Postal drop
by Mark McDermott, Chelsea Sektnan, and James Whitely
PennySaver and Los Angeles Times Local Value circulars in a dumpster outside the Redondo Beach Post Office. Easy Reader photo
Problems within the United States Postal Service have led to local postal carriers being forced to deliver mail late into the night and supervisors allegedly ordering the dumping of bulk mail at the Redondo Beach Main Post Office.
Interviews with more than a dozen mail carriers, who spoke anonymously due to USPS regulations forbidding critical comment on postal matters, reveal an office in disarray and suffering desperately low morale. Carriers say that reduced staffing, mail route consolidations, and confusion resulting from the implementation of an automated sorting system have resulted in repeated late-night dumping of presorted bulk mailers.
Photographs taken Monday morning by Easy Reader staff at the Redondo Beach Main Post Office appear to confirm these allegations. The photos show recycling bins and trash bins filled with bundled mail – specifically, the Local Values advertising mailer issued by the Los Angles Times Media Group and the PennySaver USA advertising mailer.
Mailers were also allegedly illegally dumped in 2009, when this photo was taken. Easy Reader Photo
Similar photos taken earlier this month and in 2009 – when the USPS also went through a round of mail route consolidations – have been submitted by postal workers as evidence that recent cuts to the number of postal employees have led to supervisors ordering that bulk mail be trashed rather than delivered.
“What’s frustrating is that the mistakes made in 2009 are being repeated now,” one employee said.
Employees have contacted U.S. Congresswoman Janice Hahn’s office with concerns over the alleged mail dumping and other practices occurring within the Redondo Beach office. Hahn spokesperson Robert Kellar said the matter has been referred to the Inspector General’s Office.
“We did receive information,” Kellar said. “We are forwarding it to the Inspector General’s office. And we will follow up to make sure an investigation is performed. It’s a serious charge.”
Federal law includes a specific provision outlawing the destruction or delay of mail by postal employees, punishable by up to five years imprisonment.
USPS supervisors at the Redondo Beach station were unable to speak to the allegations and referred the matter to USPS spokesperson Richard Maher. After conferring with Redondo managers, Maher said the matter would be investigated but that the photos likely show mail that was deemed undeliverable, duplicate, or excess by mail employees.
“I spoke to our senior manager at the Redondo Beach Post Office who verified that the mail in the dumpsters was undeliverable or excess advertising mail,” Maher said. “Mailers of Standard Mail [advertising mail] are aware that pieces that are duplicate, excess or undeliverable will be disposed of.”
The Los Angeles Times Media Company was provided copies of the photos. Nancy Sullivan, vice president of communications, said that the Times’ system prevents duplications.
“The Los Angeles Times Media Group does utilize the United States Post Service (USPS) to deliver Local Values in Redondo Beach and we are gravely concerned about what this photo appears to depict,” Sullivan said in a statement. “The Times will be working with the USPS to understand the circumstances and their plans to remedy the situation if necessary, and will join with the producers of the other mailers apparently disposed of to gain a full understanding.”
Other allegations include that supervisors have set up a “dunce table” where employees limited in their ability to work due to temporary injury or permanent disability are required to sit without performing any work – apparently in an attempt to bore or shame them into submission and quit – while carriers who feel unsafe delivering in the dark have been ordered to return to their routes.
Barbara Stickler, the president of the National Association Letter Carriers branch 1100, said the union is investigating an array of concerns within the Redondo Beach Main Post Office.
“I do believe it is a hostile work environment,” Stickler said. “I do believe it is not the environment that either the Postal Service or the union wants in any of its facilities.”
Rise of the machine
Nationwide the USPS has been struggling mightily since 2006, when Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA).
The Postal Service in many ways exists in the worst possible of worlds as a business. It is not funded by Congress, but is instead self-funded; yet the USPS faces the constraints of being a quasi-governmental agency that by law has to provide universal service and is still essentially controlled by Congress. Through PAEA, Congress loosened some of its restrictions, allowing the USPS more flexibility in setting its own prices and launching new products. But in so doing, Congress required its pound of flesh from the Postal Service: the new law included the highly unusual provision that the USPS had to prefund health benefits for the next 75 years in the next ten years.
Union observers called this provision a “ticking time bomb” planted within the USPS by the 2006, Republican-controlled Congress. The prefunding requirement cost $5.5 billion a year; the USPS has not turned a profit since 2006 and has lost an average of $5 billion annually in the four years since the passage of the law. Other forces are also at play, including the troubled American economy and what USPS CFO Joe Corbett this week described as the “continued and inevitable electronic migration” of the Postal Service’s most profitable product, First-Class mail, which has declined in volume every year since 2006 due to the rise of the Internet.
