Louis DeJoy Is Killing It
By Casey Taylor, New York Magazine
07 March 21
Up until about a year ago, carrying mail for the United States Postal
Service was among the most predictable ways to earn a living. My father did
it for 20 years, and I worked alongside him for two of them. You show up,
throw magazines and loose letters into the labeled slots at your designated
mail case, and deliver the route. You come back when the truck is empty, and
the next morning, you get to work filling it up again. A Sisyphean means of
community service. "Every day!" echoing in a sing-songy voice on the floor
by carriers with a strong sense of gallows humor: The mail never stops, and
it'll keep going long after they're gone.
Until last year, that is, when the pandemic began to crush this American
institution under the weight of its sworn duty. As frontline workers,
carriers began getting sick: By September last year, roughly 8 percent of
postal workers had taken time off as a result of illness or exposure, a
percentage that surely increased along with cases. Considering the increase
in overall mail volume thanks to the pandemic's e-commerce boom, this
resulted in overworked carriers covering unprecedented levels of empty
routes. On-time delivery of presorted first class mail fell from 94 percent
at the end of 2019 to 91 percent after the start of the pandemic in 2020.
The pandemic would've been enough, but in May 2020, former logistics CEO and
Trump donor Louis DeJoy was named Postmaster General. The hiring was
criticized from the start as a conflict of interest on two different fronts:
Not only was DeJoy seen as a Trump loyalist, but he also had millions
invested in USPS competitors or contractors, the very companies that would
most benefit should the post office become another federal institution
stripped and sold for parts to the profiteers. As such, when he began
ordering carriers to hit the street at specific times, often leaving mail
behind in the process and disassembling mail-sorting machines, it wasn't
clear whether it could be best explained by sheer incompetence, an attempt
to undermine an election, or a desire to kill the very service he was meant
to advance. By October, DeJoy's changes caused on-time delivery to fall all
the way to 86 percent nationally, with rates below 80 percent in major
cities like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Detroit. To put a finer point on
just how ineffective his leadership was, even these dismal numbers
represented an improvement over previous months, all because injunctions
required the USPS to roll back some of DeJoy's policies ahead of the
election.
Carriers who had longed joked about the mail never stopping started to
wonder if they'd spoken too soon. "People are always scared that the post
office is gonna die or whatever, or they're gonna take away Saturday
delivery. When the last postmaster left, it was right after DeJoy, and on
his way out, he says to me: 'Young man, get as much money as you can the
next few years, because this is going away,'" said a carrier in southeastern
Pennsylvania who has worked seven days a week since last March. "This time
feels different." A continued decline for the postal service also means a
narrower pathway to the middle class for Black Americans, who are 27 percent
of the USPS's workforce.
Saving the post office became a rallying cry during the summer of 2020, as
national media and politicians began to draw attention to the disruptions in
service and the possible nefarious purpose of a Trump appointee sabotaging
mail-in votes that skewed heavily Democratic. Joe Biden even made it a key
part of his campaign: He laid out a comprehensive plan to save the post
office in October and accused Donald Trump of deliberately undermining the
election.
Once it became clear that DeJoy's bungling hadn't prevented Biden from
winning the election, the issue mostly fell out of the news. Despite that,
working conditions for postal workers and mail carriers have remained
largely static for the same reasons they'd deteriorated in the first place.
The pandemic rages on, and sorting machines are still decommissioned,
causing massive backups in mail volume and sorting that clerks and carriers
simply can't keep up with. The issue created by eliminating sorting machines
is one of extreme volatility within individual branches. Some days are
impossibly light, others a flood. "My base average usually stays within a
couple hundred pieces day to day, but I'm going from like 600 letters one
day to 2,800 the next," says a carrier on the Central Coast of California.
While it's difficult to pinpoint a precise reason, he says, ". it's
certainly was not the norm at any other point in my career."
