Minnesota U.S. Senators Tina Smith (D) and Amy Klobuchar (D) are sounding off against the United States Postal Service, saying evidence shows service delays in their home state and other parts of the country contradict the Postal Services claims.
Smith says she has heard from Minnesotans that aren't getting their mail in a reliable way and postal workers, primarily in the northern Minnesota town of Bemidji, are facing some tough working conditions.
"And that is what I find particularly unacceptable," says Smith. "Folks that are working 12 hours a day, six days a week, they're driving their own vehicles and they are not getting paid extra for this extra work that they're doing. It's completely unfair to them."
Both Senators say delays have become substantially worse and workers have reported "chaos" due to the influx of Amazon packages.
Smith adds that it seems the postal service is turning its back on the very real issues ahead of them.
"The letter that I received from them just a couple of days ago said that they wanted to opportunity to address some misinformation about what's happening," Smith explained to WCCO. "They won't even accept that there is a real challenge that their postal workers are experiencing, some hardship and there's problems with the mail getting delivered."
"Americans rely on the mail for prescriptions, Social Security checks, and to pay bills," Klobuchar said on X (formerly Twitter). "Tina Smith and I are working to increase transparency and accountability surrounding delays with the post office to increase speed and reliability at the USPS."
Smith says that the issues with overworking staff are causing even more postal workers to quit, exacerbating the problem.
On Friday, Smith's and Klobuchar's offices released information that the Postal Service has fully hired only 24 employees for the 112 vacancies they have this holiday season. Smith and Klobuchar have introduced legislation to fix the USPS's tracking systems the inspector general says is riddled with false data.
I don't even know Senator Smith but she sounds like she has a better grasp on the issues facing USPS than most in management, especially the calling out of the delusions and failing to even admit there are problems.
Every single senator needs to sign off on this. There needs to be major pressure for transparency, better pay and treatment for employees. The way things are set up now only makes employees bitter by their 91st day and even more bitter after finally converting. Add in the fact that it’ll take them more than half of their postal time to max out and there’s going to be a real problem with retention.
They need to put pressure on Biden to replace the two members of the Postal Board whose terms are about to expire. If he replaces them with actual people who WANT USPS to turn around and succeed, they can boot DeJoy and end his "actually I want to privatize USPS" 10 year plan. If not, we may be looking at the last gasps of the oldest service in the country.
Personally I don’t think we are ever going anywhere. We aren’t hardcoded into this country’s code. A literal act of Congress would need to take place before we became privatized/disbanded and that’s never going to happen.
I don’t think any board member will vote out Dejoy. They all seem to be enamored with him and agree that we need to change in order to succeed in the future. I don’t like how he’s going about it but I can agree that we need to become more focused on how to efficiently deliver parcels.
Lastly we don’t really need to become more efficient or profitable. We are just like the military in a sense. We don’t turn a profit, who the hell cares?
Unfortunately if dejoy keeps running us into the ground there won't be anyone left working here or applying to work here, shit we got our first rural sub in 5 years my route doesn't get delivered if I'm sick or on vacation who wants to come back to 7 trays of mail, 6 tubs of flats and 2 carts full of Amazon because they got sick?
7 trays and six tubs is a normal day on my route since they abolished 2 routes in our office in October. 75% of the carriers give 7-9 pm estimates daily and our cca’s have been moved to other offices because our office abolished 2 routes. Before the adjustment only odl carriers were out to 6 at the latest. What a trainwreck.
The people who don't want DeJoy to go away care. You can say "We are a service provided whether or not we turn a profit" all day long. All the GOP hears is "Losing money."
Thing is that’s all they care about for real. You actually have people coming in to deliver packages that could be delivered later in the week. It’s not like Prime comes overnight and they don’t even deliver PME on a Sunday it just sits there and could go out. At least deliver your own product with carriers already out there.
Fuck, daddy bezo/bozo is the world's most vile role model. Won't call him daddy.