This has meant the USPS has needed to do more with less. Since 2006, the Postal Service has shed 100,000 employees from its current workforce of 700,000; in 2011 alone, the USPS reduced its work hours by 34 million despite an increase of 636,500 delivery addresses. Its strategy has increasingly been to rely on technology to replace human labor.
The Postal Service had particularly high hopes for an automated system – called the Flats Sequencing System – that sorts “flat mail” items such as large envelopes, newspapers, catalogs, magazines, and some forms of bulk mailers (Trader Joe’s ads, locally, for example). The USPS launched the program in 2008 to reduce sort times for flat mail prior to delivery, following a similar initiative taken in the 1990s, which automated the sorting of standard-sized letters and ultimately saved an estimated $5 billion annually.
The $1.5 billion FSS system is scheduled to deploy 100 machines in 47 locations nationwide. On Sept. 29, two machines went online at USPS central processing facility in Los Angeles, which serves the Redondo Beach post office.
In theory, the FSS system was supposed to reduce the amount of time letter carriers in Redondo were in the office from roughly two-and-a-half to three hours per day to between 45 minutes and one hour and15-minutes, thereby allowing carriers to be in the field as long as seven hours and 15 minutes. And so a round of route consolidations accompanied the introduction of the new machines; the Redondo Beach office, which serves Redondo and Hermosa Beach, saw its number of routes reduced from 113 to 85.
Neither the FSS system nor the route consolidations have worked as planned. A variety of problems have plagued the FSS implementation, including its inability to sort certain flat-mail items and what carriers say are often late-arriving and occasionally damaged flat mail shipments.
“Go to any customer in Redondo or Hermosa – the mail is shredded,” said one local carrier. “Ask any carrier.”
Carriers say they are still spending up to 2.5 hours in the office prior to getting to their new routes, which are now much enlarged and often in different areas than their former routes. Meanwhile, the computer-generated new route sequences have not always made sense in the field.
The bottom line is that, at least in the short term, the burdens on mail carriers have dramatically increased. According to USPS, the Redondo Beach office had already reduced its number of carriers from 143 in 2006 to 128 now, in addition to a reduction in mail clerks from 40 in 2006 to 25 now.
Stickler described the variety of factors at play – including the timing of the FSS implementation and route consolidations right as holiday catalogues are being shipped – as a “perfect storm” the result of which is a high pressure situation for mail carriers.
“On the one hand, we are still employed and still have really good jobs and are happy to be working for the Postal Service,” Stickler said. “On the other hand, the Postal Service needs to recognize that automation isn’t perfect, and you can’t just implement a new program and expect it to work out of the gate without glitches. And they are not balancing that with the time of the year, which is our busiest.”
“The machines aren’t working as well as they expected, so they are short staffed, because they didn’t hire, expecting the machines to work better,” she added.
One letter carrier said that things are likely to get much worse as holiday mail volume increases.
“The way they want you to carry mail, and the amount, is going to injure people,” the carrier said. “This is not going to go away. This is going to be more the next day, and more the next day. Your carriers are going to be dying. They are going to be buried in parcels, buried alive.”
Going postal
Every carrier interviewed for this article said that tensions are extraordinarily high at the Redondo Beach Post Office.
Most reported that the route and technology changes have been accompanied by increased supervision, both in the office itself and in the field, where carriers say they sometimes find themselves being followed by supervisors – something that is particularly rankling given the bigger workloads and shorter staffing of those doing the work in the field.
“We are so harassed now,” said one carrier. “They think this is our fault.”
Additional supervisors from the USPS L.A. District administrative offices have been working in Redondo, including regional postmaster Tyrone Williams, who has drawn the particular ire of several carriers for his allegedly aggressive managing style. (Williams did not return calls seeking comment for this story).
One carrier said that one day seven supervisors were in the office at the same time.
“I’ve never seen this many managers, every single day like this for two weeks,” the carrier said.
“The supervisors watch over us,” said another carrier. “I don’t know who is in charge – just a lot of people telling us what to do. I don’t think they know what they are supposed to do.”
Maher, the USPS spokesperson, said the supervisors are on site to help set Redondo’s problems aright. He said the USPS intended to fix any bugs in the FSS system prior to the holiday season.
