There are 10 things the Office of Inspector General with the United States Postal Service found that our Colorado mountain mailrooms could do to help get things back on track because as we’ve been reporting for years now: they desperately need help.
The report (which is pretty interesting if you’re a data nerd) took in data from 14 different mail rooms between October of 2022 to July of 2023, the vast majority of them in Colorado’s high country (places like Buena Vista, Dillon, Aspen, Glenwood Springs, Leadville, Steamboat Springs, Vail, Westcliffe, Grand Junction) and peppered in a few mailrooms that are a bit closer to more civilization (Boulder, Pueblo, Wheat Ridge.) Right away the inspector general was able to find consistent issues with staffing and employee retention, not to mention training and general success in delivering packages and mail on time.
The average time to deliver mail, from first class and marketing mail to packages and priority packages was below the rest of the state’s average time, not to mention below the national average (page 6.) Your CBS News Colorado reporter in the mountains Spencer Wilson asked Todd Watson, Audit Director at the Inspector General of the Post Office if the problems came from a collected source; pay, or the lack thereof.
“We recommended the Postal Service look into the feasibility of paying these people in mountain towns based on the locality,” Watson said. “The post office disagreed with that recommendation. And so we’re going to have to follow up through what we call the audit resolution process, where we’ll meet with them and we’ll try and identify an alternative course for them to kind of implement and implement that recommendation.”
Money seems to have the potential to help these struggling mailrooms though. The reason the report suggests higher pay is in part retention issues with USPS losing staff due to competition for other better-paying jobs, as well as workload. With a revolving door of staff members (page 8) it’s hard to keep people trained up and working the mail room efficiently. The report found that out of the 14 spots they checked, almost one-third of them had postmasters in charge who had never gone through the formal training for their position (and they were leading their teams, in some cases, incorrectly, leading to more work and backups on deliveries.) Mismanagement at the Vail post office had employees incorrectly reporting delayed mail and large e-commerce company pallets were not scanned when they arrived, as is required. This was because the staff was not trained correctly.
Another huge battle for the USPS is taking care of the brave souls who do stick it out (in the report, almost all mailrooms had trouble keeping new hires past 3 months.) The intense workload to keep communities getting their mail regularly falls on just a few people depending on the post office, and those people are working non-stop, especially during the holiday season.
“We mentioned in our report there were several locations that talked about some of the worst impacts affecting their mental health, their experiencing burnout,” Watson explained. “There’s just too much work and not enough people to help out.”
Now the I.G. will be checking in with the mailrooms in the report by April 30, 2024 to make sure they have taken on the recommendations to help get things back on track. As for the recommendations USPS rejected (more pay) the inspector general will go back to the table to see what can be done to get the situation solved.
