Willful Delay of the Mail
Within the past couple of months, the Postal Service has been willfully failing to deliver mail to large numbers of customers, including entire communities across Long Island. What is occurring is nothing short of a man factured service collapse, deliberately created by management. Entire routes are not being delivered. In some cases, whole neighborhoods are being ignored day after day while the mail sits inside post offices, knowingly and willfully delayed. This is not mismanagement or confusion, but intentional, widespread, coordinated, and showing no signs of stopping.
Letter Carriers have been providing the Union with overwhelming evidence of this disgraceful practice. We have received photographs, written statements, and firsthand reports documenting large volumes of delayed First-Class Mail, including checks, bills, tax documents, medications, and essential packages. These are real consequences and a calculated deception suffered by the public. Management is fully aware of this harm and has chosen to proceed anyway.
Carriers are being ordered to return to the office at arbitrary times regardless of how much mail remains undelivered. They are instructed to bring mail back, even when they are willing, able, and contractually entitled to continue working. In many cases, carriers are forced to abandon their regular assignments so parcels can be delivered, while entire blocks, or entire routes of mail are intentionally skipped. In other cases, carriers are being pressured to falsify scans, such as scanning packages “No Access,” when the real issue is management-imposed curfews and time limits. These instructions are unethical, improper, and place carriers at personal risk for following orders they know are wrong.
Even more infuriating, carriers on the Overtime Desired List, who are ready, willing, and available to work, are being left home. Their routes are deliberately left uncovered, while management allows mail to pile up inside the building. The following day, those same carriers are expected to deliver two days’ worth of mail in 8 hours. Predictably, they are again ordered to bring mail back, and the cycle of delay continues. This is not incompetence. This is willful neglect driven by one motive: avoiding overtime and/or penalty overtime.
Management has the audacity to claim that these actions are being taken for “safety.” That excuse is as hollow as it is insulting. There is nothing safe about rushing deliveries, skipping large portions of routes, or forcing carriers into impossible workloads. Letter Carriers have delivered mail through snowstorms, heat waves, natural disasters, and national emergencies without intentionally delaying service. To invoke safety now, while deliberately withholding mail, is a transparent and cynical lie.
The damage being done to the United States Postal Service is severe and self-inflicted. Public trust is being sacrificed for short-term cost cutting and metric manipulation. Customers who repeatedly receive inadequate service will eventually stop relying on the Postal Service altogether. Once that trust is lost, it is extraordinarily difficult to regain. This directly threatens the long-term viability of the institution.
These actions are a profound insult to the workforce. Letter Carriers have fought relentlessly to preserve this service, through understaffing, forced overtime, pandemics, and impossible expectations. Instead of supporting that dedication, management has chosen to undermine it, devalue it, and exploit it.
The consequences extend to every office and every route. When mail is intentionally brought back, the recorded work hours falsely suggest that routes can be completed in less time. Management then uses this fraudulent data to justify route cuts, job eliminations, and staffing reductions. The numbers being relied upon to restructure operations are fundamentally dishonest and riddled with data integrity failures. Decisions based on lies produce only more failure.
Congressional officials must be informed immediately of these deliberate service failures, as they constitute more than poor management, they represent violations of Federal Law. The intentional and widespread delay of mail directly conflicts with the statutory obligations imposed on the USPS under Title 39 of the United States Code, which requires the maintenance of a reliable, integrated delivery network and consistent mail service to the public six days a week.
In addition, every piece of delayed, curtailed, or returned mail must be properly documented. Any mail brought back due to management instruction must be recorded on PS Form 1571, with the specific reason clearly stated, and the form must be reviewed and signed by a supervisor. Make sure you make a copy for your records. This documentation is critical to protecting Letter Carriers, preserving an accurate factual record, and demonstrating the true scope of these violations.
The Union will not tolerate the normalization of delayed mail, falsified records, or the intentional destruction of service standards. All Letter Carriers please continue to document and report to your steward all management instructed willfully delayed mail. We will continue to document these abuses, challenge fraudulent data, and pursue every contractual, legal, and public remedy available. The public deserves better, the workforce deserves better.