“The Los Angeles District has brought in supervisors from other offices to Redondo Beach in order to fix problems and return service to normal as quickly as possible,” he said. In order to make adjustments to routes that may be too long, a supervisor must accompany the carrier on the route to determine what changes should be made to bring that route into an 8-hour status. Observing employees performing their duties and documenting the time and travel patterns of delivery routes is a normal part of managing operations.”
A local postal worker deliving mail at night. Photo by Chelsea Sektnan
Meanwhile, many carriers find themselves delivering mail until well after dark, sometimes as late as 11 p.m. While they receive overtime for the additional work, most would prefer to return to eight hour days.
“When I walk through the door and the first thing I’m saying to my kids is ‘Goodnight’, that’s not right,” said one carrier.
A few carriers have reportedly been disciplined for returning from their routes late; others have reportedly returned with their routes incomplete due to darkness and been told to go back out and finish. One alleged that Williams specifically ordered the carrier back out. “He said, ‘Get back out there,” the carrier said.
Some described stress levels as being so high they worried about the onset of violence. More than one carrier has reported suffering from anxiety attacks and said there is a worry that somebody might “go postal.”
“If something doesn’t change soon, somebody’s going to get hurt or somebody’s going to go off,” one carrier said. “I’ve been in this office [longer than a decade]. I’ve never seen morale lower.”
Many feel unsafe delivering mail in the dark.
“You really can’t see,” said one carrier. “You can’t see holes in the street. People start letting their dogs out after dinner. Who do you think is coming to your door at 8 p.m.? There’s a lot of nuts out here, too – some might go off on you. I mean, women could even get pulled into a house and raped. Or somebody might rob us when we are in our truck in the dark.”
Stickler said the union has tried to reach out to carriers and let them know that they do not have to deliver mail in any situation they do not feel safe.
“They have the right to make a determination on whether it is safe or unsafe to be out there,” Stickler said. “Should management try to intimidate them, I would be more than happy to defend this right – at some point, it’s no longer reasonable to be out there. If you, as a carrier, think the answer is to bring the mail back, we’ll deal with whatever management tries to do. But they are creating a difficult environment by the intimidation factor they are using trying to keep the employees out there longer than they should.”
Several carriers described what they called the “dunce table” where disabled or injured employees are stationed. One carrier said that those at the table previously did light work, such as sorting, but lately have been told to do no work whatsoever or they are given an outdated Postal Service manual to read.
Stickler said these tables are part of nation-wide USPS practice that was used in 2008 and 2009, when it was defeated by union grievances. She said the practice has only recently returned, and suggested it was a way of intimidating employees or to enable to Postal Service to claim that it is unable to find work for the employees and shift them to Department of Labor Worker’s Compensation disability rolls.
“Really, there are some people at that table that could do some work, some casing of the mail or sorting…Management is trying to get them, quite frankly, out of the Postal Service,” she said.
Maher said that the practice is called “Stand By Time” and is a legitimate timekeeping operation in which the employees are paid but there is no appropriate work for them to perform. He noted that Human Resources searches for appropriate work for these employees in other offices within a 50-mile radius of the office before they are moved onto Worker’s Comp rolls.
“There is no intimidation intended,” Maher said. “Employees are being paid in full by USPS as contractually required, and are required to be present in case work within their medical restrictions is available.”
A circular-filled dumpster outside the Redondo Beach Main Post Office. Easy Reader Photo
The most serious allegation made by carriers is that mail is being illegally dumped. Not every carrier interviewed had knowledge of this alleged practice. Those that did said that it is a practice that has occurred in previous times of stress within the Redondo Beach office. One carrier said it has occurred sporadically over the last four years; another said the most dramatic previous instance occurred in 2009. All believed at least some supervisors had direct knowledge of the practice.
“They don’t tell the carriers to do it, and if we did, we would get in trouble,” a carrier said. “So they do it after hours so that we get the rest of the mail out on time.”
Almost all the allegations centered on bulk mail, although one carrier suggested other mail is sometimes improperly disposed of, as well. Three different bulk mail advertisements are delivered by carriers in Redondo Beach and Hermosa Beach: the LA Times Local Values, the PennySaver USA, and Valassis “RedPlum” direct mail. Photos taken this week showed Local Values and PennySavers trashed. Carriers pointed to the fact that they were still bundled as significant, suggesting it meant that the mailers – which are individually addressed – could not have been returned “undeliverables” since the bundles had not been broken open. Bulk mail agreements do not stipulate a return to sender.
Maher said that Redondo Beach Post Office managers examined the photos taken by Easy Reader and determined that all the mail had been legitimately deemed as waste mail. He said that employees sometimes re-bundle mail that has been returned undeliverable.
