Post office consolidation causing delays in mail delivery: report

The planned closure of the Petaluma mail facility is criticized by Rep. Jared Huffman.|

A recent audit showed that mail is arriving slower than expected after the first wave of cost-cutting facility closures by the U.S. Postal Service last year, a finding that some prominent critics said looms ominously over planned facility closures in Petaluma and Eureka.

The report this month by the United States Postal Service Office of Inspector General, an independent oversight agency, showed a 45 percent increase in the amount of mail arriving behind schedule across the country in the first six months of 2015, compared to the same period in 2014. The findings took into account the longer delivery times that went into effect in January, which increased the target for local first-class mail from under two days to under three days and eliminated single-item overnight delivery.

That longer delivery standard was meant to help the Postal Service meet realistic expectations after the consolidation of workers from nearly half of its 600 facilities around the country. Yet with impacts potentially greater than anticipated, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), a critic of the closures, said the Postal Service should be careful and perhaps even reconsider the shutdown of facilities in Petaluma and Eureka.

“It underscores something we’ve been saying all along in the North Bay - it doesn’t appear that it’s going to achieve efficiency,” he said. “The best-case scenario would be for them to suspend this action until we have a good understanding of what’s going on.”

The report cited intense winter storms in the eastern United States as a factor, but also a workforce that is adjusting to new schedules, new supervisors and potentially new roles as the consolidations go forward.

Changes have already come to the Postal Service facility at North McDowell Boulevard, which formerly sorted the vast majority of mail sent between Sonoma, Marin and Mendocino counties. The site ceased sorting operations in July, and now operates as a distribution hub for the region.

Letters sent between Petaluma addresses, for example, are now carried to San Francisco for sorting before returning to Petaluma for delivery.

The facility, along with another sorting hub in Eureka, had originally been set to shut down entirely this year. Yet in a nod to concerns, the Postal Service in May indefinitely postponed the closure of those locations and 80 others in order to better analyze potential impacts.

Huffman said far-flung residents on the rural North Coast already face more frequent delays, and some feared that the shutdown of the regional hubs might further slow the arrival of sensitive mail like medications and mail-in ballots.

Meanwhile, the Postal Service is facing some hard realities as it seeks to cut costs and reorient itself amid the rise of email and private parcel carriers like FedEx and UPS Inc.. The service has historically focused on processing large volumes of letter mail, which declined to 160 billion pieces last year from a peak of 213 billion in 2006, said Augustine Ruiz, Bay Area spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service.

The volume of local-to-local letter mail in Sonoma, Marin and Mendocino Counties, which formerly would have been sorted in Petaluma, is similarly in decline, he said. Only 5.4 percent of the 2.96 million letters mailed in the region on a typical day are sent to other local addresses, while the rest are destined for other areas.

“Petaluma is a microcosm of what’s going on around the country,” he said.

The Postal Service has moved workers to other locations after closing 280 plants around the country since 2011, and no employees were laid off. The service has worked to iron out the kinks of those changes - the volume of delayed mail in June was down 86 percent compared to January, he said.

Behind the scenes, the changes are having a significant impact on the work of the clerks that route and process mail, said Valerie Schropp, executive vice president of the American Postal Workers Union, Redwood Empire chapter. Of the 195 employees at the Petaluma plant, 135 are in such roles.

Work schedules have changed multiple times for clerks as the Postal Service adjusts to the new service standards, which Schropp said has put a strain on personal lives.

“The Postal Service has always been a nighttime job,” she said. “To suddenly say you have to come in at noon to work ... It’s a big impact.”

Schropp said more workers are retiring or making an active effort to relocate out of concern that the Petaluma facility will close next year. A contract limiting the radius of employee relocation to 50 miles in the event of a closure expired earlier this year, and the union is now in arbitration over a new contract, expected later this year.

“That is up for negotiation,” Schropp said of the relocation provision.

A decision on the Petaluma and Eureka facilities, along with the 80 other facilities included in the second phase of closures, is expected in 2016.

Huffman said his office has yet to receive data that would help show how the closure of the two facilities would specifically impact delivery time for residents on the North Coast.

He also criticized whether the consolidations were a good idea in the first place, saying investment in greater service, particularly for parcel delivery, might help the Postal Service better compete with its rivals. He has introduced two pieces of legislation to that effect, which would modernize delivery and enable the Postal Service to branch out into financial services and other new lines of business.

“There’s a conflict between the stated goal of the postmaster general in trying to position the Postal Service to compete with its competitors, and yet doing so while going after these short-sighted savings,” he said.

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