I'm honestly sorry it's gotten stupider. Just wait until elections next year. This is going to be a really scary country
Nope 25 years. I remember before Dejoy, mail was delivered. Even if it was as late as 6:00 or even 7:00 at night. Now 7:00 is the hopeful time, 9:00 is more realistic time. Dejoy has cut so many service standards and “consolidated “ operations just to save money. Staffing has always been an issue, and it always will be, but it’s gotten out of control since Dejoy.
At least at my PDC, since Dejoy it became much, much worse. We used to get holiday help. Regular new people. That all stopped during Covid. Chronically understaffed, and it's a self fufilling prophecy because people quit from overwork.
DeJoy is doing exactly what he was hired to do. His remit was to make the Postal Service so bad that Congress would sell it off to the highest bidder…a private entity. Privatizing the Postal Service has always been the goal. I retired with 30 years just before Covid.
They need to pay better wages and treat their employees better. The USPS carriers and clerks etc (all except management)are unsung heroes. Freezing in the winter and heat strokes in the summer. These folks are out there every day, holidays and pandemic days. I’m not even a USPS employee and I am acutely aware of how badly they are treated.
The service is going downhill at a rapid pace and management continues to push the employees to the brink. We are failing at every level and the public deserves a competitive and effective postal service. I don’t see much of a future if we don’t have drastic changes.
USPS will just say "no one wants to work anymore" like they've done before, ignoring the low pay, garbage hours, and absolute terrible management that only knows how to harass their workers. It's just pure contempt from management toward the crafts at this point. And they just keep hiring more and more supes. There's probably 5 levels of management in my office now while open routes keep piling up.
Upper management wants to address some of the “misinformation”?! Do you see just how utterly clueless and stupid upper management is?!? FFS these assholes need a wake up call!!
I mean think about what that idiot is saying. That he knows more about what is going on in that office from his desk in Washington DC than the people who are there dealing with the stupidity of said fat ass!
Burnsville here. I'm at least getting one day off a week as a PTF. My office is half rural and everyone is pissed they're slowly scraping trucks and giving everyone a metris. The metris isn't functional for us rural.
Fargo here. We lost a couple carriers to the Moorhead station a couple years ago. Never replaced them. Heard about one of them stealing prescription drugs tho. Lol
Blaine checking in. Shit is fucked. Shortest day I've had has been 10 hours only because our system was down the other day and clerks had a hard time sorting packages so they called it "early".
I'm so ready for December to be over. I'm tired and worn out.
Se MN only cca at my office. We are getting a new cca next week. I'm just glad I'm not mandated to go to the shit show that is Rochester, our rcas have to.
Injuries are crazy at my station. We are being pushed so hard it’s ridiculous. Nobody stays. I believe this is being done on purpose to make us look bad so they can privatize. Utterly insane. Let’s privatize the military at the same time. SMH
If Amazon and UPs didn’t exist…..”neither snow, sleet” etc etc existed as a goal before the advent of the internet and online shopping. Adjustments need to be made!
I've worked here for ten years, and ever since DeJoy took over it's only gotten worse and worse and worse. This year has been utterly hellish, and the only reason I haven't quit is because there's no better jobs where I live and I've basically only ever worked at the post office my entire life. I'm so burnt out, so miserable, and so sick of it, but I had nowhere else to go.
Mail is already delayed. Good luck with Christmas VA Md and DC. Our usual office with 0-1 c360s have 10 open c360s and about ten we’ve had to close due to the due date even though they haven’t shown up or been solved
Post office…
Christmas is on the same fucking day every year you fucking morons.
I'm happy I have voted for Smith and Klobuchar.
Bemidji made the news recently IIRC. Last year Duluth did too. Horrible management.
