Protest Postal Job Cuts and Mail Delays! Singleton and Moyer Speak
Jamie Partridge
(contact Jamie Partridge, Communities and Postal Workers United, 503-752-5112)
***Permission granted to us photos and video
Protest Postal Job Cuts and Mail Delays!
Singleton and Moyer Speak
A crowd of postal workers and customers gathered outside the East Portland post office today to protest mail delays and job cuts and to demand they be heard. Disability Rights advocate Meghan Moyer and Homeless Services organizer Shannon Singleton spoke, along with union officials and retirees.
The Postal Board of Governors has eliminated public comment at their quarterly meetings in DC and the Postmaster General is refusing requests for information from the Postal Regulatory Commission. Local postal management has refused to host a hearing on major changes in mail processing and delivery coming to the Portland area. With the theme “We Won’t Be Silenced” postal activists held rallies across the country and outside and inside the governors meeting today.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s “Delivering for America” plan now includes consolidating letter carriers into massive Sorting and Delivery Center hubs, forcing long commutes and travel times while eliminating clerk, trucker and supervisor positions and reducing service or closing local post offices.
Evergreen Post Office (Beaverton) has been chosen to become a Sorting and Delivery Center in June, 2024, receiving letter carriers, displaced from neighborhood post offices ("spokes"). Salem, Eugene/Springfield, and Medford will also get massive S&DC hubs, displacing carriers from "spoke" offices.
The Portland City Council has called on the US Postal Service to hold a community hearing, led by local elected officials, Senators and Congress people, with representatives of the US Postal Service, to answer our concerns and questions about these Sorting and Delivery Center - Spoke consolidations and their impact on jobs and service (see attached resolution).
Senators Merkley and Wyden, Representatives Blumenauer and Bonamici have also called on the USPS to hold a local “Listening Session.” (see attached letter)
The USPS has refused.
Postmaster General (PMG) Louis DeJoy’s “Delivering for America” (DFA) Ten-Year plan now also includes the consolidation of local mail processing to 60 Regional Processing and Distribution Centers, RPDCs, which in Oregon involves trucking local mail from Medford and Eugene/Springfield P&DCs (which are now called Local Processing Centers, LPCs) to Portland’s P&DC (now an RPDC) for processing then trucking back to Medford and Eugene for distribution, delaying mail and eliminating clerk and mail handler jobs.
The DFA also includes “Local Transportation Optimization” (LTO), which will eventually involve over 10,000 post offices nationwide, eliminating the evening truck at stations over fifty miles from a processing plant and with less than 30,000 population, and which has already been rolled out in close to 200 (nearly half) of Oregon’s post offices, delaying their mail.
The Ten-Year Plan is slowing the mail, raising prices, cutting and closing postal facilities, outsourcing postal work, paving the way for privatization of the US Postal Service.
“We must protect vote-by-mail,” said Jamie Partridge, organizer with Communities and Postal Workers United. “We must protect the timely delivery of medicines, legal papers, and parcels. We must protect our vulnerable communities who depend on reliable postal service - seniors, veterans, rural and low-income residents, small businesses”.
Sponsor: Communities and Postal Workers United,
Endorsed by: American Postal Workers Union local 128, National Association of Letter Carriers branch 82, Portland Democratic Socialists of America, Portland Jobs with Justice
