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How the Biden administration can save the Postal Service
https://www.vox.com/recode/22243799/post-office-delays-postal-banking-usps-reform
In November, on the day that networks called the election for Joe Biden, cheering crowds stopped mail trucks in the streets of New York City to thank postal workers for delivering more than 135 million mail-in ballots on time during a pandemic. Now, in Washington, DC, a coalition of lawmakers and advocates are trying to pull off a different sort of feat: saving the United States Postal Service.
Without help from the federal government, the Postal Service could run out of cash later this year. Such a financial crisis would mean laying off workers, limiting service, and worsening delays — and delays are already so bad that holiday cards mailed in early December are still being delivered in late January. In the long term, Congress could decide to privatize the Postal Service, fulfilling one of the Trump administration’s ambitions but likely denying service to millions of Americans.
While it sounds a bit odd at first, an increasingly popular idea to fix the agency’s financial woes is to give it more jobs to do. In other words, to grapple with its ongoing existential crisis, the Postal Service needs to rethink its very existence.
“There needs to be creativity and other things the post office can do, when it’s done its mission of binding the country together,” Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), told Recode. “So we’re very keen on all sorts of expanded services.”
...
Put differently, even if Congress pulls through with a bailout and ends the prefunding mandate mess, the Postal Service still needs to evolve to survive. The Save the Postal Office Coalition, which includes 300 groups, including the APWU, MoveOn, and Color for Change, came together not long after DeJoy joined the agency and is calling for $89 billion in emergency relief for the agency in President Biden’s first 100 days. It’s also pushing for Biden to appoint a “postal czar” who favors postal banking and reform-minded leaders to fill the four open seats on the USPS Board of Governors, which Trump had left empty in the final months of his presidency. If Biden fills all the seats, Democrat-appointed governors would make up a majority of the board, giving them the power to remove DeJoy from office and reshape the Postal Service’s role in American life.
In November, on the day that networks called the election for Joe Biden, cheering crowds stopped mail trucks in the streets of New York City to thank postal workers for delivering more than 135 million mail-in ballots on time during a pandemic. Now, in Washington, DC, a coalition of lawmakers and advocates are trying to pull off a different sort of feat: saving the United States Postal Service.
Without help from the federal government, the Postal Service could run out of cash later this year. Such a financial crisis would mean laying off workers, limiting service, and worsening delays — and delays are already so bad that holiday cards mailed in early December are still being delivered in late January. In the long term, Congress could decide to privatize the Postal Service, fulfilling one of the Trump administration’s ambitions but likely denying service to millions of Americans.
While it sounds a bit odd at first, an increasingly popular idea to fix the agency’s financial woes is to give it more jobs to do. In other words, to grapple with its ongoing existential crisis, the Postal Service needs to rethink its very existence.
“There needs to be creativity and other things the post office can do, when it’s done its mission of binding the country together,” Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), told Recode. “So we’re very keen on all sorts of expanded services.”
...
Put differently, even if Congress pulls through with a bailout and ends the prefunding mandate mess, the Postal Service still needs to evolve to survive. The Save the Postal Office Coalition, which includes 300 groups, including the APWU, MoveOn, and Color for Change, came together not long after DeJoy joined the agency and is calling for $89 billion in emergency relief for the agency in President Biden’s first 100 days. It’s also pushing for Biden to appoint a “postal czar” who favors postal banking and reform-minded leaders to fill the four open seats on the USPS Board of Governors, which Trump had left empty in the final months of his presidency. If Biden fills all the seats, Democrat-appointed governors would make up a majority of the board, giving them the power to remove DeJoy from office and reshape the Postal Service’s role in American life.
The article is mostly about postal banking. There are ways to remove DeJoy and put in someone who will do the job correctly through appointing governors to the board.
10 replies
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People are still getting Christmas cards a month later 
They put in draconian cost cutting measures which caused severe delays. There were firings, reassignments, cutting overtime pay, etc. There are probably some lawsuits around delaying the mail deliberately to impact the election or something like that. DeJoy also owns major investments in postal contracting firms so there's some conflict of interest.