“We would investigate that regardless, but at this point, just because the fact the mail is bundled does not mean that it wasn’t determined by employees to be undeliverable or duplicate,” Maher said. “So I have to take the employees’ word at that. As I said, they could have rebundled there. Or oftentimes we’ll get duplicate mailing, especially as our mailers adjust to these delivery routes – sometimes they’ll send us duplicates of the mail as they process the old routes and the new routes together. So there is a lot of situations that could have occurred and at this point in time I can’t determine what did occur other than the manager says everything in the dumpster was verified as undeliverable or duplicate Standard Mail, which mailers understand is disposed of.”
PennySaver officials did not return phone calls by press time to comment on the disposal of their mailers. The LA Times identified its mailers in the dumpsters as Local Values packages that were delivered to the Redondo Beach Post Office on Tuesday, Nov. 8. They had requested the mailers be delivered by Thursday, rather than the usual Friday Local Values delivery, due to the Veteran’s Day Holiday. The USPS technically has a delivery window of two to nine days for Standard Mail but the Times reports that successful Friday delivery is estimated to occur 85 to 90 percent of the time, with the balance on Saturdays.
Sullivan, Times vice president of communications, stressed that the packages arrive at the Redondo post office “route ready” based on schemes provided by the USPS Central Data Facility in Memphis, Tennessee.
“It’s important to note we do not do the scheme sequencing,” she said. “For instance, the Redondo Beach Post Office is required to send new scheming to the Central Data Facility, which in turn supplies us with the updated information. Also, there are checks and balances in place to ensure the circulars we are mailing adhere to USPS guidelines.”
Sullivan also said that the Times believes “whatever issues may have occurred in Redondo Beach last week to be isolated to that specific area.”
Maher said he did not find it credible that any supervisor would risk his or her career by throwing out mail illegally. He also noted that PennySavers are sometimes delivered using a system in which the mailers are not individually addressed but rather are delivered in bundles accompanied by a separate package of individually addressed cards (often with the “Have You Seen This Child?” missing children postcards). In this case, the carriers combine mailers and cards when delivering mail, Maher said, and sometimes the cards and bundles don’t match up in numbers.
“Some bundles of PennySavers may never be opened if we receive more of them than the addressed postcards that are used to deliver them,” Maher said.
The PennySavers visible in the Easy Reader photographs, dated Nov. 9, do not appear to be those utilizing cards. Individual addresses are identifiable on the mailers strapped in the outside of the bundles.
A carrier who examined the photographs said that bundles did not appear to have been re-bundled. Carriers who return with undeliverable mailers, the carrier said, do not themselves re-bundle mailers but drop them in a bulk mail undeliverable bin.
“I don’t think they are telling the truth,” the carrier said. “Those bundles don’t look like they’ve ever been opened.”
Paul Boyle, a senior vice president with the National Newspaper Association of America who specializes in Postal Service Issues, said he has never heard of an instance of the USPS illegally dumping mailers.
“I can’t imagine a legal hook or angle – this is paid postage,” he said. “You expect them to go to the last mile – they say they deliver to each house, and that is what they are proud of. I can’t imagine….These are addressed to non-subscribers, and newspapers spend a lot of money on technology to make sure these are sorted and sequenced according to addresses. So there is really no reason whatsoever these should not be delivered.”
83% of the cost of the USPS is labor (compensation & benefits), 53% of the cost at UPS is labor, 28% of the cost at FedEx is labor. The reporter does a great job of glossing over the root problem: too many well compensated employees. Since ER is reflecting the union’s narrative, it’s not surprising that the compensation problem is over-looked.
All enterprises live within an ecosystem of costs, ignoring that fact always leads to the death of the organization, regardless of how nice the rhetoric sounds. USPS is a terrible organization in a lot of ways, it could be restructured and improved, but that will cost some of it’s fat cats their jobs.
WHO WANTS those crappy circulars anyway??? YOU??
Totally agree with Kate. Unions have no business in govt. Unions successfully killed off manufacturing in this country – and govt unions now threaten killing off the taxpayers.
At least the USPS did something halfway right, but they threw away the wrong part of the LA Times.
Retracted.
That is not your decision! The sender PAID for them to be delivered, not trashed.
Someone better be losing their job, even go to jail.
If these pieces were individually addressed, then postage was paid for them. They were NOT from a “detached card” mailing and simply excess pieces. A crime has occurred here…..