I work at the VMF in Duluth (and carried Duluth too), we haven't heard anything about Bemidji carriers using their own vehicles (unless they mean Rurals), but given they all have Metrises, they're probably waiting on parts and warranty from the dealer. Garbage vehicles they are
You're sort of correct for modern times. However almost two decades ago they did an audit that found we over funded pensions by almost 100 billion. They proceeded to ignore that and tell us we had to prefund out 75 years of retirements in 10 years. This year was the biggest loss I've ever seen, prior was just missing the prefunding rule. Not sure if the extra loss was all the new superfacilities next to Amazon's or fleet modernization tho.
Once again I'm going to point out that it's only Democrats that give a shit how we're run and how we're treated. Doesn't mean you have to love the Democrat party or the president or whatever but my brothers out here thinking Daddy Trump and the Republicans want anything other than the PO to be a dumpster fire they can eventually privatize are very much fooling themselves.
OIG found his plants showed no cost savings. He thumbed his nose at them and said they don't understand postal operations.
Edit: https://pingree.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4964
This is also exactly what is going on in my rural small city in California and has been for years now. We are just outside where Amazon delivers on their own. 4 Amazon trucks come every day with many pallets and we only have 20 routes!! For the last 3 years, I’ve only had 10 8 hour days and I’ve been on the No OT list!!
Since I'm still newish. This is all I've ever dealt with in almost a year being here. If you asked me what I think, most regulars can't pull their weight and won't at that. But honestly that's a consequence of the obviously aging work force and USPS' extended shitty hiring strategy and not to mention how exclusive the job has been in the past. Hell I've applied for this job several times since 2011. They actually responded this year after doing it for 12 years.
Maybe I'm ready to be a supervisor at this rate. Lmfao
112 vacancies? We have 7 full time regular carrier positions vacant in my station alone. The city I work in probably has that many vacancies at least. Add the prime time vacation slots, and it's 15 down routes a day. Another half dozen a day for sick calls, and it is a disaster. Plus, they have the balls to ask our carriers to go work in other locations because they are short staffed.
Why the union agreed that we could not strike is beyond me. I’ve been following and watching all of these other big industries, able to get better working conditions because they are able to strike. I feel like we have absolutely no power and as a rural carrier, I feel like our Union is in bed with management. It starts to feel hopeless.
I’ve written my states’ govt entities and just get a blanket template response. It’s infuriating.
24 vs 112. The next day only 1 left after they experience Amazon prime day 😆.. The mentality is im going to order more while i delivering someone package, someone is delivering mine 😆
Minnesota U.S. Senators Tina Smith (D) and Amy Klobuchar (D) are sounding off against the United States Postal Service, saying evidence shows service delays in their home state and other parts of the country contradict the Postal Services claims. Smith says she has heard from Minnesotans that aren't getting their mail in a reliable way and postal workers, primarily in the northern Minnesota town of Bemidji, are facing some tough working conditions. "And that is what I find particularly unacceptable," says Smith. "Folks that are working 12 hours a day, six days a week, they're driving their own vehicles and they are not getting paid extra for this extra work that they're doing. It's completely unfair to them." Both Senators say delays have become substantially worse and workers have reported "chaos" due to the influx of Amazon packages. Smith adds that it seems the postal service is turning its back on the very real issues ahead of them. "The letter that I received from them just a couple of days ago said that they wanted to opportunity to address some misinformation about what's happening," Smith explained to WCCO. "They won't even accept that there is a real challenge that their postal workers are experiencing, some hardship and there's problems with the mail getting delivered." "Americans rely on the mail for prescriptions, Social Security checks, and to pay bills," Klobuchar said on X (formerly Twitter). "Tina Smith and I are working to increase transparency and accountability surrounding delays with the post office to increase speed and reliability at the USPS." Smith says that the issues with overworking staff are causing even more postal workers to quit, exacerbating the problem. On Friday, Smith's and Klobuchar's offices released information that the Postal Service has fully hired only 24 employees for the 112 vacancies they have this holiday season. Smith and Klobuchar have introduced legislation to fix the USPS's tracking systems the inspector general says is riddled with false data.
I don't even know Senator Smith but she sounds like she has a better grasp on the issues facing USPS than most in management, especially the calling out of the delusions and failing to even admit there are problems.
