OPA-LOCKA, Fla. – It is an issue that is being talked about all over the country. Changes at the United States Postal Service are slowing down or even preventing people from getting and sending their mail.
Laura Goldberg said that last Tuesday she put several paid bills In her mailbox. Two days later, those bills still hadn’t been picked up and she hadn’t receive any mail either.
"No one's getting mail, some people are feeling like they're getting it once a week, some people a couple times a week. I had bills in there not only for Florida Power & Light, but for mom and pops who really depend on me paying them like my son's clarinet teacher," Goldberg said.
In fact, it wasn’t until Friday that she finally saw a postal worker on her street.
“She explained that she had my mail for Wednesday and Thursday and Friday and no one had been around to our neighborhood for a number of days,” Goldberg said.
American Postal Workers Union Miami area president Wanda Harris told Local 10 the delays are because the new postmaster general said he wants to cut costs.
[NATIONAL: Postal Services halts some changes until after election]
“The mail that’s supposed to be delivered today may not get delivered until 2 to 3 days later because they’re told to leave it behind,” Harris said.
The new policies reduce service, including eliminate overtime hours for employees and remove mail-sorting machines and public collection boxes.
And Harris said those changes are unacceptable, especially for people like the mail carrier working Goldberg’s area. That worker is currently covering someone else’s route, along with her own and is expected to somehow do it without any overtime.
"That carrier still has to do their route which may take a full 8 hours, so that other route is going to run into overtime. So, with him cutting the OT, that mail is going to sit for a day or two," Harris said.
“At the plants, which is the mail processing centers that gets the mail to delivery for the carriers to deliver to customers, they’re being told don’t worry about that mail, that mail can wait ‘til tomorrow, that truck’s got to leave, the truck’s got to go without that mail.”
Harris, who has been working for the USPS for 30 years, said the slowdown is heartbreaking.
“You’re talking about checks, bills, small businesses. It’s really, really sad.”
Harris wanted to point out that the post office does not operate on tax dollars.
“We are strictly stamps and revenue and all we want to do is service our customers, who we love so much, and give them what they’re supposed to have in a timely manner that we have done for years and years. We bind the country together. We are the ones that give loved ones their letters with 55 cents a stamp, give the veterans their care packages, give the sick their medicine, give the small businesses their mail that they need to survive. We’re the ones that do that. We take care of the American people.”
On Tuesday, the postmaster general announced he will be suspending the changes until after the election.
There are still problems. We know at least five mail sorting machines that have been removed from Miami in the last few months and mail is already behind. We’ll have to see how long it takes for everything to catch back up and what happens when the changes are put back into place after the election.