Senate hosts listening session on Bemidji mail delivery delays

Dec. 5—BEMIDJI — At a listening session on issues related to the Bemidji Post Office held on Tuesday, Megan Bryant and other family members of rural carriers shared stories of just how little they see their loved ones these days.

"We have an almost 2-year-old daughter that (my husband) does not get to spend time with. He gets up before she wakes up, he gets back (from work) after she's in bed. He gets home, eats really quick, takes a shower, goes to bed and does it all again," Bryant shared. "When will he get to know our daughter?"

Postal carriers at the Bemidji office shared in November

that they've been working 12-hour days, six days a week, and that they had been told to prioritize delivering Amazon packages before other mail.

After an informational picket led to

national attention

and an influx of calls to congressional representatives, a listening session was arranged in Bemidji by the offices of U.S. Senators Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar on Tuesday to learn about the situation firsthand.

Around 65 people showed up for the meeting, which was held in the Greater Bemidji board room. Members of the Bemidji City Council, current and former Beltrami County Commissioners, Senator Steve Green and many other members of the community came to share their experiences with the mail, show their support for mail carriers and express what they hoped would be done to resolve the issues.

Several attendees had family members who work as mail carriers, and they shared the impact that the long work hours and high demands have had on their parents, children and spouses — from not having time to spend with their families to their loved ones losing weight from the stress.

Some of those in attendance were former postal carriers, with a significant portion having only quit recently as conditions have steadily grown worse.

"When you work that much the work doesn't go away when you go home," shared Dan Rickert, who recently took early retirement from the post office after 29 years. "It's running in your head when you go to bed, it's running in your head when you wake up. I lost weight, I lost sleep and I couldn't take it anymore."

Former employees of the post office also brought up concerns of safety, both in regards to the long hours and the vehicles, which they said were frequently in no condition to be driven.

One attendee shared an instance of an axle breaking while delivering her route, another said that even when they marked a vehicle as unfit to drive, supervisors would untag the truck with the excuse of not having other vehicles available.

While postal workers who had retired or recently quit attended, they and others shared that current employees of the post office had been warned not to attend, or that if they did there would be consequences, by upper USPS management.

These reports of a hostile work environment were echoed by another former employee who spoke at the meeting but preferred not to be identified by name for fear of retaliation.

"I go home at night crying," they said. "We are being treated so poorly, all we want is respect. They're asking us to work 12, 14 hours a day, six days a week."

Even with these long hours, residents in Bemidji and the surrounding area have reported delays in mail delivery, with some waiting days for important documents, payments and bills.

"I feel bad for my people, my customers," the former employee said. "We have a relationship with them, so when we're asked to treat them like they don't matter, it's a very hurtful situation."

Many of the comments made during the session related to the contract between the USPS and Amazon, which has the postal service deliver packages for the multinational e-commerce platform. The agreement was first signed in 2013 and was implemented in large metropolitan areas before it began to roll out to more rural cities and towns.

"Amazon signs a contract with the USPS and basically they're taking federal contracted, union employees and forcing them to be carriers for a private company," said Reed Olson, a former Beltrami County Commissioner who attended the listening session.

Olson specifically requested that postal workers be given the right to strike, something some of the Bemidji rural carriers also called for during their initial picket.

"No union that has full rights would put up with this sh*t, they'd go on strike in a heartbeat," he said, "but here they're being locked into a kind of perverse form of indentured servitude to a very profitable company. We need to make sure our carriers have the rights that any other labor union in the country would have."

Other attendees blamed the current state of the local mail and the broader postal service on the administration of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and on management systems that look to treat the post office as a business.

"I believe our present difficulties are the direct result of the administration of Louis DeJoy and his consistent efforts to effectively privatize this essential service," said Randall Burg, a community member. "This model of profit and privatization really has no role in the management of this public service."

Burg also noted the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which set the requirement for the USPS to account for retirement funds 75 years into the future, as a specific example of a law that has hampered the postal service and made its finances and self-sufficient budget model suffer.

"I don't know of another entity that's required to do that. It's put the postal service in a financial hole they'll never get out of," Burg said, adding that he would like to see it repealed.

Representatives from Smith and Klobuchar's offices shared that the testimony of community members and former postal workers would help support the senators' efforts to pressure the USPS to resolve these issues.

"This meeting matters, and you're being heard," said Sara Silvernail, the state director for Sen. Tina Smith. "Just this morning we received (a response to a letter from DeJoy), it was highly contradictory to what you all are saying... the senators both know that what you're telling us is the truth, and we will stand by that truth."

In a phone interview with the Pioneer on Tuesday evening, Smith shared her gratitude to those who spoke at the meeting, with a special thanks to the postal workers who attended.

"It's so important that they spoke out and that they've made sure we have a clear understanding of what's happening," she said. "I'm particularly thankful to those postal workers and letter carriers who had been warned away, threatened and intimidated not to come and tell their U.S. senators what they are experiencing. I've got their back, and they did the right thing to come and speak out."

Staff at the meeting shared that Smith, Klobuchar and Minnesota's 8th Congressional District Rep. Pete Stauber had all written letters to DeJoy demanding answers to the ongoing problems Minnesotans have been experiencing with the mail, and that they've attempted to meet with DeJoy but have been turned down "repeatedly."

With the experiences of those in Bemidji recorded, they hope to increase pressure and garner an acknowledgement of the issues and begin working toward solutions.

"The first thing is to be able to get firsthand reports on what the actual working conditions are, and then I will go back to the powers that be in Washington, D.C., and let them know exactly what we hear is happening and demand some accountability," Smith said.

In a phone interview with the Pioneer ahead of the meeting on Tuesday, Klobuchar shared that she had received both verbal and written commitment from the district manager of the postal service that the USPS would not prioritize Amazon packages over other deliveries.

"There's no way that a big company should have preference over people getting their medication or getting their letter from grandma," she said. "I'll continue to push the postal service to remedy this situation, to make the commitment, which they now have, to not preference the Amazon packages and to adequately staff the post office."

Klobuchar and Smith also shared that they have just introduced legislation that aims to improve the accountability of the USPS in regards to undelivered and delayed mail. They hope that this, along with the continued conversations with USPS leadership will begin the movement toward improving working conditions and mail deliveries.

"One of the first things that has to happen is better working conditions for these people. That's not going to happen overnight, but we can bring pressure to bear on the leadership of the Post Office immediately to start to get the wheels of change moving," Smith said.