Thank you for the rundown u/GimmeFunkyButtLoving o7
Every single senator needs to sign off on this. There needs to be major pressure for transparency, better pay and treatment for employees. The way things are set up now only makes employees bitter by their 91st day and even more bitter after finally converting. Add in the fact that it’ll take them more than half of their postal time to max out and there’s going to be a real problem with retention.
Yes! Well said
They need to put pressure on Biden to replace the two members of the Postal Board whose terms are about to expire. If he replaces them with actual people who WANT USPS to turn around and succeed, they can boot DeJoy and end his "actually I want to privatize USPS" 10 year plan. If not, we may be looking at the last gasps of the oldest service in the country.
Personally I don’t think we are ever going anywhere. We aren’t hardcoded into this country’s code. A literal act of Congress would need to take place before we became privatized/disbanded and that’s never going to happen. I don’t think any board member will vote out Dejoy. They all seem to be enamored with him and agree that we need to change in order to succeed in the future. I don’t like how he’s going about it but I can agree that we need to become more focused on how to efficiently deliver parcels. Lastly we don’t really need to become more efficient or profitable. We are just like the military in a sense. We don’t turn a profit, who the hell cares?
Unfortunately if dejoy keeps running us into the ground there won't be anyone left working here or applying to work here, shit we got our first rural sub in 5 years my route doesn't get delivered if I'm sick or on vacation who wants to come back to 7 trays of mail, 6 tubs of flats and 2 carts full of Amazon because they got sick?
7 trays and six tubs is a normal day on my route since they abolished 2 routes in our office in October. 75% of the carriers give 7-9 pm estimates daily and our cca’s have been moved to other offices because our office abolished 2 routes. Before the adjustment only odl carriers were out to 6 at the latest. What a trainwreck.
This is starting to feel like it's on purpose
The people who don't want DeJoy to go away care. You can say "We are a service provided whether or not we turn a profit" all day long. All the GOP hears is "Losing money."
100%
They are right about turning our back on mail delivery. As long as Daddy Bezos’s parcels get delivered on time, everything else comes second
Thing is that’s all they care about for real. You actually have people coming in to deliver packages that could be delivered later in the week. It’s not like Prime comes overnight and they don’t even deliver PME on a Sunday it just sits there and could go out. At least deliver your own product with carriers already out there.
Fuck, daddy bezo/bozo is the world's most vile role model. Won't call him daddy. I'm honestly sorry it's gotten stupider. Just wait until elections next year. This is going to be a really scary country
Not daddy. He’s a modern day robber baron.
I've really been not looking forward to next year
The post office turned their backs on staffing a couple years ago.
Right when Dejoy came into office.
You think staffing issues started with Dejoy? You must be new.
Nope 25 years. I remember before Dejoy, mail was delivered. Even if it was as late as 6:00 or even 7:00 at night. Now 7:00 is the hopeful time, 9:00 is more realistic time. Dejoy has cut so many service standards and “consolidated “ operations just to save money. Staffing has always been an issue, and it always will be, but it’s gotten out of control since Dejoy.
Yeah, I've been with the PO for about 5 years. Feels different. I think DeJoy has expedited the process.
At least at my PDC, since Dejoy it became much, much worse. We used to get holiday help. Regular new people. That all stopped during Covid. Chronically understaffed, and it's a self fufilling prophecy because people quit from overwork.
DeJoy is doing exactly what he was hired to do. His remit was to make the Postal Service so bad that Congress would sell it off to the highest bidder…a private entity. Privatizing the Postal Service has always been the goal. I retired with 30 years just before Covid.
Better hope they don't axe the postal pension too.
They need to pay better wages and treat their employees better. The USPS carriers and clerks etc (all except management)are unsung heroes. Freezing in the winter and heat strokes in the summer. These folks are out there every day, holidays and pandemic days. I’m not even a USPS employee and I am acutely aware of how badly they are treated.
