Congress passes bill to shore up Postal Service, delivery
Congress on Tuesday passed legislation that would shore up the U.S. Postal Service and ensure six-day-a-week mail delivery, sending the bill to President Joe Biden to sign into law. The long-fought postal overhaul has been years in the making and comes amid widespread complaints about mail service slowdowns. Many Americans became dependent on the Postal Service during the COVID-19 crisis, but officials have repeatedly warned that without congressional action, it would run out of cash by 2024. “The post office usually delivers for us, but today we’re going to deliver for them,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Congress mustered rare bipartisan support for the Postal Service package, dropping some of the more controversial proposals to settle on core ways to save the service and ensure its future operations. Last month, the House approved the bill, 342-92, with all Democrats and most Republicans voting for it. On Tuesday, the Senate sent it to Biden’s desk on a 79-19 vote. Republican Sen. Jerry Moran said the Postal Service has been in a “death spiral” that is particularly hard on rural Americans, including in his state of Kansas, as post offices shuttered and services were cut. “Smart reforms were needed,” he said. The Postal Service Reform Act would lift unusual budget requirements that have contributed to the Postal Service’s red ink and would set in law the requirement that the mail is delivered six days a week, except in the case of federal holidays, natural disasters, and a few other situations. Postage sales and other services were supposed to sustain the Postal Service, but it has suffered 14 straight years of losses. Growing workers’ compensation and benefit costs, plus steady declines in mail volume, have contributed to the red ink, even as the Postal Service delivers to 1 million additional locations every year. The bill would end a requirement that the Postal Service finance workers’ health care benefits ahead of time for the next 75 years, an obligation that private companies and federal agencies do not face. Instead, the Postal Service would require future retirees to enroll in Medicare and would pay current retirees’ actual health care costs that aren’t covered by the federal health insurance program for older people. Gone for now are ideas for cutting back on mail delivery, which had become politically toxic. Also set aside, for now, are other proposals that have been floated over the years to change postal operations, including those to privatize some services. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., the chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, helmed the legislation and said that since the nation’s founding, the Postal Service has become “a vital part of the fabric of our nation.” Peters said the legislation would ensure the Postal Service can continue its nearly “250-year tradition of delivering service to the American people.” Beyond cards and letters, people rely on the post office to deliver government checks, prescription drugs, and many goods purchased online but ultimately delivered to doorsteps and mailboxes by the Postal Service. “We need to save our Postal Service,” said Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, another architect of the bill. Portman said the bill is not a bailout, and no new funding is going to the agency. Criticism of the Postal Service peaked in 2020, ahead of the presidential election, as cutbacks delayed service at a time when millions of Americans were relying on mail-in ballots during the first year of the COVID-19 crisis. At the time, President Donald Trump acknowledged he was trying to starve the Postal Service of money to make it harder to process an expected surge of mail-in ballots, which he worried could cost him the election. Dominated by Trump appointees, the agency’s board of governors had tapped Louis DeJoy, a major GOP donor, as the new postmaster general. He proposed a 10-year plan to stabilize the service’s finances with steps like additional mail slowdowns, cutting some offices’ hours, and perhaps higher rates. To measure the Postal Service’s progress at improving its service, the bill would also require it to set up an online “dashboard” that would be searchable by ZIP code to show how long it takes to deliver letters and packages. The legislation approved by Congress is supported by Biden, the Postal Service, postal worker unions, and others. Mark Dimondstein, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, called passage of the legislation a “turning point in the fight to protect and strengthen the people’s public postal service, a national treasure.” Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
Weary postal workers hope Joe Biden will bring new tone, change