Unions have put the Post office underwater. I am in the printing business and clients pay the post office THOUSANDS to do their mediocre service anyway. The fact these are being trashed needs to be investigated and punished. This is theft no matter how you look at it.Jail time is warranted and should be pursued
There is definitely something amiss with the mail delivery process here in North Redondo. A year ago, a month after I moved into my apartment and had been regularly receiving mail here, my DRIVER LICENSE was returned by the USPS to the DMV for a still-unknown reason. I spoke with someone at the Post Office who said a supervisor, whose name I have but won’t share here, would call me. That was a year ago and I’m still waiting for the call.
Almost daily, I receive mail for my neighbors: the pieces are clearly and correctly addressed, they’re just placed in the wrong box. This wouldn’t be such a big deal if all my neighbors were trustworthy but, well, they aren’t. Or, I continue to receive mail for previous residents – and not ads, but real, personal, confidential, mail. One of them looked like a check so I found the girl on facebook and she came for it.
When I went to the Manhattan Beach Post Office on Sepulveda & 10th on a regular business day during regular business hours when nobody was in line at the counter the employees wouldn’t let me hand them a couple of letters across the counter; rather, they insisted I walk out into the lobby and place my letters in the slot. What’s up with that?
Wow, do you understand business? Of course a smaller percentage of UPS and FedEX is labor. Both organizations have lots of large planes to maintain, whereas the post office ships mail by commercial airlines. Also, UPS and FedEX don’t have universal delivery service to every residential and commercial address, so they need fewer people to deliver their letters and packages. I would bet that if UPS and FedEX had to frontload their health benefits for the next 75 years, they would be going broke too.
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics”, Kate.
I think the story has a lot to say about North Redondo’ s Postal Service. But everyone has to keep in mind that there are over 30,000 postal facilities. Malfeasance is likely to occur occasionally at any organization the size of the Postal Service. But this story should not be an indictment of the entire Postal Service nor should it speak to the efficacy of mail.
why treat humans like animals…why and where did Mr.Williams learn to do this..Like the Priest in the churchs and the football coaches, Postal Management moves them to the next office…His day of hurting humans must stop..Ceaser”s home….
Why do I have to through this clutter away every day. I appreciate the PO’s help in discarding this unwanted clutter. There has never been, and never will be, anything worth buying that is advertised in newsprint crammed through my mail slot. This is the stuff we really need a “DO NOT MAIL NEWSPRINT” option that is invoked by a simple call or visit to your local PO. Seriously, nobody wants this stuff!
Yes, yes! If we pay the Postal Workers less, they are more likely to deliver the Mail. Correct?UPS ands Fedex do not deliver to every address in the US every single day. They do not have the number of retail outlets, or other services of USPS. Of course, their labor cost is less. Remeber, the business of USPS is putting Mail in Mailboxes. That takes LABOR. So of course, labor is most of the expense.
So how much would UPS or FedEx charge to come to your mailbox six days a week just to see if you had a letter to mail?
How much would they charge to deliver a letter in 3 days from your Key Largo, Florida home, to a friends home in Paia, Hawaii?
The USPS is one of the reasons that America prospered. Countries without good mail service remained 2nd or 3rd rate nations.
Now email has changed the world and the USPS needs to find a way to survive.
This happens in every office. I for the life of me can’t understand why someone han’t gone on another shooting spree
the carriers are harrassed constantly all day every day. The post offce treats the carriers like maximum security inmates. It is absoultely disgusting.
Those so called dumpings may in fact be the extras that are from vacant homes and the extra they send out to the post office and are thrown out.
At first glance, it appears the mail be undeliverable. However, one of the photographs have a hamper of bundled pieces (first clue and reason to be suspect) which have been tagged as ‘eliminated routes’. I see no reason this would be called undeliverable although a little inconvenient for the workers. They are still viable addresses which require further sorting because the post office changed or eliminated routes. This is common with each route adjustment and is handled by handing over the adjusted streets to the proper carrier. Mr Maher is clearly covering for management by stating that this is undeliverable. A carrier or clerk throwing this out would be dismissed. Management will be given a pass and that is wrong!. The Postal Service suffers embarassment a black eye and potential loss of business in a time when they can il afford to and the best you’ll get from management is ‘oh, well…..’
If the methodology used to solve a problem, is the same methodology used to create the problem, what is the likely outcome?
I give you the United States Postal Service. Process over results, one size fits all.
As a former employee, I guarantee you the problem is poor management. And there’s a *significant* dollar amount attached to that stigma!!! Unfortunately, the internal inertia is so great and the incompetence is rewarded/encouraged from the top down, the organization cannot change its philosophy and it WILL fail. It’s not a question of if.
