“If requested, they’re to be known as ‘Supply Companions’ or ‘Distributors,’” stated a second provider. “It’s ridiculous.”
The directive, handed down Monday morning from U.S. Postal Service administration, comes three weeks after mail carriers within the northern Minnesota city staged a symbolic strike outdoors the put up workplace, protesting the heavy workloads and lengthy hours attributable to the sudden arrival of 1000’s of Amazon packages.
On Tuesday, staffers from the workplaces of Democratic Minnesota senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar hosted a “listening session” with Bemidji residents to “talk about ongoing postal points associated to bundle and mail supply,” in keeping with an invite distributed by Bemidji Mayor Jorge Prince.
“We want a really clear dedication that we’re not going to be prioritizing Amazon packages over common mail,” Klobuchar instructed The Washington Put up after Tuesday’s assembly. She additionally stated her workplace is trying into enhancing postal staffing and pay for rural carriers, and has repeatedly requested a gathering with Postmaster Common Louis DeJoy.
Along with being banned from saying “Amazon,” postal staff have additionally been instructed their jobs could possibly be in danger in the event that they converse publicly about put up workplace points. Staffers had been instructed they may attend Tuesday’s assembly solely on their 30-minute lunch break in the event that they modified out of uniform, mail carriers stated. One mail provider stated he’d been warned there could possibly be “penalties” for many who confirmed up.
Postal clients in Bemidji have been complaining about late and lacking mail for the reason that starting of November, when the contract for delivering Amazon packages on the town switched from UPS to the put up workplace. Mail carriers instructed The Put up final month that they had been instructed to ship packages earlier than the mail, leaving residents ready for tax rebates, bank card statements, medical paperwork and checks.
A lot of these residents complained to elected officers, together with Smith, who wrote a letter to the postmaster basic inquiring about stories that “Amazon is interfering with well timed deliveries and stretching the company’s already-overburdened staff too skinny.”
“We routinely work with the US Postal Service to ship for purchasers and we apologize for any delays skilled in and round Bemidji,” Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson stated in an announcement. “We work carefully with USPS to refine quantity forecasts to allow them to function easily, and we’ll proceed to take action as we work by way of the vacation season.”
(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Put up, and the newspaper’s interim CEO, Patty Stonesifer, sits on Amazon’s board.)
As the vacation purchasing season will get underway, the packages in Bemidji proceed to pile up — at one level they had been stacked so excessive somebody known as the hearth marshal. Mail carriers say they’ve been mandated to work on Sundays, delivering mail seven days every week on lonely rural routes that may now take as much as 12 hours to finish.
“Individuals want to grasp how simply how dangerous it’s gotten,” stated Eric Cerroni, whose spouse is a mail provider in Bemidji.
Mail carriers requested Cerroni to current written testimony on behalf of postal staff on the Tuesday assembly as a result of they’re “too busy with work and possibly afraid of repercussions.”
Kyle Sorbe, a spokesperson for Smith’s workplace, stated in an electronic mail that “if these stories are true, they’re extraordinarily regarding and Senator Smith can be in search of a clarification from the Postal Service.”
Put up workplace spokesperson David Partenheimer stated the assembly was “not a USPS-sponsored occasion and we don’t plan to attend,” as workers members “are targeted on our peak-season operations now.”
“Relating to questions on Amazon or different firms we work with,” he continued, “the Postal Service doesn’t talk about specifics of our working relationships.”
Tuesday’s assembly in Bemidji lasted over an hour. Fifty folks attended in individual, and greater than 180 watched a reside stream on the web site of native newspaper the Bemidji Pioneer.
A number of postal staff who lately stop or retired because of the ongoing points attended, together with one who recognized herself solely as Shelly, and acquired a spontaneous spherical of applause when she started to talk.
“I labored on the put up workplace for 30 years,” she stated. “By no means in my life have I been handled so poorly. I am going dwelling at evening crying.”
“I didn’t wish to retire but,” she stated. “However I used to be compelled to retire.”
Residents expressed their issues with delayed mail, together with lacking medicines and late payments leading to charges. In addition they shared considerations about working situations for postal staff, together with low pay, lengthy hours and security dangers for mail carriers working late at evening.
On the assembly, congressional staffers stated a number of letters from their respective workplaces had lastly acquired a response on Monday. In that response, shared with The Put up, DeJoy acknowledged that the quantity of Amazon packages on the Bemidji Put up Workplace has elevated. “As a result of packages on the whole take up significantly extra bodily area than letter mail or flats, a interval of excessive bundle quantity (similar to peak season) can result in Put up Workplace loading docks changing into overwhelmed,” the letter says. “Thus, a excessive bundle quantity at all times has the potential to intrude with the circulation of letter mail, no matter the place these packages originated.” The put up workplace is working to combine the mail and packages, the letter stated.
DeJoy contested the assertion that rural carriers are underpaid, however conceded that as a result of “bundle quantity grew in Bemidji … some rural carriers are actually working longer hours than they had been beforehand.”
He additionally stated that district-level knowledge present that a lot of the mail in Bemidji is being delivered on time. However Smith’s workplace disputed that declare, saying the put up workplace has restricted capability to trace paper mail.
On Monday, the Minnesota senators launched a invoice known as the Postal Supply Accountability Act, which might require the put up workplace to enhance monitoring and reporting of delayed and undelivered mail nationally.
“As an important public service, USPS owes its clients transparency,” a short on the proposed laws says. “It is a step towards that aim.”
The put up workplace has held a contract to ship Amazon packages on Sundays since 2013. The company, which has misplaced $6.5 billion up to now yr, has stated that it’s essential to extend bundle quantity by slicing offers with Amazon and different retailers.
correction
A earlier model of this text misidentified Kyle Sorbe, a spokesperson for Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), as Kyle Smith. The article has been corrected.
