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Postal Service slowdown hits Wisconsin

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You are the owner of this article.You have permission to edit this article.Craig Brown started to notice it about three weeks ago when a customer who should have gotten a package within three days called to say it still hadn’t arrived after nearly two weeks. Brown, the owner of Steve’s Curling Supplies — named for his father — has since seen the same thing happen with other packages he’s shipped through the U.S. Postal Service.One package, he said, is still “in limbo.”“It normally takes two days, and it’s been a month,” he said.Thankful that it’s not the busy season, when he normally ships 30 to 50 packages a day, he’s looking with trepidation to the future.“If this was October through Christmas, when I’m shipping 30 to 50 packages a day, I’d either have to switch everybody to UPS and charge them two to three times as much for shipping, or I'd have to field 20 calls a day from unhappy customers complaining that they haven’t got their stuff yet,” he said.It’s not business as usual. Last year he shipped more than 3,000 packages and had issues with 10 at most.Brown is seeing the effects of a nationwide, and some say intentional, slowdown of the Postal Service, now at the center of a bitter political showdown that encompasses voting rights, pandemic relief and the future of the widely popular Postal Service itself.&nbsp;In a political era in which political parties rarely agree, the U.S. Postal Service has a .President Donald Trump in recent days has of his intention to starve the Postal Service of funds in an attempt to hamper mail-in voting, which he has claimed without evidence will lead to widespread voter fraud.It has become the sticking point in negotiations over the next coronavirus relief package, which Trump said he won't sign if it includes $25 billion to get the Postal Service through the pandemic.&nbsp;And on June 15, Louis DeJoy, a Trump ally and fundraiser, became postmaster general, rapidly putting in place measures that some say are crippling the agency even as the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted record numbers of mail-in votes and vast increases in retail package deliveries.DeJoy has significant holdings in Postal Service competitors, leading to speculation that he has little concern for the long-term health of the agency he leads.Postal union officials say that since joining the Trump administration, DeJoy has eliminated overtime at a time when the workforce is already shorthanded, issued a series of directives that leave packages languishing for days and reduced the number of sorting machines — the very ones used to process mail-in ballots — at key distribution centers across the country.That includes Milwaukee, where much of Dane County’s mail is processed. Hence Brown’s concern that come October, his business could fall victim to partisan tactics leading up to the Nov. 3 election.“I may disagree very much with the political rationale for slowing down the Post Office,” he said. “But people have to know how bad local businesses are being hurt.”Chris Czubakowski, vice president and legislative director for the Milwaukee chapter of the American Postal Workers Union, said the assault on the Postal Service is taking place on multiple fronts.“There’s all these little cogs everywhere where these directives are causing the whole machine to slow down,” he said.First, he said, was the elimination of overtime at a time when the pandemic has already depleted the workforce at the Postal Service's package processing facility at Oak Creek."During the pandemic, we’ve been warning management about having all these people work so close together, that there would be a potential for the spread of the virus among the employees," he said. "And it’s recently happened. The cases have been spiking out there. You already have all these operations that are understaffed. Now you have people calling in because they’re sick, or their family member’s sick, or they’re quarantined or they don’t have child care."And on June 6, four sorting machines at the distribution center in downtown Milwaukee were removed, with three more scheduled to go at a later date. That will leave the facility with 29 of the 36 sorting machines it had two months ago.“While we’re always concerned with any reductions of machines, these reductions are a bit more eye-raising and concerning because of the current efforts by the Trump administration to privatize and politicize the postal service during a pandemic and prior to an election,” he said.So far, he said, the first-class mail that’s processed in the sorting machines is still getting out the door. But while there had been two workers operating each machine, now there’s one. And with no overtime, any mail not processed by the end of a shift is left for the next shift to handle, threatening a backlog if volumes increase.“With increased volume down the road, it raises some concerns,” he said. “We’re all in uncharted territory with the pandemic and the election.”And there is another area where DeJoy has inserted directives that hobble mail carriers’ ability to do their jobs, Czubakowski said. He’s directed mail carriers at Post Office stations not to wait for late mail and instead leave it for the next day.&nbsp;A similar directive instructs truck drivers to leave at set times, with no leeway to pick up mail that arrives late.“What used to happen is the trucks could wait around a little bit, and they would get what they could on the trucks,” he said. “Now, under the postmaster general, we’re not going to wait for any last-minute mail.”Become a Cap Times member today and enjoy great benefits.Questions?{{title}}{{summary}}You don't have any notifications.Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.Topics

You are the owner of this article.You have permission to edit this article.Craig Brown started to notice it about three weeks ago when a customer who should have gotten a package within three days called to say it still hadn’t arrived after nearly two weeks. Brown, the owner of Steve’s Curling Supplies — named for his father — has since seen the same thing happen with other packages he’s shipped through the U.S. Postal Service.One package, he said, is still “in limbo.”“It normally takes two days, and it’s been a month,” he said.Thankful that it’s not the busy season, when he normally ships...

Postal Service slowdown hits Wisconsin

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