Senator Gary Peters released a report this week on changes to the United States Postal Service (USPS), also addressing mail delays.
It is the sixth report since Peters launched an investigation in August. It looks through the holidays and new year.
Peters, who is the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, is pressing USPS and Postmaster Louis DeJoy to answer whether changes made over the summer would be brought back in the new year. Those changes sent on-time deliveries plummeting. In Detroit, less than two-thirds of deliveries were making it to their destinations as promised.
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The report also outlines the new changes for 2021, stating that USPS leadership is “considering a broad overhaul of the postal service’s operations and potentially deep cuts to the services it provides.” That includes permanently lowering service standards, increasing package rates and “aggressive work hour reductions.”
The report comes as the postal service has been hit with near record backlog of holiday parcels during the pandemic. According to data from ShipMatrix, more than 6 million packages have been left sitting in shipping warehouses with days left before Christmas.
A USPS spokesperson declined an interview but said in an interview that “We are utilizing our available resources to match the workload created by the impacts of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. We appreciate the patience of our customers and the efforts of employees as conditions change on a day-to-day basis.”
Changes outlined in Peters’ report are not final yet. USPS leaders said they plan to detail their 2021 plans in the upcoming weeks.