The U.S. Postal Service’s stretch of challenges didn’t end with the November general election and tens of millions of mail-in votes. The pandemic-depleted workforce fell further into a hole during the holiday rush, leading to long hours and a mountain of delayed mail. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has vowed to make improvements after facing withering criticism and calls for his removal for his actions that slowed delivery of mail before the election. Some critics hoped President Joe Biden would fire DeJoy, but a president can’t do that. Instead, Biden could and likely will use appointments to reshape the Board of Governors, which meets Tuesday for the first time since his election. It’s unclear how swiftly Biden’s administration will move. A White House spokesperson declined to comment on upcoming appointments. Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said he’s hoping for some “bold appointments” by Biden. “We want a Board of Governors that understands fundamentally this is not called the United States Postal Business,” he said. “It’s not a profit-making business. It’s here to serve the people.” A change in tone, at the least, would be welcomed by postal workers after former President Donald Trump called the Postal Service “a joke” last year in criticizing business practices that led to a growing operating deficit. Despite the pandemic, on-time rates for first-class mail topped 90% for most of the year until DeJoy took office in June and began instituting changes that raised concerns about the delivery of mail-in election ballots. Workers decried DeJoy for limiting overtime and late or extra trips, resulting in delayed mail, and the dismantling of sorting machines ahead of the election. All told, the Postal Service successfully delivered more than 130 million ballots to and from voters during the general election. But by the time Christmas arrived, it had gotten so bad that more than a third of first-class mail was late, a dismal performance, even though DeJoy had backtracked on some of his changes by then. At the holiday peak, tractor-trailers chock full of mail were left idling outside some postal-sorting facilities across the country because there was no room inside. Packages and letters piled up in distribution hubs. Delays grew by days, and then weeks. A number of factors contributed to the nightmare. Americans were using the Postal Service at an unprecedented level because of the pandemic. Overtime couldn’t make up for the impact of postal workers’ COVID-19 illnesses and quarantines. Commercial flights that transport mail operated on reduced schedules. And FedEx and UPS dumped packages on the Postal Service when they reached their limit. “At Christmastime, you could barely move in the facility,” said Scott Adams, local president of the American Postal Workers Union in Portland, Maine. “Aisles were blocked with mail.” Jay Geller said it took 30 days for a birthday card mailed after Christmas from his mother-in-law in Iowa to reach her 8-year-old grandson at his home in Cleveland. And don’t get him started on the homemade scones from Minnesota, which were late and inedible. “By the time they arrived, they were hard as rocks and smushed flat,” he said. Terri Hayes experienced “Christmas in January” when many of her packages arrived late in Medina, Ohio. The last gift to arrive was a necklace and charm sent by a friend in Maryland on Dec. 5. It arrived on Jan. 28. She sympathizes with overworked postal workers but also worries about more important items, like bills, being delayed. “I just wish that they would put things back to the way they were when it worked,” Hayes said. “Put the sorting machines back. Let them work the overtime hours.” The Postal Service contends it has now returned to “pre-peak” conditions, and DeJoy and six members of the board said they’ve learned from the election and the record holiday season in which more than 1.1 billion packages were delivered. The postmaster general and board are working on a 10-year plan that will include improvements. “We must confidently plan for our future — which we believe is bright for the Postal Service and for America,” they said in a statement. Critics have called for DeJoy to be fired. And Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., a New Jersey Democrat, wants Biden to fire the entire Postal Service Board of Governors for what he called dereliction of duty. The Board of Governors, which selects the postmaster general, is currently made up of Trump appointees. The vice-chair resigned in protest over the Trump administration’s actions. That leaves a chairperson, Robert Duncan, who is a former Republican National Committee chair, along with three other Republican members and two Democratic members. If Biden fills all vacancies, then Democratic members would hold a majority, though the board is officially bipartisan. No party may hold more than five seats on the nine-member board. The postmaster general and deputy postmaster general vote on some but not all issues brought before the board. Dimondstein said the recent announcement of more than 10,000 more permanent jobs in distribution hubs is a down payment on addressing problems. DeJoy has to come around to further changes to improve service and morale, he said. “He’s either going to do right by the people of the country. Or he needs to go,” Dimondstein said. Republished with the permission of the Associated Press.
