which will be essential for an election held in the middle of a pandemic, Democrats and unions have taken these reforms as evidence that the administration is trying to throttle the agency as a means of cheating in the election. ![]() Postal Service in June, reports came flooding in of numerous changes at the agency that have slowed delivery times and limited capacity-sometimes with dangerous consequences for Americans who rely on the mail. After GOP mega-donor and former logistics executive Louis DeJoy became postmaster general of the U.S. Something has gone wrong with the mail-but it’s hard to say what precisely, why exactly, and whether it’s now been fixed. ![]()
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