A U.S. Postal Service worker in Montpelier made a public plea for help last month as residents complained about widespread delivery delays.
“We are understaffed, overworked, and completely buried in packages,” Michelle Burton wrote in a Jan. 21 post on Front Porch Forum, describing herself as a postal employee.
The Postal Service has had to deliver a deluge of packages since people started staying home and ordering online at the onset of the pandemic two years ago, and Vermonters have been raising concerns about problems with the mail for months.
Among the reasons for the delays, Burton asserted in two posts on the forum, is the Postal Service’s new protocol of “packages first, mail second.”
Compounding the problem, she wrote, are free Covid-19 tests. Since people have been able to order the tests, first from the state of Vermont and now from the federal government, the Montpelier Post Office is experiencing volume that is almost double that before Christmas, she wrote.
“We are less than fine and haven’t been since covid hit,” Burton wrote in a follow-up post on Saturday. “All we want to do is get your mail and packages to you, but at this time it’s an impossible task.”
Burton declined to comment for this article.
VTDigger spoke to two mail workers in Vermont on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the press. Both shared accounts that mirrored Burton’s posts on Front Porch Forum.
One of the mail carriers, who works all over the state, said mail delivery is hamstrung when every package must be delivered every day, especially when routes are getting 200 packages a day. The person told VTDigger that when packages are not delivered or scanned as attempted delivery, it’s registered as a failure in the postal service’s internal systems.
“The District is really coming down hard on management for any failures,” the carrier said, referring to the Northern New England District Office based in Portland. “Package delivery — I don’t think that should take precedence over first-class mail.”
An Orange County postal worker confirmed to VTDigger that there, too, the number of packages has increased since free tests became available and that employees there also have been told to prioritize packages over mail.
Postal Service spokesperson Stephen Doherty did not respond to a request for comment on the workers’ reports.
In her second post, Burton pleaded for help.
“We need the National Guard!” she wrote. “Something!”
Long days in the capital
In Montpelier, Burton wrote that an undue burden is being placed on the postmaster, who had to manage the post office while home sick. She said as soon as the postmaster was back in the post office last week, she was back out delivering mail and packages, as other postmasters in Vermont have been forced to do.
Burton wrote that the postmaster works seven days a week.
Nevertheless, Burton wrote, the postmaster “got a spanking” from the district office “about how the packages are failing and how our office is bringing the district percentage down.”
“That’s all they care about,” Burton wrote.
Burton wrote that one reason for the shortage of workers at the Montpelier Post Office is that it takes three months between the time a person is hired and when a person starts work, a period of time few people are willing to wait when so many jobs are open in private companies.
In Montpelier, she wrote, postal carriers are working six days a week from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Rural carriers work even longer days, beginning at 6 a.m. and staying on until 6:30 p.m. Most postal workers in Burton’s office are paid only until 2 p.m. because that is how long it has been estimated it should take them to complete their rounds, she wrote.
The mail carrier who works all over the state said routes were evaluated as to how long it took to complete them before the pandemic.
“People are ordering everything online,” said the carrier, who spoke to VTDigger on Tuesday and had worked for 13 days straight. “There’s not a single route (evaluation) all over the Northeast Kingdom that accurately reflects the package volume.”
Concerns in Congress
U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., told VTDigger his office has received “an avalanche of complaints” about mail delivery. In January 2021, Welch said, the office received eight complaints. This January, it was 69.
Welch said most have pertained to the Bennington and Williston post offices.
Welch and Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., wrote to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Dec. 23, demanding the immediate installation of a functioning cancellation machine at the White River Junction processing facility.
It was a follow-up to a letter they wrote in October 2020, asking for the immediate delivery of equipment. A year later, a machine did arrive, their second letter said, but not the one promised, and it was missing parts, which made it unusable.
In their December letter, the members of Vermont’s congressional delegation cited complaints that packages are receiving priority over first-class mail.
“The focus that DeJoy appears to have had is on cost-cutting, as opposed to service improvement,” Welch said.
Since before American independence, Congress, and later the president, had appointed postmasters general. The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 turned it into an independent agency within the federal government.
The Postal Service Board of Governors now appoints the postmaster general, and once in office, the person can be removed only by the board, whose members are appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress. They serve seven-year terms and cannot be removed by the president.
“We can’t do anything about DeJoy,” Welch said. “Even the president can’t fire DeJoy, who is a Trump appointee but doesn’t serve at the pleasure of the president.”
The postmaster general serves at the pleasure of the board for an indefinite term.
The Postal Service is strapped for funds, in part, because in 2006, Congress required it to prepay all health and pension benefits of postal workers for the next 50 years. Welch has co-sponsored a bill that would repeal that requirement.
“This pre-funding requirement really was a way to make the Postal Service balance sheet bleed in advance,” Welch said. “That really has to be eliminated.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified the Montpelier postmaster. It also misstated the process by which the postmaster general is appointed.