Management at the local levels have zero autonomy and latitude wrt to the best usage of human capital. They’re mere marionettes for upper management and most of middle/upper management is nothing more than an uneducated, inexperienced, bloated bureaucracy. What I wouldn’t give to see some reporter worth his salt do an expose on Postal management…
Is your apartment lobby well lit? is your name CLEARLY labeled on the box? having recently taken over a route for another carrier, it is IMPOSSIBLE to know who lives where. Especially in high turn over apartments and low income areas, but I repeat myself. Did you bother to fill out a change of address form when you moved? Some people (apartments/low income areas) think the mail just follows them like magic…
Dear moron, didn’t the report earlier say it was the supervisors where dumping the mail. You just assume it was the union. The postal workers are the hardest workers around and are under constant threats, harassment and intimidation all the time. So before you make any of your condescending remarks why don’t you read before you accuse asshole.
The average fedex envelope costs $38.20 for the “express”saver pack.
28% of that is labor. Lol. BFD.
Post office people do it cheaper and substantially more efficiently than $38.20 per letter.
Retracted
This is not a problem that exsists only in Redondo Beach USPS, it is nation wide! There are more workers that are so intimidated by management they run like scared rabbits all day, every day because they feel they have to in order to keep their job. With the economy being as it is this is only going to continue to get worse until as stated in the article, someone goes “postal”. Eyes need to be opened & expose what is really going on behind closed doors where the public never sees. What is described in this article is just the tip of the ice berg and it goes deep where no one sees.
Anyone who is anti-union is a tea bagging crack head that believes that the earthquakes and hurricanes are gods’ wrath against democrats and the middle class. Look at your history. April 1937 Hitler’s 1st act of power was to assassinate the 5 German union presidents. Anyone who doesn’t know their history is doomed to repeat it. So when the corporate fascists succeed at destroying our union and our postal service who will protect and fight for your working contract with management? The SS or the Gestapo? Issa or Ross? The Koch Brothers’who financed 687 of these tea bagging clowns? Pick one Adolf, I mean George U.
Doug, the Postal Service provides its delivery service for those who pay to have their message delivered, not simply for those receive it. The USPS doesn’t exist to NOT deliver mail. If you don’t wish to receive certain mailings, notify the sender…not the post office. In other words, don’t shoot the messenger. Besides, for every 10 pieces of 3rd class mail you ditch, there might be 1 or 2 you DO wish to look at. Do you want someone else to decide what mail you receive & what you don’t? I sure as heck don’t, and neither should you.
The UPS has the Teamsters and they seem to be doing great financially………..explain that genius
“USPS is a terrible organization in a lot of ways, it could be restructured and improved,”………….yeah we could all get the same pay and benefits as your current employer, Walmart………………..ahhh Tea Bag heaven.
Kate, could be the fact that USPS has over 600,000 employees compared to UPS or Fed Ex to service far more deliveries (every address) across the country. Those “private” companies refuse to deliver to 25% of America. And their product (parcels only) is less labor-intensive than delivering all types of mail (letters, flats, parcels, etc.) Yes, as mail volumes decrease, manpower needs to decrease accordingly. But, not only the craft employees need downsizing, the management also must be downsized. But that’s not happening. The management ranks remain full-staffed, while the workers on the street have be cut and those who remain are expected to take up the additional burden.
I heard that a new invention of consisting of a carbon fiber backpack frame capable of holding three carrier satchels and a water bladder and equipped with a GPS tracker and on board audio and visual monitoring is being tested by the USPS.
There is also the missing leg of the technology development of the new route system, delayed by the recent financial woes, which was to be a final sort machine which would encapsulate all the mail for one delivery point within a plastic bag.
The bag would be marked with the route and delivery point number and sorted by delivery point sequence into a route delivery container cartridge. The delivery automaton could then proceed to the route and deliver said encapsulated mail by matching the bar code/ electronic signal of the capsule to the delivery point container marker.
Stroll into the Redondo Beach Post Office and go to the Postmaster’s Office … As you cool your heels in the waiting room, notice the giant book on the stand, the one that looks like a Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. When you open it, you’ll notice that it is the employee rules and regulations.
You can always tell when Democrats are allowed to be close to computers, they can’t resist the personal insults.
Public Employee Unions are created to have an adversarial relationship to their employers, the public. Don’t you think that it’s a little dumb to pay people to attack you?
