Postal Service workers want better workplaces, training

PHOTO | TROY HULL

U.S. Postal Service workers rally outside the McDowell Street Station in Charlotte on April 28. Postal union members across the country are demanding more investment in hiring and training new workers as well as workplace treatment.

The U.S. Postal Service is profitable, but workers want better treatment and training.

USPS workers rallied across the country on April 28 for corrections to improve service through investment in personnel and workplaces. In Charlotte, they gathered at the McDowell Street Station. The postal service, which had long been under financial stress, is in a better financial position after passage of the Postal Service Reform Act, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told the Washington Post last month.

“I think we’re 10,000% better than we were two years ago,” he said. 

Even with the improved financial outlook, “service problems are widespread, and no corner of the country has been spared,” American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein said in a statement. “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.”

An audit report from the USPS Office of Inspector General on turnover in “non-career” (new hire) workforce released last month found that postal workers had a turnover rate of 58.9% in 2022, a spike from 2019’s rate of 38.5%. The two main reasons for turnover cited in the OIG report were a lack of respect from supervisors and long hours.

The USPS has tried to address staffing problems by creating more career track positions, but results have been middling. 

“We had a 650,000-person organization that hired 200,000 people last year, right, and the numbers didn’t go up,” DeJoy told Congress. “That was turnover because of the environment and the stress and historical lack of good tactical procedures with regard to our workforce.”

USPS data show a 12.5% decrease in retail counter clerks who staff post office retail counters and distribute mail to carriers. Since 2006, the number of clerks fell from 79,182 to 69,298 in 2023 as mail volume decreased while package volume grew from 1.2 billion to 7.2 billion in 2022. 

With fewer counter clerks, wait times have increased since 2018, according to a study by the Postal Regulatory Commission. The report also singled out sorting facilities that handle both mail and packages as the site of “staffing challenges.” Those challenges haven’t kept pace with an increase in the number of delivery locations since 2006. USPS now delivers to 164.9 delivery sites, an increase of 18.7 million, or 12.8%, from 2006. 

USPS has an overall favorable rating of 77% among Americans according to a poll by the Pew Research Center in March 2023, but that represents a drop from 91% in 2020.

“We can be timelier and offer quality services that better meets the needs of the American people Dimondstein said. “But first, we must ramp up hiring and create a workplace that values its workers.”

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