Miami postal workers union chief: Yes, your mail is being delayed. Here’s why

Brian Dixon is part of South Florida’s vast Amazon and eBay online retailer community. As a third-party seller of books and diet tea, Dixon sources his products from wholesalers, then sells them through the two tech giants’ digital marketplaces to earn a living.

To ship his goods, Dixon relies on the U.S. Postal Service. But In the past month or two, Dixon — who says he had nearly perfect reviews on both websites — began receiving complaints from customers about late shipments.

The complaints, he said, seemed to coincide with the appointment of a new U.S. Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, in mid-June.

“Within two weeks [of the appointment], I saw a significant slowdown in postage service,” Dixon said.

He’s not imagining things: Mail delivery has indeed slowed down in the Miami area — along with many other parts of the country —since the start of the summer. The Washington post reported Monday that internal Postal Service data showed on-time mail rates abruptly fell starting in late June.

The reason for the slowdown, according to Wanda Harris, Miami Area President of the American Postal Workers Union, is the direct result of changes made under DeJoy.

The biggest change, Harris said in an interview, has been eliminating overtime pay. Harris said postal workers are used to working 10 hour days so that mail that may have taken longer to process gets delivered on time.

With the cuts, Harris said, post office trucks are “leaving mail behind” because workers must now keep to a strict eight-hour schedule.

“So it’s arriving a day or two later than it otherwise would,” she said.

In a statement, the USPS said the changes were part a larger effort to make sure trucks were running “on-time and on-schedule.”

“On-time transportation has gone up from 89% to 97% in a few weeks,” the agency said.

Harris’ district, which includes Hialeah, Homestead, Miami Beach and Boca Raton in addition to Miami, has also seen seven sorting machines removed in recent weeks, she said. She said the machines remain a vital component of how the mail gets processed.

“These changes are happening in the middle of a census, in the middle of an election year, in the middle of a pandemic,” she said. “All of this is happening right when American people needs us more than ever.”

The USPS said the machines were only being used about one-third of the time.

“There is ample machine capacity to handle spikes in mail volume,” it said.

Citing the financial straits of the USPS, DeJoy has said the overtime cuts were designed to save money. The USPS lost $1.2 billion in April, according to preliminary financial data, compared to just $338 million in the same period in 2019, news outlet Government Executive reported in May.

But in response to public outcry, DeJoy last week ordered a halt to further changes—though it was not clear if the sorting machines would be restored. On Monday, DeJoy testified before Congress that the changes he has overseen were designed to increase efficiency and savings, and were in no-way politically motivated.

Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz accused DeJoy Monday of “not being honest with the committee” about the machine removals, the Washington Post reported, arguing that he was “hiding” plans for their disposal “while removing them at a breakneck pace.”

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a $25 billion bill to close the service’s funding gap; the USPS has historically relied on the sale of its products, like stamps, as opposed to taxpayer money, to fund operations. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has signaled his opposition to passing the bill outright.

For South Florida residents like Dixon whose livelihoods depend on the post office, the changes have been maddening—and whatever effort has been to reverse them has yet to kick in.

“It’s a nightmare, he said. “I now have no confidence that anything will get [to a customer] in time.”