This story was originally published by MinnPost.
WASHINGTON — The saga over unreliable mail delivery in many areas of Minnesota is escalating, with the inspector general of the U.S. Postal Service investigating the cause of poor service for many Minnesotans.
But solutions to a frustrating problem will be hard to fix because they are the result of several factors and are very widespread.
Poor mail delivery is not limited to Minnesota. Similar complaints have been voiced in Colorado, Kansas, Maine, Hawaii, and other states.
When it comes to the problems in Minnesota, the inspector general has responded to requests for an investigation from the state’s members of Congress, including Rep. Angie Craig, D-2nd District, and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith.
Allyson Conroy, spokesperson for the USPS Office of Inspector General, said a field operation was conducted recently in the St. Paul area.
“Specifically, we audited the Apple Valley Branch, Eagan Branch, New Brighton Carrier Annex, and the St. Paul Processing and Distribution Center,” Conroy said, adding that the objective was to “evaluate mail delivery operations and property conditions.”
Conroy said the inspector general is also investigating the efficiency of the St. Paul processing center. She expects an initial audit report on the facility to be available later this month.
A separate, broader investigation of the entire Minnesota-North Dakota Postal District and a probe into mail delivery operations in northern Minnesota are also underway. Reports on those investigations are expected in April.
Some say the complaints of no mail, slow mail and lost mail are likely to be the result of changes the USPS has made in order to survive.
“It’s a national problem,” said Steve Hutkins, a retired English professor and founder of the Save the Post Office website.
To Hutkins and other observers, the problems residents in Bemidji, Eagan, Apple Valley and other Minnesota cities and towns have had with mail delivery can be blamed on a 10-year “Delivering for America” plan Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is implementing, which includes contracting with Amazon and other online retailers to deliver packages, closing post offices and realigning and closing mail sorting centers.
Hutkins said a shortage of postal employees, as well as a new responsibility to deliver packages from Amazon and other retailers is the reason “ problems are cropping up all over the place.”
‘Tremendous burnout’
The USPS is an independent agency of the executive branch of the federal government that is self-funded by revenue from the sale of postal products, like stamps, and services. But a shift from “snail mail” to communications, advertising and payment of bills online, coupled with the death of many print publications put the USPS into a financial tailspin and prompted the overhaul.
But even as DeJoy implemented changes and predicted the USPS would turn a profit, it continued to lose money.
In a November speech to the Board of Governors, DeJoy said the USPS finished the 2023 fiscal year with a $6.5 million loss, after forecasting it would break even that year.
“Our efforts to grow revenue and reduce labor and transportation costs were simply not enough to overcome our costs to stabilize our organization,” DeJoy said. He also said he wanted the USPS “to become the preferred (package) delivery provider in the nation,” competing with Federal Express, UPS and other commercial carriers.
The problems in Bemidji — where mail delivery was frequently delayed for days — have been attributed to a suddenly imposed requirement that the local post office deliver Amazon packages, which caused frustration and complaints of overwork that prompted some employees to leave.
Postal carriers who had previously delivered dozens of smaller parcels along with paper mail suddenly were required to deliver hundreds of Amazon boxes that had previously been handled by UPS.
Yet the problems in mail delivery in Minnesota began much earlier than last fall’s crisis in Bemidji.
In the spring of last year, Rep. Angie Craig, D-2nd District, began to receive complaints about mail deliveries from constituents. She sent out a survey to try to determine the extent of the problem, expecting to receive about 300 responses. She said she received more than 3,000.
And the calls from constituents kept coming.
“If you are mad enough to call your congressperson, think of all the people with problems who didn’t,” Craig said.
To Craig, the problems are DeJoy’s fault.
“Frankly, he does not seem that concerned about the level of service. He seems more concerned about turning the USPS into a profit center,” Craig said in an interview with MinnPost.
“Addressing the very real concerns of Postal Service customers and workers needs to be a priority of Postmaster General DeJoy, and I will continue to push for solutions.”Sen. Tina Smith
DeJoy was a wealthy Trump mega-donor who initially raised concern among Democrats with his proposed changes to the USPS, which included cutting mail delivery from six days a week to five. But he’s won the appreciation of the Biden White House with his plan to introduce 66,000 electric vehicles to the USPS fleet by 2028.
He’s also won the respect of the nation’s postal unions by, in the end, keeping six-day mail service and for his support for legislation signed into law by President Biden last year that eliminated a mandate that postal service retiree health plans be pre-funded, giving the financially shaky USPS a $57 billion boost.
Craig said some of the problems at the post office may have to do with understaffing.
“There is tremendous burnout among letter carriers right now,” Craig said.
She also said the USPS shifted their employee background check system from a localized one to a national system, which can take up to 45 days. By then, a USPS job applicant is likely to have sought other employment.
A brutal schedule and increasing violence directed at postal carriers has also resulted in demoralization and resignations.
“It’s terrible work,” Craig said.
On Sunday, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) held a rally in Minneapolis to bring attention to the increase in robberies and physical attacks suffered by mail carriers. And on Monday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota announced charges against a 26-year-old man in two armed robberies of letter carriers in Edina and Brooklyn Center.
The escalation of violence began during the pandemic and is thought to have been sparked by the stimulus and unemployment checks and the increase in packages delivered by postal workers in that time of crisis.
“These brazen crimes, once rare but now growing more frequent and more violent here, elsewhere in Minnesota and beyond, are hurting letter carriers, leading to stolen mail, and damaging our community,” the NALC said in a press release.
‘A love-hate relationship’
Don Maston, president of the National Rural Carriers Association, which represents about 2,530 postal workers in Minnesota, said delivery problems across the nation “are all driven by the same issue – a lack of staffing.”
“There’s a need for better wages, and the job is just not attractive for many,” Maston said in an interview with MinnPost.
The pay for the carriers his union represents is determined in large part by the volume of the mail delivered in each route.
“While mail volume declines, parcel volume is increasing,” Maston said. So, carriers have a “love-hate” relationship with Amazon and other online retailers, he said, because those retailers are keeping volume up.
“But it’s a lot better to deliver mail out a window,” Maston said. “We do understand that we have a lot of frustrated carriers out there.”
Meanwhile, Craig, Klobuchar and Smith are pressing for Congress to approve legislation that would force changes in the USPS’s delivery tracking and accountability systems and the way the USPS reports staffing, recruitment and areas with the most disruptions.
In a 2022 report, the USPS inspector general said the data USPS collects is based on self-reporting, which the investigation found to be consistently inaccurate.
The lawmakers’ legislation would require the Postal Service to implement some of the inspector general’s recommendations to accurately track deliveries and make the information public.
After complaints of five-day mail delays in Carver and reports that a lack of adequate space forced workers to sort mail in a parking lot, concerns about the Postal Service’s performance became bipartisan. Last month, Reps. Tom Emmer, R-1st District, Pete Stauber, R-8th District, Brad Finstad, R-1st District and Michelle Fischbach, R-7th District, demanded answers from DeJoy.
Meanwhile, in letters to the Democratic lawmakers, the USPS minimized problems with the mail and staffing and said “hiring hubs” in major metropolitan areas have allowed the (Minnesota-North Dakota) district to hire dozens of new employees since August, with dozens more in process.
“Contrary to the Postal Service’s assurances that everything is fine with operations in Minnesota, my office continues to hear from Minnesotans who are experiencing unacceptable mail delays,” Smith said. “Addressing the very real concerns of Postal Service customers and workers needs to be a priority of Postmaster General DeJoy, and I will continue to push for solutions.”
This article first appeared on MinnPost and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.