Help faltering postal system, stop mail delays
1928 - 2021
It was one thing for holiday gifts and Christmas cards to arrive a little late because of delays at the United States Postal Service. In fact, some people found it a bit amusing, and a little nice, to get a gift a month or more late and be to able extend the holiday cheer. What is no laughing matter is all the other heartache, inconvenience and threat to people’s livelihoods and health that backlogs in deliveries has caused. And there seems to be no end in sight to the troubles.
People’s bill payments aren’t getting to creditors and banks on time. And W-2 forms have been delayed as well. Tenants are ending up delinquent on rent payments, and homeowners on mortgages. Life-enabling prescription drugs aren’t arriving in a timely manner, and businesses’ products and inventories are languishing in distribution facilities. Speeding tickets and other traffic violations are coming in after a fine is due, or close to it. Maryland’s congressional Democrats got so many complaints from constituents they wrote Postmaster General Louis Dejoy a letter demanding that he do something to improve mail delivery, saying he could start by walking back any cost-cutting he had put in place. Individuals are also airing their grievances on social media.
A large part of the problem is that USPS is experiencing an unprecedented crush of packages amid a pandemic-related increase in online shopping, and the busy holiday season compounded it all with a record 1.1 billion parcels sent. Add to that employees missing work or having to quarantine because of COVID-19 cases along with winter storms, and everything seems to be working against the agency. Dejoy didn’t help matters over the summer when he made operational changes to cut costs, he said, though they were widely seen as an attempt to interfere with the presidential election. Either way, the moves, which included dismantling 600 mail sorting machines nationwide, only hurt services.
There are calls to boot Dejoy from his job, which some had hoped would happen under a new administration. Unfortunately that is not easy. President Joe Biden does not hire or fire the postmaster general, as that’s the responsibility of the USPS Board of Governors. What President Biden can do is quickly appoint people to the three vacant positions on the nine-member board. The American Postal Workers Union has asked the president to appoint Democrats to give them a majority on the board. But at the very least, he should fill it with people who want to overhaul the system beyond haphazard cuts and who recognize the problems that existed even before the pandemic.
The USPS needs people with vision on how to make the agency solvent and who are unhindered by special interests. A May 2020 report by the Government Accountability Office said the current USPS business model is not financially sustainable because of three main problems: declining mail volumes, increased compensation and benefits costs, and increased unfunded liabilities and debt – the latter mainly from hundreds of millions of dollars in pension and retirement costs. And that was before Dejoy took over, and just a few months into the pandemic.
The GAO report also noted that Congress will have to take a lead on any overhaul because of laws that restrict what the Postal Service can do. Past attempts at legislation have gotten caught up in special interest politics and opposition. It’s time lawmakers get different interests to compromise. Talks of a bailout are all fine, but throwing money at a problem only helps if the core problems are addressed.
The new chair of the USPS board seems to get that concept. Ron Bloom, a Democrat and a former senior counsel to President Barack Obama, was elected to the position last week. “It will require both ourselves and our stakeholders to come together, openly face our challenges, make necessary choices and do what is right for this great organization and our country,” he said in a statement. Let’s see if he can make that happen. The Postal Service, despite all of its problems, is still an essential need in this country.
In the meantime, some short-term fixes are needed to address the real challenges facing Americans whose lives mail delays are disrupting. We hope Dejoy takes seriously the call from Maryland lawmakers hearing from disgruntled voters. Long-term structural solutions are one thing, but that does nothing to help the elderly man who needs his blood pressure medicine.
– Baltimore Sun
Ohioans who answer work emails from their beds or the sidelines at their kids' soccer games could be blocked from claiming those minutes as overtime if a bill introduced in the state Senate becomes law.
Supporters say Senate Bill 47 would give employers clarity and protection from lawsuits in this new COVID-19 world where thousands of people work unsupervised from home. Opponents say federal labor laws provide adequate protection, and these new rules could create a system that harms hourly employees.
“The idea behind this is to get everybody on the same page so they know when the employee is actually working,” Sen. Andrew Brenner, Rpowell, said.
If passed, the bill would exempt Ohio employers from paying overtime when employees travel to and from work and for “activities requiring insubstantial or insignificant periods of time beyond the employee's scheduled working hours.”
A quick glance through your phone while waiting in the car for groceries isn't billable hours, Brenner said. “The idea behind this is to say look, if you are doing that on your own time and you don't have this spelled out in your contract, you're on your own.”
That's fine, Sen. Nickie Antonio, Dlakewood, said. An occasional, clarifying text to a boss after hours doesn't have to count as overtime work. What bothers her is how all those little moments add up over the course of a year and how an employer might exploit Brenner's bright line to his or her advantage.
“We wouldn't have these rules about overtime if employers hadn't blatantly disregarded common practice,” Antonio said. “I just think this bill is unnecessary.”
What counts as work?
The federal Fair Labor Standards Act says an employer who “suffers or permits” work outside scheduled hours can be forced to count those hours even if he or she did not directly order it.
However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Anderson v. Mt. Clemons Pottery Co. that “when the matter in issue concerns only seconds or minutes of work beyond the scheduled working hours, such trifles may be disregarded.”
The 1946 ruling called that amount of work “de minimis,” meaning too trivial or minor to matter. The challenge since then has been to define what crosses the de minimis line in a world where smartphones can tether employees to their jobs from anywhere on the planet.
A Center for Creative Leadership survey back in 2012 found 60% of people who used smartphones for work were already keeping in touch with their office 13.5 hours per day and an
other five hours each weekend.
Another survey by the American Psychological Association found 44% checked worked email daily while on vacation and 10% checked in hourly.
Ten minutes of extra work a day adds up to more than 41 hours in an average work year.
France enacted a law in 2017 to stop the “explosion of undeclared labor” that forced companies with more than 50 employees to negotiate and define outof-office email rules. Some firms, according to CNN, went so far as to shut down their email servers overnight.
“Work should be defined based on the task being done not on an arbitrary amount of time,” said Bob Derose, a labor attorney and former President of the Ohio Association for Justice (a nonprofit focused on trial rights).
He's neutral on the bill, but Derose did oppose the previous version Brenner tried and failed to pass during the last General Assembly. He said he appreciated all the work both Brenner and co-sponsor Sen. Bob Peterson, R-washington Courthouse, had put into improving its language. But he still harbored some reservations about how companies would interpret “insubstantial or insignificant periods of time.”
“If what they are doing isn't related to their work, then they could do it for hours and not be paid,” Derose said. “But if a person is doing something related to their job, then they should be paid – even if it's four minutes.” astaver@dispatch.com @annastaver
Marguerite Mcdowell, age 92, passed away February 13, 2021. Arrangements entrusted to DIEHL-WHITTAKER FUNERAL SERVICE, 720 E. Long St., where a Walk-through Viewing will take place 9-10AM on Friday, February 26, 2021. All visitors are asked to wear an appropriate cloth face covering and maintain proper distancing according to current public health guidelines. A Celebration of Life Service will be streamed online to allow family and friends to honor Marguerite together at a distance. Interment Glen Rest Memorial Estate. To attend the service remotely, send flowers and post an expression of sympathy and support for the family, please visit Marguerite’s memorial celebration wall at www.diehl-whittaker.com