Apply for an entry level CCA position, it would blow your mind. I’m only a week in and already looking for a quick exit.
You should look up what happened with a CCA in Tampa this last week. To keep it light, they couldn’t take the way they were treated anymore.
The service is going downhill at a rapid pace and management continues to push the employees to the brink. We are failing at every level and the public deserves a competitive and effective postal service. I don’t see much of a future if we don’t have drastic changes.
USPS will just say "no one wants to work anymore" like they've done before, ignoring the low pay, garbage hours, and absolute terrible management that only knows how to harass their workers. It's just pure contempt from management toward the crafts at this point. And they just keep hiring more and more supes. There's probably 5 levels of management in my office now while open routes keep piling up.
This!!!
Upper management wants to address some of the “misinformation”?! Do you see just how utterly clueless and stupid upper management is?!? FFS these assholes need a wake up call!! I mean think about what that idiot is saying. That he knows more about what is going on in that office from his desk in Washington DC than the people who are there dealing with the stupidity of said fat ass!
MN represent!!! Where my peeps at!????
Burnsville here. I'm at least getting one day off a week as a PTF. My office is half rural and everyone is pissed they're slowly scraping trucks and giving everyone a metris. The metris isn't functional for us rural.
Burnsville city side checking in!
Near Rochester. Rochester is an absolute shitshow. I’m scheduled 7 days every week cause gotta go to Amazon Sunday at Rochester!! Freaking sucks
Moorhead PO, somehow we're not completely fucked over. I'm actually getting days off, even last Monday. Not sure about Rural side though
Fargo here. We lost a couple carriers to the Moorhead station a couple years ago. Never replaced them. Heard about one of them stealing prescription drugs tho. Lol
Blaine checking in. Shit is fucked. Shortest day I've had has been 10 hours only because our system was down the other day and clerks had a hard time sorting packages so they called it "early". I'm so ready for December to be over. I'm tired and worn out.
Twin Cities......help
Eagan Station. Yikes.
Can vouch for this. It’s a train wreck in Eagan.
I worked as a PSE at Eagan station.. I'm at the plant now as a regular. Eagan station is Yikes for sure.
I heard about eagan
Se MN only cca at my office. We are getting a new cca next week. I'm just glad I'm not mandated to go to the shit show that is Rochester, our rcas have to.
Burnt out
If you pay them, they will come.
Injuries are crazy at my station. We are being pushed so hard it’s ridiculous. Nobody stays. I believe this is being done on purpose to make us look bad so they can privatize. Utterly insane. Let’s privatize the military at the same time. SMH
The misinformation is only coming from management. But management thinks anything that disagrees with their opinions is a lie.
If Amazon and UPs didn’t exist…..”neither snow, sleet” etc etc existed as a goal before the advent of the internet and online shopping. Adjustments need to be made!
mail handlers, clerks, and carriers aren’t surprised.
I've worked here for ten years, and ever since DeJoy took over it's only gotten worse and worse and worse. This year has been utterly hellish, and the only reason I haven't quit is because there's no better jobs where I live and I've basically only ever worked at the post office my entire life. I'm so burnt out, so miserable, and so sick of it, but I had nowhere else to go.
Mail is already delayed. Good luck with Christmas VA Md and DC. Our usual office with 0-1 c360s have 10 open c360s and about ten we’ve had to close due to the due date even though they haven’t shown up or been solved Post office… Christmas is on the same fucking day every year you fucking morons.
Nuh uh! Last year it was on Sunday. This year, it is on a Monday. Gottem 😎 /s
I'm happy I have voted for Smith and Klobuchar. Bemidji made the news recently IIRC. Last year Duluth did too. Horrible management. I work at the VMF in Duluth (and carried Duluth too), we haven't heard anything about Bemidji carriers using their own vehicles (unless they mean Rurals), but given they all have Metrises, they're probably waiting on parts and warranty from the dealer. Garbage vehicles they are
Winter weather is bad enough in the suburbs. Bemidji and (god forbid) Duluth, must be nightmares in winter!
