The fox is still in the Post Office henhouse

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Sarah Anderson The fox is still in the Post Office henhouse

Skyleigh Heinen, a US Army cans who spoke out recently to veteran who suffers from demand an end to a forced slowrheumatoid arthritis and down in mail delivery. anxiety, relies on the Postal The level of public outcry in Service for timely delivery of her defence of the public Postal Servmeds to be able to function. She ice is historic – and it’s having an is one of thousands of Ameriimpact.

Shortly after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy took the helm in June, it became clear that the fox had entered the henhouse. President Trump had gained a powerful ally in his efforts to decimate the Postal Service.

Instead of supporting his frontline workforce, DeJoy has made it harder for them to do their job. For example, he banned overtime, ordering employees to leave mail and packages behind if they could

not deliver them during their regular schedule. Until this point, postal workers had been putting in extra hours to fill in for sick colleagues and handle a dramatic increase in shipments.

As the mail delays worsened, more than 600 high-volume mail sorting machines disappeared from postal facilities. Blue collection boxes vanished from neighbourhoods across the country. Postal managers faced a hiring freeze.

President Trump threw gas on the fire by gloating that, without the emergency relief he opposes, USPS couldn’t handle the crisislevel demand for mail-in voting.

Outraged protestors converged outside DeJoy’s ornate Washington, DC condo building and North Carolina mansion, and flooded congressional phone lines and social media. Political candidates held pop-up press conferences outside post offices.

At least 21 states filed lawsuits

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to block DeJoy’s actions, while singer Taylor Swift charged that Trump has “chosen to blatantly cheat and put millions of Americans’ lives at risk in an effort to hold on to power”.

After all this, DeJoy said that he’s suspending his “initiatives” until after the election. This is a victory, but it’s not enough. DeJoy’s temporary move does not address concerns about the threats to the essential, affordable delivery services that USPS provides to every US home and business, or the decent postal jobs that support families in every US community. These needs will continue long past November 3.

Second, DeJoy has made no commitment to undo the damage he’s already done. And he promised only to restore overtime “as needed”. Will he replace all the missing mail

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sorting machines and blue boxes? Will he expand staff capacity to handle the backlog he’s created and restore delivery standards?

Third, DeJoy makes no mention of the need for pandemicrelated financial relief. USPS has not received a dime of the type of emergency cash assistance that Congress has awarded the airlines, Amtrak, and thousands of other private corporations.

While the pandemic has been a temporary boon to USPS package business, the recession has caused a serious drop in firstclass mail, their most profitable product. Postal economic forecasters predict that Covidrelated losses could amount to $50-billion over the next decade.

DeJoy has proved he cannot be trusted to do the right thing on his own. Congress must step in and approve at least $25-billion in postal relief – and legally block actions that undercut the ability of the Postal Service to serve all Americans, both today and beyond the election.

This is not a partisan fight. We will all be stronger if we can continue to rely on our public Postal Service for essential services, family-supporting jobs, and a fair and safe election. CT

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies. More research on the Postal Service can be found on IPS site www.Inequality.org. This article was distributed by www.OtherWords.org.