After 250 years of existence, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is at a pivotal crossroads – stuck in a dead-letter pile of delays, deficits and doubt with $9.5 billion in losses last year alone and mail sometimes taking weeks just to cross town.
A Full Measure investigation looks inside the delays, fiscal troubles and future fixes.
Mark Dimondstein is president of the American Postal Workers Union.
“Is [mail delivery] taking longer than it did when you [worked at the post office] in the 1980s?” I asked.
He replies: “It absolutely has taken longer. There’s probably multiple reasons. Some of it is this challenging transition. Some of it is short staffing.”
Even postal workers at USPS processing centers are frustrated by the sorting nightmare they face.
“Delivery standards have been reduced from top-down mandates by management,” one source tells me. “Mail used to come in today and be gone tonight. Now it comes in, sits and rots and eventually leaves when the old stuff is pointed out by the workers.”