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qwlauren35

(6,145 posts) Wed Aug 12, 2020, 10:12 PM Aug 2020

USPS Slowdown Hurts SMALL Businesses

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/n7w9nd/usps-package-delays-mail-slowdown-hurts-small-businesses

“The postal service is part of our nation’s infrastructure and was never designed to be profitable,” said the small business owner from Florida. “If we lose the postal service, I will lose a substantial part of my business and so will millions of other small businesses that rely on the postal service.” This person added that they are a Republican and voted for Trump, but now regrets it.

For years, Tintes has shipped about 400 packages a week around the country. About 97 percent would arrive on time and the rest perhaps a day later. The blog explaining why he used USPS, which was published in May of 2019, was titled “NEW AND IMPROVED—NOT YOUR OLD POST OFFICE.”

But in recent weeks, Tintes can no longer defend the post office. He estimates one in five packages are not reaching their destination on time. And they are not delayed by a day or two like before. Entire batches of packages go missing for weeks inside a USPS distribution facility or are routed to the wrong part of the country. On Monday, Tintes received a package from a customer in Miami sent via priority mail (typical delivery time of 2-3 days) that was three weeks late. Express mail, which used to take a day to get delivered, can now take a week or more.

A 2019 report by the USPS Office of the Investigator General found that 70 percent of microbusinesses—defined as any business with fewer than 10 employees—used the post office within the last six months, spending on average $359 per month on shipping, and more than half of them said they ship with the post office most frequently.

According to emails from and interviews with dozens of current USPS employees from around the country, all of whom requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation for speaking to the media, DeJoy has instituted new policies—ostensibly about cutting costs and operating more efficiently—that have handcuffed the post office from being able to process the surge in packages (regular mail like letters, magazines, and newspapers are also impacted, although its volume has significantly reduced during the pandemic because of the decline in marketing mail). Overtime has been heavily restricted, which employees say they need to sort and deliver all of the packages that have flooded into the system sustaining a holiday season-esque surge for months. As a result, employees at processing and distribution facilities can no longer work more hours in order to handle the increased package load. Likewise, trucks from one facility to another must leave at their pre-scheduled time whether all the mail is on it or not and they cannot send extra trucks if the packages don’t fit in one. The longer the policy has been in effect, the worse the backlog gets.

Plus, per the new overtime policy, carriers who deliver the mail now must come to work later and are restricted to spending a mere half hour sorting and loading their trucks in the morning, a task that previously took at least two hours, according to multiple letter carriers around the country. Anything that doesn’t get loaded is left behind for another day.