Postal workers held informational picketing outside the main post office in Eagan.
Postal workers rallied in Eagan and around the country today, ratcheting up their fight for a fair union contract and better customer service – two aims that go hand in hand, members of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) said.
“The American people deserve better,” Dave Cook, president of the St. Paul Area APWU local, said. “They deserve their public postal service back.”
Widespread complaints of slow mail delivery and long lines at the post office – including in Minnesota – are, in part, a result of staffing shortages at the USPS, Cook and other postal workers said.
The APWU has made staffing a top priority in contract negotiations covering 200,000 postal workers this year, demanding fair pay and benefits to retain and recruit workers. Union members also want the USPS to reverse a new policy that loosened its own “on-time” delivery standard from three to five days.
“They’ve cut staff because they don’t feel like they have to process every piece of mail every day,” Cook said of postal administrators’ new approach, known as “Delivering for America.”
But many post offices are so short staffed, union members said, that they are struggling to meet even the newly relaxed delivery standard.
Denise Jensen, an APWU steward at her Duluth post office, said workers are “doing their best to make it work with less,” but they are tired of bearing the brunt of public frustration. Meanwhile, the Postal Board of Governors recently adopted a policy that restricts public comments before the board to one time per year.
“They won’t give us the tools to make it work better,” Jensen said. “We’re always behind, and I feel bad for our customers. We have to face them, and it’s hard because we live in the communities we work in.”
Jensen said full-time workers who retire from her post office are often being replaced by part-timers, and postmasters are increasingly doing work that falls under clerks’ jurisdiction, prompting the union to file grievances.
“They don’t care,” she said. “Upper management knows it has to cut corners to make it work, but I’m still handing out refunds for guaranteed, two-day deliveries when it doesn’t happen, which is a lot.”
The rally at the main post office in Eagan came on a national day of action in support of “The People’s Post Office,” organized by the APWU. The union’s contract was set to expire Sept. 20, but the two sides agreed to extend the agreement while bargaining continues. Contract negotiations began in June.
Learn more about the campaign at peoplespostoffice.org.
– Michael Moore, UA editor
Union Advocate 