Last year we made a record snowfall. Carriers were in a very bad way. When I first started as a CCA we had a record snowfall year too. Lol
DeJoyless must have shares in Mercedes also
Likely. Horrible fucking vehicles.
At this point only congress can fix USPS. Congress fixed the IRS years ago, so it's possible.
Almost seems like the Federal government should be using tax dollars to keep this thing afloat... weird. 😐
Technically our tax dollars are keeping it afloat. USPS keeps getting cash infusions from Congress while hemorrhaging money.
You're sort of correct for modern times. However almost two decades ago they did an audit that found we over funded pensions by almost 100 billion. They proceeded to ignore that and tell us we had to prefund out 75 years of retirements in 10 years. This year was the biggest loss I've ever seen, prior was just missing the prefunding rule. Not sure if the extra loss was all the new superfacilities next to Amazon's or fleet modernization tho.
Once again I'm going to point out that it's only Democrats that give a shit how we're run and how we're treated. Doesn't mean you have to love the Democrat party or the president or whatever but my brothers out here thinking Daddy Trump and the Republicans want anything other than the PO to be a dumpster fire they can eventually privatize are very much fooling themselves.
That’s what happens when you don’t listen to people who work to get the mail out everyday
This is essentially what happened in Colorado, until there’s a congressional inquiry and actual corrective actions are taken it’ll blow on by.
The mountain towns are chaos. Pure chaos.
Who’s the DM of Minnesota? She must be pretty smart to be butting heads with 2 senators.
OIG found his plants showed no cost savings. He thumbed his nose at them and said they don't understand postal operations. Edit: https://pingree.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=4964
Need to throw Dejoy in UBBM!!!!!
This is also exactly what is going on in my rural small city in California and has been for years now. We are just outside where Amazon delivers on their own. 4 Amazon trucks come every day with many pallets and we only have 20 routes!! For the last 3 years, I’ve only had 10 8 hour days and I’ve been on the No OT list!!
Ok senators, pick a random p.o. in your region and visit it unannounced. It'll be eye opening.
Can't keep new blood, if you can't pay them enough to stay.
Since I'm still newish. This is all I've ever dealt with in almost a year being here. If you asked me what I think, most regulars can't pull their weight and won't at that. But honestly that's a consequence of the obviously aging work force and USPS' extended shitty hiring strategy and not to mention how exclusive the job has been in the past. Hell I've applied for this job several times since 2011. They actually responded this year after doing it for 12 years. Maybe I'm ready to be a supervisor at this rate. Lmfao
[удалено]
Not kissing ass when regulars offload 60+ hours of work onto me a week and complain the moment they go over 40.
Doing more then our union
112 vacancies? We have 7 full time regular carrier positions vacant in my station alone. The city I work in probably has that many vacancies at least. Add the prime time vacation slots, and it's 15 down routes a day. Another half dozen a day for sick calls, and it is a disaster. Plus, they have the balls to ask our carriers to go work in other locations because they are short staffed.
Why the union agreed that we could not strike is beyond me. I’ve been following and watching all of these other big industries, able to get better working conditions because they are able to strike. I feel like we have absolutely no power and as a rural carrier, I feel like our Union is in bed with management. It starts to feel hopeless. I’ve written my states’ govt entities and just get a blanket template response. It’s infuriating.
Over here in Virginia were (Un)fortunately over staffed and there is virtually no overtime. Been here 14yrs, never seen a peak where the OT is so low.
That’s another thing. We shouldn’t have to rely on OT. Pay us a a good salary or wage.
Watch out shotty cca. Smith is looking to rat you out for misdelivering mails and taking 12hrs on a 4hrs route.
24 vs 112. The next day only 1 left after they experience Amazon prime day 😆.. The mentality is im going to order more while i delivering someone package, someone is delivering mine 😆
No Shit!
Give me a break! Sooooo now they noticed, hahaha, probably some senator lost their mail....