Reprinted from The Daily Kos by Laura Clawson on August 22, 2020.
As Postmaster General Louis DeJoy slows down mail delivery to help Donald Trump accomplish his goal of undermining mail-in voting and to continue the decades-long Republican war on the US Postal Service, postal workers have sounded the alarm. “You don’t just go and tell management, ‘Hey, I saw that. That’s not allowed,’ ” Scott Adams, an American Postal Workers Union local president in Maine told the Portland Press-Herald’s Bill Nemitz. “At some point you have to hold their feet to the fire and say, ‘I’m telling you, and I have been telling you, you follow the rules. And when you don’t, we’re blowing it up.’”
It’s not just in Maine. Postal workers in other locations are pushing back against DeJoy and Trump’s sabotage, as in the Milwaukee area where workers organized and refused to follow the new rules. With DeJoy having removed many sorting machines, though, it’ll take more than workers doing their jobs—against the rules—to fix things. As American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein told The American Prospect, “Can the union do something specifically about what machines they have or don’t have in the post office? No. Can the union be part of a movement to share with the public what’s really going on and be part of a movement for change? We’ve seen that in the last month.”
Senator Paul Suggests Cutting Days for Rural Postal Deliveries
Reprinted from The San Francisco Chronicle by Bruce Schreiner on August 22, 2020.
US Senator Rand Paul on Friday suggested cutting the number of days rural America receives postal deliveries to help shore up the financially ailing US Postal Service.
The Kentucky Republican also said Congress should attach conditions to any infusion of federal money for post offices — including reducing the postal service’s workforce.
Paul pitched those changes as Postmaster General Louis DeJoy appeared for a Senate committee hearing amid intense scrutiny of postal service operations and whether it will be able to provide timely delivery of ballots for the November election. …
