How the Grinchmaster General stole Christmas.
And how to get it back.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – unless you’re a postal worker. Thanks to chronic understaffing and Amazon’s increasing use of the agency’s last-mile delivery service, the mail is piling up at post offices across the country and overwhelming already-overworked USPS employees. And that’s just the stocking stuffer: these Christmastime delays will become the year-round norm, from Janesville to Nashville to Whoville, if real-life Grinch Louis DeJoy gets his way*.
As The Guardian’s Michael Sainato reported last week, the Postmaster General is currently implementing a “10-year austerity plan” that would slash working hours at hundreds of post offices and shutter vital postal sorting facilities. DeJoy’s scheme has all the tender sweetness of a seasick crocodile: an average of 25 jobs would be lost per sorting facility, while DeJoy has called for shedding 50,000 jobs from the postal service over the next decade. Postal advocates and lawmakers from both parties have blasted the plan, warning that DeJoy’s service cuts and repeated price hikes will destroy a treasured public institution. All the while, DeJoy has remained a crooked jerky-jockey by cashing lucrative rental payments from USPS contractor XPO Logistics, for whom he previously served as a top executive.
Cuddly as a cactus and as charming as an eel, Louis DeJoy has openly taunted his detractors by boasting that he’ll be around for “a long time, get used to me.” President Biden has lent credence to this claim, botching multiple opportunities to return DeJoy to sender. Last year, he filled two seats on the Postal Board of Governors (which has the power to fire DeJoy) with DeJoy-supporting bad bananas, including a close ally of Mitch McConnell. And more recently, when postal advocates urged Biden to replace two termed-out Trump appointees on the board with anti-DeJoy reformers, the President wouldn’t even touch the subject with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole! Instead, Biden allowed DeJoy supporters Lee Moak and William Zollars to stay on the board an entire extra year after their terms expired, ensuring DeJoy’s continued job security (the three words that best describe this decision are as follows: stink, stank, stunk).
But Biden still has time to make things right and put DeJoy on his naughty list. The one year holdover terms of Moak and Zollars came to an end two weeks ago, and the Board is currently two seats too small. Biden must fill these vacant posts with candidates who will fire DeJoy. If he doesn’t, all we can do is hope DeJoy’s heart will grow three sizes (and I don’t like those odds). The Save The Post Office Coalition currently has a sign-on petition asking Biden to nominate postal policy expert Sarah Anderson and former postal worker and Congresswoman Brenda Lawrence –two anti-DeJoy reformers– to the Postal Board.
If I could make one Christmas wish of you, dear readers, it’s to join me in signing it. Together, we can make 2024 the year we save the Postal Service from the Grinchmaster General.
ADD YOUR NAME: Tell Biden to Save the USPS And Appoint Rep. Brenda Lawrence and Sarah Anderson to the USPS Board of Governors Now