The Independent View: Neither rain, nor snow, nor dead of night
Why The U.S. Post Office Is In Trouble – 678,539 Employees And A $9.2 Billion Loss In 2020
Critics have suggested the service is ossified and in dire need of workplace reforms.
According to an analysis, the USPS doesn’t enforce a mandatory retirement policy, meaning employees can continue earning top dollars for as long as they wish. Nearly 550 employees have been on the job for at least 50 years; 8,500 for at least 40 years; 76,500 for at least 30 years; and 215,000 for at least 20 years.
Post Office defenders might suggest the USPS could lean on its stable of veteran workers to help generate best-in-class ideas to help balance the books.
In 2020, the executive suite tried this. For example, they hired Richard Uluski, who had retired in 2016 after a 36-year career and was praised by the then-postmaster General for “demonstrated exceptional leadership and delivered results.” Uluski’s new position? “Executive Coach” with compensation at $100 per hour with statutory caps on hours.
A post office spokesperson responded to a request and provided additional clarification. “He (Uluski) is employed with us as a reemployed annuitant under the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law in Dec. 2019. The law allows Mr. Uluski to receive his Postal Service pension while at the same time receiving a federal salary — with limits, as the document identifies.”
In order to survive, the USPS must pick a lane: Is the organization going to operate like a private company or a government agency? If it chooses the latter, it should be more transparent about how it spends its money.
Even though it benefits from its status as a federal agency, the USPS doesn’t participate in usaspending.com, a searchable database of federal spending, contracts, and grants that was created by Senators Barack Obama (D-IL) and Tom Coburn (R-OK) in 2006 to provide accountability in federal spending.
The following was taken from various reviews, letters to editor, and news outlets.
There are several reasons the USPS is suffering. Although the COVID-19 crisis has boosted its business, it has also threatened it. Politico reports because the majority of mail is sent by businesses and most businesses are stalled at the moment, “COVID’S stalling of the economy has cratered mail volume.”
“lmao what a bunch of brainless USPS apologists who very obviously were personally insulted for no reason by a legitimate question. USPS’S service is awful and because their a government entity they’re shielded from any possible litigation. If UPS or Fedex tried to pull the crap that USPS pulls they’d be surrounded in a class action lawsuits and so absolutely bankrupt that it would make Enron jealous. They’re bad because they can be, with absolutely no repercussions.”
“Every USPS within a 10 mile radius of NYC literally has <2 stars on google. Many having less than 1.2 stars. Don’t believe me just check. It’s honestly a joke. My local post office has black mold growing all over the drop ceiling and I’ve seen countless times the postal workers in the office going on antisemitic diatribes about the Jewish people who come to deliver mail there.
“I’ve also managed to have multiple credit cards LITERALLY STOLEN BY POSTAL EMPLOYEES, and subsequently billed thousands of dollars in fraudulent charges, which has happened numerous times in the past in New Jersey with enormous identity theft and fraud rings composed of people WHO WORK AT USPS and still nothing has been done about it.
Worst of all, there’s no way to fix this. USPS is responsible for investigating themselves, so they obviously won’t admit their own faults when doing a personal investigation into their own malpractices.”
“Their mail delivery service consistently misdelivers mail. I had a piece of mail that was delivered to my place instead of the addressee’s, who had the same number on a different street, and the delivery driver left a note asking for it back. I returned it, paper clipped to the note, AND THE PARCEL WAS RETURNED TO MY BOX SEVERAL DAYS LATER. This is not an anomaly. USPS has also lost my wife’s passport and social security card and birth certificate (certified package), only to have it show up 3 months later after we had already paid hundreds of dollars to get new ones. Insurance refused to pay out.”
What follows are my personal experiences.
Interaction with the local (Porterville/springville) offices has for the most part been positive. We did ship a large box of oranges to Jackson, Wyo. where relatives checked for weeks to receive their package only to be told it had not arrived. I made the mistake of marking “perishable” on the box which alerted the Jackson crew to the goodies inside. After a few weeks an honest employee went into the break area to find the box with a large hole in it and more than half the oranges missing. I recently needed to contact the South Lake Tahoe Office. They have a local number listed but several attempts to call resulted in about 30 seconds ringing, transfer to the operator which also rang for a while than hung up. Yesterday I was in Tahoe and visited the Post Office and asked if they answer the phone. The person stated “No we don’t have enough people to do that.”
While working at LAX airport I was asked to take a package to the main office “One World Way.” When I got there, I noticed several men sleeping on bags of mail high in the warehouse. I asked the person behind the desk what they were doing. He responded “Oh they’s on break.” When I returned to work they told me they forgot another box, could I make another trip. I asked if I could drop it off on my way home. About three hours later I dropped the package off. The same people were sleeping in the same place. A different person at the desk responded to the same question. “Oh they’s on break.”
This my friends is how the Post Office earned its unwritten moto. “To employ the unemployable.”
Apologies to the Porterville/springville employees and my contract delivery person who do a remarkable job and seem to be dedicated to providing quality service.