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Nevertheless it wasn’t the buck hunt delaying the mail in Bemidji, a tiny city 100 miles south of the Canadian border the place welcome indicators are written in each English and Ojibwe and statues of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox tower in downtown. Since early November, Bemidji has been bombarded by a sudden onslaught of Amazon packages — and native postal staff say they’ve been ordered to ship these packages first.
The end result has been chaos on the Bemidji submit workplace. Mail is getting backed up, generally for days, leaving native residents ready for checks, bank card statements, medical insurance paperwork and tax rebates. Routes meant to take eight or 9 hours are stretching to 10 or 12. At the very least 5 carriers have stop, and the submit workplace has banned scheduled sick days for the remainder of the yr, carriers say.
“If we hold getting this quantity, plus Christmas coming, we gained’t survive,” one Bemidji submit workplace worker stated, talking on the situation of anonymity to guard her job. “We aren’t outfitted for this.”
Mail carriers have “expressed a whole lot of concern concerning the quantity of labor,” Mayor Jorge Prince stated after ending his personal breakfast at Raphael’s, a bustling diner lined with classic cookie jars. However the Bemidji Metropolis Council has no jurisdiction over the U.S. Postal Service, and the identical goes for the native hearth marshal, who was referred to as in final Monday as a result of the Amazon packages have been stacked precariously excessive.
Dennis Nelson, a veteran mail service, stated he bought so annoyed watching a number of co-workers “breaking down and crying” that he staged a symbolic strike earlier this month exterior the submit workplace the place he has labored for greater than 20 years.
“I’ve to do one thing,” Nelson stated. “It appears like we needs to be carrying shirts that say ‘USPS: Dropped at you by Amazon.com.’”
Bemidji is just not the one place the place postal staff say they’ve been overwhelmed by packages from Amazon, the ever present e-commerce big. Carriers and native officers say mail service has been disrupted in rural communities from Portland, Maine, to Washington state’s San Juan Islands.
The scenario stems from a disaster on the Postal Service, which has misplaced $6.5 billion previously yr. The submit workplace has had a contract with Amazon since 2013, when it began delivering packages on Sundays. However lately, that enterprise has exploded as Amazon has more and more come to depend on postal carriers to make “last-mile” deliveries in harder-to-reach rural places.
The Postal Service considers the contract proprietary and has declined to reveal its phrases. However U.S. Postmaster Basic Louis DeJoy has stated publicly that “rising bundle quantity” — not simply from Amazon, however from FedEx and UPS as nicely — is vital to the mail service’s monetary future. In a Nov. 14 speech to the Postal Service Board of Governors, DeJoy stated he desires the submit workplace to turn out to be the “most well-liked supply supplier within the nation.” And lately, the company has reconfigured its nationwide community of mail-sorting vegetation, bought an armada of eco-friendly supply vans and pressed a advertising and marketing marketing campaign in service of that aim.
In larger cities, Amazon has its personal distribution community, which takes a few of the strain off the submit workplace. However in rural areas, the place carriers drive miles of lonely routes of their private autos, the association has prompted issues.
Within the mountains of Colorado, biologists in Crested Butte are battling the delay of time-sensitive samples, the Denver Put up reported in September, whereas mail carriers in Carbondale say they’re overwhelmed by Amazon packages. Different Minnesota cities together with Brainerd and La Porte have been hit laborious by Amazon previously, carriers stated. And in Maine, carriers organized a symbolic strike in protest of the Amazon onslaught a yr in the past — although a postal audit discovered that the delays have been brought on by staffing points, not prioritizing packages.
In Bemidji, the mayor has complained to native members of Congress, who say their skill to manage the submit workplace is restricted. Final week, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) despatched a letter to DeJoy to ask about reviews that “Amazon is interfering with well timed deliveries and stretching the company’s already-overburdened staff too skinny.”
“As Postmaster Basic, you’re liable for guaranteeing that the Postal Service meets its service requirements, and it’s clear proper now that issues should not working as they need to,” stated the letter, a replica of which was shared with The Washington Put up. “Coming into into contracts that your system can not help is a breach of your obligations.”
Angela Bye, the Postal Service district supervisor for North Dakota and Minnesota, declined to remark. Postal Service spokesperson David Partenheimer stated the company is unaware of any important supply points in Bemidji. “Like every prudent enterprise, we don’t publicly focus on specifics of our enterprise relationships,” he stated.
Partenheimer defended the submit workplace’s file in an electronic mail, whereas conceding “a lot work stays to be carried out.” He added that the submit workplace’s purpose is “to ship mail and packages collectively in an built-in community.” After publication, he added that it “doesn’t prioritize the supply of packages from Amazon or different clients.”
