USPS struggling to deliver mail; staffing, workplace rules blamed

The United States Postal Service in the Cape Girardeau area is struggling to get the mail out.

Staffing shortages, workplace rules and alleged management decisions relating to resource deployment are to blame for delivery delays, according an American Postal Union representative and two employees speaking on the condition of anonymity. According to them, the problems are affecting delivery in all of Southeast Missouri, including the Bootheel. Reports of slow mail delivery around the country have bubbled to the surface as well.

The people who spoke with the Southeast Missourian contend carriers and clerks are working long hours of overtime and several mail routes are regularly not being delivered on a daily basis in the area. Meanwhile, 11 "standby" employees are being paid full-time wages to perform no daily duties, sometimes working puzzles, they said, as customers consistently call the post office with complaints. Based on a 40-hour week, the Cape Girardeau post office is leaving 440 hours of labor sitting in break rooms, according to the situation described by a union representative, Greg Davidson.

Davidson said the worst of the issues can be traced back to February 2022, when decisions at the national level, made in what has been termed an "excess event", ceased Cape Girardeau's sorting operations and placed 17 clerks on "standby". In addition, another six maintenance positions were eliminated, and those maintenance workers were placed on "standby".

Four of the six maintenance employees remain as standby employees, Davidson said. He explained the seven clerks have officially been cleared as standby employees from the February 2022 "excessing" event and can be worked at any time. The maintenance workers are still officially operating under standby status rules and are not supposed to work in other positions while under the standby timeline, Davidson said, "wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars."

Standby status is part of a union agreement that states employees cannot be laid off or reassigned during periods of low-mail volume. The opposite is occurring in the Cape Girardeau office. Mail volume is too high for the current workers to maintain traditional post office standards of daily delivery.

The standby employees were protected by the union, and placed on paid standby to jump into positions as they became needed. Davidson contended USPS is refusing to work the standby employees because USPS wants to prove on paper that more positions and resources are not needed. Management's goal, he said he believes, is to eliminate positions once the standby employees eventually drop off the payroll for one reason or another.

Of the 17 clerks, 10 went back to jobs at the plant, Davidson said. Meanwhile, mail is getting to carriers late, because the processing center and the clerks cannot handle the high volume. Some items, particularly parcels from Amazon, are not processed immediately, Davidson and others reported. A shortened carrier staff is then expected to deliver routes for up to 12 hours a day, and there are not enough carriers to cover all the routes.

Davidson said employees use the words "crazy" and "insane" every day to describe the situation at the post office.

Management response

Meanwhile, USPS has declined to publicly acknowledge a problem. Davidson said the local postmaster who recently took the position, Dustin Redden, a longtime post office supervisor, is not at fault for most of the problems in the delayed deliveries. He said Redden is working long hours and is trying his best but the decisions relating to staffing are primarily made above his rank.

Redden, when reached by text, told the Southeast Missourian that the point of contact for media inquiries is Mark Inglett, based in Kansas City, Missouri. The Southeast Missourian reached out to Inglett with specific questions regarding carrier shortages and open routes. Inglett did not address those questions, instead issuing the following statement: "The Postal Service is committed to providing the best possible service to our customers and the Cape Girardeau Post Office is making sure all mail is delivered timely and accurately. When mail service issues occur, we take steps to quickly resolve customer concerns. We gladly work to address any specific issue from the community when brought to our attention and we encourage customers to reach out to their local postal station."

When a reporter followed up that response with more specific questions and a request to talk to local leadership in Cape Girardeau, Inglett did not respond.

Davidson disputed Inglett's statement. He said the post office typically receives more than a dozen phone calls a day complaining about not receiving their mail. No changes have been made to address the problem, so Davidson has issued complaints with the Office of the Inspector General. He estimated the USPS has wasted as much as $2 million locally by not working the fully paid standby employees, while also paying out huge sums of overtime to overworked and exhausted employees. He encouraged customers to call their federal officeholders with complaints.

He said the staffing issues are also affecting safety in the workplace.

"The plant and post office are falling apart," he said. "We have bathrooms that are closed, and we can't get them repaired. A few weeks ago, we brought up issues with the management of post office operations and cited numerous safety hazards. They put in work orders for people outside the area, who couldn't get to it immediately, when we have people sitting here who could help. I was forced to file OSHA complaints on that."

He said employees are "exasperated."

A Southeast Missourian reporter corresponded with two staff members who wished to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak on behalf of the post office.

"Almost all of the carriers are overworked, stressed out and burnt out," one employee said. "The clerks are the same way."

Both employees confirmed the situation with standby workers.

"They are there Monday through Friday and literally just sit there; they are on standby," one employee said. "We have five to six maintenance employees that are also placed on standby and have to sit in a room for their shift. We are short-handed, but we have seven people sitting that could be helping clerks and carriers."

Customer accounts

A Southeast Missourian Facebook post seeking information about local postal delivery resulted in dozens of comments and several emails complaining. Some local residents said the problems dated back to the summer. One commenter reported missing mail several days a week. Another poster said she received her notice to appear in court four hours after the scheduled appearance. She said it took 14 days for the letter to arrive in New Madrid, Missouri, from an address in the same town.

Brenda Estes told the Southeast Missourian she recently went to the local post office to make a complaint about not receiving her mail. She said the man who took her complaint said hers was the eighth he had taken that day.

"I'm not sure what is going on with the post office, but it sounds like I am not the only one with this issue," Estes said. "It is unacceptable!"

Whitney Amick, office manager for Miller Drywall in Scott City, said the business has had problems with mail delivery since July.

"We have had our mail we send out not make it to the recipients. We have had numerous phone calls to us asking where the vendor's money is, why are you late on payments," she wrote in an email. "And this has been very puzzling to us because we send out our payments in a timely manner and have never had any issues before. Not only are we having problems with our customers receiving our payments, we are also having problems receiving any mail at our office. We have gone days without any mail. Two to three days at a time. This has caused a lot of problems for me because we are not receiving mail, we cannot send payment in a timely manner either. ... It has really caused a lot of people and businesses to no longer have faith in the USPS."

Davidson said there are three standby workers qualified to fill in at the Scott City location, but USPS management has decided to close the post office when the clerk is sick or off on vacation, rather than to staff the office with a worker who is already being paid.

Davidson and another employee confirmed that one city route in Scott City has struggled with prompt delivery.

"Meanwhile, those with bid jobs struggle as trucks dispatch up to two hours late and mail sits until the next day unprocessed because we are so short-staffed," a second employee said. "Nobody blames those folks for being on standby, because they, like the rest of us, were not asked for our input on any decision that got us here."

Local and regional representatives of the National Association of Letter Carriers referred questions to the national organization in Washington, D.C. A message left there was not returned.

In April, the American Postal Workers Union issued a statement about a shortage of carriers. The statement called for public support in demanding more postal workers and better service.

"Service problems are widespread and no corner of the country has been spared," said American Postal Workers Union president Mark Dimondstein. "New hires at the USPS are often treated poorly and many fail to receive proper training, resulting in high turnover. Combine this with the pressures of short-staffing, a high volume of mail and packages, abusive treatment by managers, and you have a toxic work environment at many postal facilities and a perfect recipe for mail being delayed."

The first of the two employees said retention of new employees is indeed a problem.

"When more carriers are hired they are burnt out fast," the employee said. "They don't tell them in training they will be working five or six 12-hour shifts, and it's not what they were expecting."