Postal Service
First a reminder that privatization(done in other countries) has been a decades long attack on postal infrastructure. Inserting a profit taking middleman into a non-profit network is an efficient idea? It would have happened by now had not an illegal strike back in the 1970's severed the USPS from the rest of government services. It continues to rely on postage for all its expenses even as first class letters decline. Maligned postal jobs are now an envied union competitive with other package carriers who can actually strike.
This is an open message to Congress and investigators criticizing the super consolidated super centers that will mushroom all over the country.
Remember, ALL of the governing boards of the USPS and politically appointed, government responsible people are put in specifically with friendliness to outsourcing and salvific ideas involving big business and non-applicable business models fundamentally at cross purposes with national infrastructure and public service. That includes probably most recent Dem appointees which is why DeJoy's wild implementations seem cheered on. Now they will be repacked with monsters.
But this is about service reality (based on well over 40 years in the service). Consolidation strains service to outlying areas swallowed up in long hauls to a faraway center. The standards(since2008 especially) have routinely been relaxed for everyone so that schedules accommodate some success in delivering to that whole area. That is why letters to your next door neighbor wait in the new scheduled system and will not be delivered next day even if possible. New machines and changes usually have growing pains that delay the mail. Changes or shrinkage of the work force always cause difficulties. Demoralization and chaos(not the lazy worker! ) almost necessarily spread. A lot of employees not in that mess spread that stupid meme about "bad work ethics over there". Remember: there but for the grace of DeJoy go I. DeJoy the trucker, whose very first Mussolini-style making the trucks depart on time left mandated committed mail at the docks
When a supercenter is opened up in short order causing disruptions in the entire area, filled up with new and relocated employees it suddenly experiences all of these things at once. They do not consult with the unions on the plan much because they are just going to gut out the "transition" period no matter what. Tooling and fine tuning is done in process as total commitment just begins, past bridges torched.
Now, engineers of progress, remember that this untested, but predictably under-performing novelty is about to meet a continuous unending larger tide of mail. Everything has been done to fail. Recovery from this new unending volume has been a nightmare while it just keeps coming. Trucks parked around, days and miles away unable to be processed. Partially processed mail(no longer much counted because it already has failed its date!) is diverted even many states away to places with no efficient data programs to efficiently sort it back with more trucking.) Common sense alone tells you what will happen to employees buried and stretched in the mess, new machines that never really cope with the everyday abuse, truck schedules out the window, tons of failed mail ignored or lost in the effort to make the new "daily success" numbers look better.
So we had a privatized sub plant here for years. They failed, and lost money, and mistreated underpaid employees for years as we sent postal workers to bail them out. We finally got it back though it still seems their damage was permanent. We unionized the survivors and they became immediate regular clerks. Private mailers seem unable to cope even with special low rates crafted to help them profit. Some, like mislabeling experts Pitney Bowes, offered plans to sell out the USPS.
Predators of the public commons will take the juicy simple supercenter parts? A stamp tax directly paid to billionaires while the public see actual tax money diverted to carrier delivery? Can they make enough on a stock pump and dump before they fail, before they slash services, force stamp rates to rise, persecute and overstress the work force upon whom imperfect automation depends? Sweet talking from the media while they take the money and run?
You don't need an investigation; you just need common sense for the common good.
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Now they will try to privatize it to provide more profits for republicon billionaires.
