US Postal Service: House backs election cash boost

[Janet Brum]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2020-53876958" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;


The US Postal Service delivered 142.6 billion pieces of mail in 2019


The legislation would also block cuts and changes that critics have said will hamper mail-in voting.

Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi recalled lawmakers from the summer recess to vote on the bill, which she said would protect the USPS.

After the vote, President Trump tweeted the measure was a Democrat ballot scam.

"Representatives of the Post Office have repeatedly stated that they DO NOT NEED MONEY, and will not make changes, " said Donald Trump. He has threatened to veto the bill, which is in any case unlikely to make progress in the Republican-controlled Senate.



Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell said the chamber would "absolutely not pass" the bill.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said earlier that further cost-cutting measures at the postal service would be suspended until after November's vote.

A slowdown in mail deliveries amid cost-saving measures at USPS has fuelled fears about how one of the oldest and most trusted institutions in the US can handle an unprecedented influx of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic.

President Trump strongly opposes mail-in ballots and has repeatedly suggested it could lead to widespread voter fraud despite there being no evidence for this.

The "Delivering for America Act" passed by the House in a rare Saturday sitting includes $25bn of emergency coronavirus funding requested by the USPS's board of governors.

More than a dozen Republicans crossed the floor to vote with their Democratic opponents.

The bill would require the USPS to treat all official election correspondence as first-class mail.

The service would be prohibited until January 2021 from implementing or approving any changes to operations or service levels that would "impede prompt, reliable, and efficient service", including closing or reducing the hours of post offices, removing mail sorting machines and mailboxes, or stopping overtime payments.

"This is not a partisan issue," Democratic Representative Carolyn Maloney, the bill's author, said before the debate. "It makes absolutely no sense to impose these kinds of dangerous cuts in the middle of a pandemic and just months before the elections in November."



Ms Pelosi stressed that the USPS was not a business.

"While we always want to subject every federal dollar to the scrutiny of what we're getting for it, let us remember that it is a service. No business that I can think of would ever be saddled with what we've done to the Postal Service," she added.

Republican political leaders on Friday said Democrats had "sought to spread baseless conspiracy theories about the USPS for political gain" and had "manufactured a crisis to undermine President Trump at the expense of America's institutions".



They also condemned Democrats for pursuing for what they said was "an unnecessary bailout plan that does not fix any of the underlying operational issues".

On Friday, the postmaster general told a Senate committee there had been "no changes to any policies with regard to election mail" and that the USPS was "fully capable and committed to delivering the nation's election mail fully and on time".

Mr DeJoy - a top Republican donor and former logistics executive appointed to lead the agency in May - acknowledged that the changes he had instigated had slowed some mail delivery, but insisted that it was "outrageous" to suggest they were intended to help President Trump in November.

[PostmanBitesDog]

[PostmanBitesDog]

Earlier today, President Donald Twat sent another whiny, bitchy tweet about "voter fraud."

DT.jpg

But a few hours later, Twitter wasn't having any of that nonsense and once again hid his tweet under a Twitter Rules message.

T.jpg

[Janet Brum]

This is brilliant :)

[PostmanBitesDog]

Something of interest that's closer to home:

The New York Times (Aug. 22, 2020) ~ Mnuchin Paved Way for Postal Service Shake-Up

[Postmaser General Louis DeJoy]'s résumé was far different than recent postmasters general, most of whom had risen through the Postal Service ranks. Megan J. Brennan, who had announced in October 2019 her intention to retire as postmaster general at the end of January, began her career as a letter carrier in Pennsylvania.

Mr. DeJoy, who ran New Breed Logistics before selling it to XPO Logistics in 2014, would be coming from the private sector to assume control of a highly unionized, sprawling bureaucracy with more than half a million employees. His companies had experience working with the Postal Service, moving bulk shipments of packages from fulfillment centers and ferrying them to local Postal Service centers. But both companies had fewer than 10,000 employees, none of them unionized, and he had never worked in the public sector.

The companies were also the subject of a litany of complaints from workers, including more than a dozen lawsuits accusing managers — but not Mr. DeJoy personally — of presiding over a hostile environment rife with sexual harassment and racial discrimination and where workers were fired for getting sick or injured.

[...]

Mr. DeJoy, 63, had transformed his father’s Long Island trucking company from a small shop with 10 employees into a national logistics and supply-chain provider that won lucrative contracts with Boeing, Verizon and the Postal Service. By 2014, around the time that he sold it XPO for $615 million, the company had about 7,000 employees.

That kind of growth came at a cost. In the logistics industry, speed is supreme. New Breed Logistics competed with Amazon in the hustle to deliver products to people’s homes as fast as possible. In pursuit of that goal, New Breed Logistics pushed their workers to extremes, according to a New York Times investigation published in 2018.

The company’s warehouse in Memphis offered a glimpse into the grueling culture that played out under Mr. DeJoy’s leadership. Inside the warehouse, hundreds of workers, many of them women, lifted and dragged boxes that could weigh up to 45 pounds. To save money, there was no air-conditioning, even in the middle of southern summers, causing temperatures to rise past 100 degrees.

Employees at the warehouse were disciplined using a “point system,” in which they could be fired once they racked up 10 points. Asking for a break to go to the doctor could earn you a point, as could taking too long on a break.

In 2013, New Breed was ordered to pay $1.5 million after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued, accusing the company of retaliating against three female employees who said they had been sexually harassed.

There was no reprieve for women who were pregnant or sick, according to interviews and lawsuits. Those who asked for lighter work loads were often denied.

That included women like Tasha Murrell, who pleaded with her supervisor in 2014 to leave early because she was pregnant and lifting had become unbearable. Instead of a reprieve, her supervisor told her to get an abortion, according to a discrimination complaint that she later filed with the employment commission. Shortly after asking for a break, Ms. Murrell woke up in a pool of her own blood. She rushed to the hospital, where she learned that she had miscarried.

“It was like a sweatshop,” Ms. Murrell said. “All they cared about was their profits.”

XPO declined to comment for this article. A spokeswoman previously told The Times the company was “surprised by the allegations of conduct that either predate XPO’s acquisition of the Memphis facility or weren’t reported to management after we acquired it in 2014.”

If the name XPO Logistics sounds familiar, it's because they run the operations for British online fashion and cosmetic retailer ASOS at their giant fulfillment center near Barnsley, South Yorkshire.

And yes, it's a sh*thole place.