The Post Office market has changed since Ben Franklin thought of it. And since detailed operational and financial information isn’t published. (Funny how bureaucracies are never “funded” enough to provide real transparency. And “journalists” aren’t clever enough to either ask the right questions or present the relevant information.) It’s hard to see this problem anything except the highest level.
However, having watched people pretend to work as well as people who actually worked hard, I’ll bet that there is an over-staffing problem made worse by over-paying certain groups of people. Too bad the public can’t see what’s really there.
I kid you not for one MBU on my route I got exact duplicates that ended up going into the discard bin . Anything in the pictures from outsideof a post office are usually duplicates or vacant houses .
WHO WANTS those crappy circulars anyway? The mailers who pay 3 cents each for them and claim first class postage on their taxes. Time warner (ADVO) paid ZERO taxes last year. They are the biggest lobbyist’s for postal privatization as well. It costs the USPS 6 cents each to deliver them with the added overtime. MAKE THEM PAY 1ST CLASS RATE and stop subsidizing big business. I SAY DO AWAY WITH BULK RATE ALL TOGETHER!!
You mean like the banks or the tax evading republicons. Anyone who is dump enough to vote for the tea bagging republicons who actually believe that earthquakes and hurricanes are god’s wrath against the democrats is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.
got your boys at the top, wanna keep those exorbitant salaries, the boys at the bottom (carrier supervisors) who are putting TREMENDOUS PRESSURE on their carriers. IT SUCKS!! Whats it gonna take MORE CARRIERS GOING POSTAL, COME ON WASHINGTON, YOU DONT GET IT , OR SEE IT HAPPENING,$###$%*@!!@##$ DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GLAD IM RETIRED
P.S. HEMET CALIFORNIA IS ANOTHER REDONDO BEACH
Wow ! what can I say I recently retired after 33 years of service. I was in management for 29 of those years. I retired not because I wanted to , but because it was either retire or be fired. What the article says is true, the postal service is trying to reduce the workforce anyway it can. In the 33 years of service I never rec’d any type of discipline. On the contrary I did receive numerous awards and promotions for my work performance. I was a Postmaster for 14 years and served as Officer-in-Charge in various offices. What the article writes about the dumping of mail is true. The postal service’s method of attempting to reduce the number of routes has not worked. It has cost the postal service so much more in overtime and double overtime pay !!!! I have seen this first hand. I am glad to be gone even though I was forced out.
2001 – Potter Creates the Mail Industry Task Force (MITF) with DPM Nolan and Pitney Bowes CEO Critelli co-chairs creating a platform for Postal Reform (Privatization).
2002-Critelli becomes Council President of the Mail Industry CEO Council (MICEO), allowing MICEO to lobby MITF which is championing Postal Reform (Privatization).
2002 – Nolan praises the work of the MICEO giving tacit USPS approval to Postal Reform (Privatization) ideas submitted therein.
2002 – Potter submits USPS Transformation Plan to Congress which was chock full of short- and long-term options for change in USPS operations and delivery practices, and was a partial basis for the landmark Postal Reform and Accountability Act (H.R. 6407) passed in late 2006.
2005 – Mail Express, Inc. a startup business-to-consumer lightweight package delivery company is created. (In 2010 renamed Streamlite, Inc.)
2005 – USPS Board of Governors Attacks Union Pay and Benefits.
2006 – Nolan and Critelli tout the importance of their Postal Reform (Privatization) plans.
2006 – Nearly dead H.R. 6407 rises, Lazarus-like, and somehow crawls onto the desk of Pres. Bush to be signed into law on Dec. 20.
2006 – H.R. 6407 the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) includes “pay for performance” language that enhances Potter’s retirement package (Super-size me, please), while saddling the USPS with 5.5 Billion dollar prefunding leading to present day fiscal insolvency.
2007 – Nolan who co-chaired the MITF from 2001 to 2006 leaves the USPS for Mail Express just three months after passage of H. R. 6407. Gail Sonnenberg also leaves USPS for Mail Express (According to Streamlite, Inc. Sonnenberg is credited with establishing “pay for performance” during her tenure as Vice President of Human Resources at USPS). 2010 – Dec. 3, Potter retires with a 5.5 Million retirement package, enhanced by the PAEA, and “Pay for Performance” bonuses.
2010 – Pitney Bowes spends one million lobbying the Post Office and another million lobbying the Postal Regulatory Commission.
Pennysavers do not have separate cards any longer. They have been addressed on the Pennysaver for many years. It is management’s way of lying about them as usual. They always think they can toss out a lie, like this and with their arrogance can get away with it. Postal management is the most dishonest system you can imagine. They lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. Don’t believe them. They are desperate to make numbers. I have had the supervisors tell carriers to leave a mailroom and hide the mail in parcel lockers on my route.