“The Postal Service is in its third yr of the Delivering for America plan,” he stated. “The group continues its deal with bettering service reliability … by modernizing the outmoded and getting old postal community throughout the nation, operational stabilization, and new aggressive product choices for our clients.”
Amazon spokesperson Sam Stephenson stated the corporate shares weekly forecasting information with the Postal Service, which “approves our forecasts.”
“We work instantly with the USPS to steadiness our supply wants with their accessible capability,” Stephenson stated. “We acknowledge that, like us, different main retailers, small companies, and the communities they serve depend on the native USPS to ship, which is why we’ll proceed to collaborate on bundle quantity every week and modify as wanted.”
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Put up. Interim CEO Patty Stonesifer sits on Amazon’s board.
‘No means of maintaining’
In Bemidji, postal staff stated that they had been informed that Amazon was coming to city for years. It lastly occurred one morning in early November, when the submit workplace was flooded with hundreds of Amazon bins and carriers stated they have been informed all of them needed to be delivered by the top of the day.
Carriers who beforehand had delivered dozens of small parcels a day plus paper mail all of a sudden needed to ship between 300 and 500 bins that they stated had beforehand been dealt with by UPS. One mail service stated his mail truck was so filled with packages he might barely see out the left window. Some bins have been so huge they couldn’t match into mail autos. These have been saved on-site for buyer pickup in an space that quickly was overflowing.
For all the additional work, mail carriers weren’t making rather more cash. Rural mail carriers are paid just for the period of time the submit workplace estimates it’ll take them to complete their jobs. And in Bemidji, the routes had been reevaluated in October, simply earlier than Amazon modified the whole lot.
Consequently, “we’re giving freely tons of free labor,” stated Nelson, the service who staged the symbolic strike on Nov. 13. Although mail carriers aren’t legally allowed to strike — their union signed away that proper greater than 100 years in the past — others joined him within the pre-dawn chill, carrying indicators with slogans corresponding to “USPS belongs to the folks, not Amazon.”
Mail carriers take their jobs severely — they take an oath of workplace upon assuming their roles — and really feel badly when the mail doesn’t get to folks, stated three Bemidji postal staff who spoke on the situation of anonymity to guard their jobs.
“It’s laborious to like a job while you watch everybody depend on you and you may’t assist them,” one stated.
‘Personal enterprise takes precedence’
Mel Milender, treasurer of the Eckles Township Rural Fireplace Affiliation, stated the chaos on the submit workplace has been “extraordinarily impactful.” After native governments assured him $400,000 in checks have been within the mail to assist cowl the current buy of $1.3 million in hearth tools, Milender stated, the checks have been nowhere to be discovered.
“We didn’t get mail for 3 days,” Milender stated. “And we needed to pay payments.”
When Milender referred to as the submit workplace, he stated, “They informed me that they needed to take this contract with Amazon, and that folks have been quitting, they usually didn’t have folks to ship the mail and they might get to me once they might.”
Different residents stated they’ve been ready on payments, playing cards from their grandchildren and insurance coverage funds. Although Chris Katko and his spouse dwell simply six blocks from the Bemidji submit workplace, they, too, skilled delays, together with on time-sensitive hospital payments, Katko stated.
When the proprietors of Patterson’s, a neighborhood haberdashery, noticed their mail service, Jay, laden with Amazon packages, they stated they frightened about him — but additionally concerning the checks they have been mailing to distributors. An area bookkeeper began driving 20 miles into city to go to the submit workplace, her husband stated, as a result of “the mail can’t be trusted.”
Mark Fuller, a neighborhood engineer, stated he worries about getting funds from purchasers on time. “If we’re ready on, , [$50,000 or $80,000] or $100,000 and we’re paying 9.75 p.c curiosity on the road of credit score, that may be fairly impactful over time,” stated Fuller, who prefers checks to digital funds to keep away from excessive charges.
Milender is aware of the native carriers are working laborious, he stated, however he thinks the submit workplace might have carried out issues in a different way.
“I can’t imagine a personal enterprise takes precedence over the general public,” he stated. “What bothers me most is that we had no forewarning. The U.S. Postal Service knew that they accepted that contract and may have made positive that they made everyone conscious of it.”
At Raphael’s, it’s clear folks need the issue mounted. A bunch of retired schoolteachers who meet there twice per week have been discussing the way it’s now quicker to order their e-book membership picks from Amazon than from the native bookstore. The mail, they stated, is now so gradual they name it “the Pony Categorical.”
“There are occasions once we don’t even get the mail,” stated Judy Phillips, a retired English trainer, as a result of “they should ship the Amazon.”
Listening to their dialog, an older gentleman who declined to present his title stopped by their desk to share his personal sense of concern.
Amazon “packages take precedence over first-class mail,” the person stated, including: “That’s not proper.”
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