"Not the norm" feels like an excellent summary of the transition period
between the previous presidential administration and this one. A few postal
workers expressed some degree of understanding for the reduced urgency
around the problems. "You've got the pandemic, you know. You've got the
vaccine. There's a lot that kinda pushes it to the back burner," says Larry
King, former president and current treasurer of the National Association of
Letter Carriers's Local 520 in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
Despite their understanding, however, the urgency among letter carriers
remains just as high as it had been before the election. DeJoy continues to
stall on the presentation of his ten-year reform plan for the USPS, telling
the House Oversight Committee last week that they would likely have it "some
time in March," without committing to a date. When asked to elaborate on
what would be included in the plan, DeJoy used the indecipherable jargon
trail blazed by other CEOs faced with questions they have no answers for -
"unachievable hurdles" and "aligning to the new economy" and "better
operational management" and other preemptive justifications for what will
inevitably be internal cost cuts, reduced service quality, and increased
postage rates. There is no evidence that DeJoy's mission, which has appeared
to be to destroy the USPS entirely, has veered from its course. If Biden
plans to save the post office, as he pledged to do on the campaign trail,
then there's little time to waste in taking action.
To his credit, Biden acted immediately after DeJoy delivered his testimony
to the House Oversight Committee, naming three nominees to fill all but one
of the four open vacancies on the postal board of governors. Assuming
confirmation from the Senate, that would create a perfectly balanced board,
with four Democrats, four Republicans, and one independent (Amber
McReynolds, chief executive of the Vote at Home Institute, a voting-rights
group with support from liberal and left-leaning organizations). On the
surface, it would appear that Biden has a clear majority with four Democrats
and one independent sympathetic to his side. A majority is necessary to
remove DeJoy, as the president doesn't have the authority to fire a
postmaster general, only a vote by the board members can do that. But one of
the Democrats, Ron Bloom (appointed by Trump) reiterated his support for
DeJoy and the ten-year plan this past week.
Even with Democrats in place, that alone won't stop DeJoy. The board may be
able to slow his progress once Biden's nominees begin their tenure, but
without a clear majority, there are significant limitations to what can be
done. They can voice displeasure and generally make life more difficult for
the postmaster general, but only a majority can remove him or prevent him
from implementing the business plan that's being developed in conjunction
with one of the Democrats currently on the board.
The only remaining hope for the postal service is that Biden exercises the
nuclear option at his disposal - firing the board of governors with cause
and installing an entirely new board that will enable the swift removal of
its saboteur. Representative Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, has
already called for the president to do so, citing the collective failures of
this past year to be the only cause needed to justify it. Failing to
intervene immediately means more delayed bills and prescription medicines,
more 70-hour work weeks for clerks with no days off, and - perhaps worst of
all - another year's worth of eroded public trust that must be repaired.
Firing the board is sure to create a legal dispute that the Democrats would
need to fight in order to see it through.
In the meantime, while the administration awaits yet another peaceful
resolution that is somehow always just out of reach, the workers the
president swore to save will toil away. "I mean, I realized last year that
the future of my career rests on Joe Biden," the carrier from Southeastern
Pennsylvania said. "That's not really where you want to be, even if he's
better than the other guy." Other carriers weren't quite as cynical, but
expressed similar levels of concern for the future of their jobs. "Unless
there are some changes made to how things are done, at the very least, I
don't think this is sustainable," says Joe Roman, a carrier of 26 years and
nine-year shop steward for the Bloomfield branch in Pittsburgh. He's careful
to add that he doesn't tie that directly to DeJoy, but to operations more
broadly. However, other carriers Intelligencer interviewed for this story
all shared a universal belief that, regardless of what his intentions or
motivations are, DeJoy and his changes are the problem and nothing will be
fixed until he's removed.
Turnover for new postal workers is high, with veteran carriers and clerks
citing lower pay and increased chaos as a key reason why nobody tends to
stick around longer than a couple of months. It makes things harder on a
daily basis, but more importantly in the eyes of carriers who have spent
decades fulfilling their duty to the community, it devalues the service.
"I've been delivering my route for a decade," said one carrier. "I know
every person on my route. That makes you take an extra effort to get them
their mail. Some guy that's in and out, and then another takes his place. I
mean, that's obviously going to impact the mission." The inability to retain
new employees exacerbates the absurd workload issues that have made 70 hour
weeks the norm for carriers in high volume branches.
Postal workers who thought they were signing on for the last sure thing that
exists for the American working class - a clear path towards decades of
financial security in exchange for backbreaking community service - are
watching in real time as it's whittled down to another gig. "Morale is as
low as it's ever been," says King, the union official. "I mean, we were just
in a meeting last week, and they've got these formulas and charts and it's
just not possible. It had been bad for a little while but it just keeps
getting worse for us."