I have never heard of a postal employee getting in trouble for dumping bulk advertising mail. They do prosecute people that dump mail — but as far as I know – only if it is First Class Mail.
I am a carrier in Redondo Beach and we do not have that many vacancies on any of the routes in the office. Just look at the area that the Post Office is in, this is a wealthy area that is always ordering things in the mail. Per route, the average of vacancies would be 4 – 6 houses, and we don’t get extra mailers as management claims.
I bet this has been going on for a long time.
What bothers me is this; is all this paper trash being recycled or dumped in the landfills?
I love how the Postal Service’s idea of sending all these excess supervisors out on routes to watch carriers, ostensibly to determine if a route is out of adjustment, is to send people who don’t know anything about the job of carrying mail out to make these determinations. I mean, why not send a bunch of paper pushing ass kissers out to “watch” these letter carriers?? You could write what they know about delivering the mail inside a match book with a grease pencil.
Notice has been served to all Postal Managers. No longer will the employees of Redondo Beach Post Office put up with the “Thug” mentality brought in with the placement of Tracy Jones as Postmaster and Tyrone Williams as MPO (Manager Postal Operations). Since this story was printed, Mr. Jones has been “detailed” out of R.B. and Mr. Williams has not been seen in the office. Hmmmm……
It has, we moved out of the area in May 2011, I filed NUMEROUS complaints with this post office about not receiving mail, not getting mailers (yes I liked getting the albertson’s ad with the coupons on tuesdays…but only got them about once a month if our regular carrier was off for the day). The topper came when we moved, a month before moving date I sent in our change of address card, we moved, never got mail. Our neighbor’s key happened to fit the box and low and behold it was STUFFED with first class mail (pre approved credit card offers and all). I then tried contacting the local RB office, no answer after 20 rings…and nowhere near 5pm. I find it hard to believe that this is just management though. When you see the carriers truck LOADED with the mailers, and you nor your neighbors get them then they aren’t doing the dumping until AFTER delivery. I also am witness to a carrier being HARASSED my a manager…who berated and yelled at him for not slowing down so she could “catch up and walk next to him”
Nothing’s changed ! The Thugs (Williams and Jones) are back. The recycling bins have locked lids on them. Why locking lids on the recycling bins, if the problem has been corrected ? Because it hasn’t been corrected ! Managers are too concerned with keeping their numbers (man hours) down than they are supplying our customers with the service that they deserve and paid for. Here’s an idea ! Let the carriers do their job the way they know best, and your numbers will look good, and our customers will get their service !
I work for the USPS as a Transitional Employee (TE) in other words I’m a contractual employee who works on a year to year basis. At the end of my contract I get 5 days off. I do not get sick leave or paid vacation nor do I get benefits. I am required to work on holidays and there is no holiday pay. I typically work 6 days a week. I’m expected to run with the mail everyday. Management doesn’t factor in my 30mins for lunch and two 15 min breaks for my daily assignments. Management doesn’t factor in weather conditions, animals, traffic, & time that it takes to get signatures on express envelopes and parcels. They want you to run run run. If you get hurt on the job your out. They expect you to work until all the mail is delivered which means I could be out there until 8,9, even 10pm. USPS does not supply Flashlights or headlights for us. If I get hurt at night I will be let go. There is no job security. I’m expected to do all the things that Regulars do but without the benefits. Not fair! I’ve been in this job for 3yrs now in the same position and there’s no advancement. I’m physically tired and fed up as well as all the other Transitional Employees. We are treated like mules.
I remember there was a time when I called to say that I will be needing help because I was given to much mail to carry and wouldn’t make back to the station on time by 6pm and their response to me was that I am the help.
Lunches are hardly taken by TE’s as they are in fear of being let go if not performing well and being back by 6pm with all mail delivered.
It’s a tough job and I don’t see it getting any better with all these knuckleheads in Management. These routes need to be shortened and Carriers need to be treated better and fairly to be proficient.
This problem is not only happening in the Southbay. It is happening all over L.A. county & probably all over the nation.
That just means UPS and FedEx are less efficient. We don’t have to pay as much overhead so of course the bulk of our cost is labor.
If 28% of FedEx’s cost is labor that means they are spending 72% on unnecessary things and inefficient business practices.
21 year Postal carrier here, the problem is the mail that is still bundled. That has not been touched, so it is not from vacant houses.