Postal Service Workers Are Shouldering the Burden for Amazon

SteveBlog

Nation Magazine: Every day postal trucks drop off about 4,000 packages at a US Postal Service station in central Tennessee, where they’re unloaded by a team of around six USPS employees. Each person grabs a box, rushes to the only scanning machine, runs the bar code, and then places it in the proper gurney for its route. The process takes … Read More

Amazon deliveries and at-risk workers lead to more accidents and injuries at the Postal Service

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Last week the Postal Service shared some information with the Postal Regulatory Commission about accidents and safety issues.  As one might expect, the increased use of all those recently hired postal workers — 117,000 in 2015 — is leading to more injuries and accidents. Replacing experienced career employees with inexperienced non-career employee comes at a cost both to the Postal … Read More

“We Deliver for Amazon”: The Postal Service’s New Priority

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A former postal worker in Greensboro, North Carolina, named Paul Barbot has written two excellent articles for Alternet about his experiences dealing with Amazon deliveries as a City Carrier Assistant (CCA).  The first of them — “The Horrific New Marriage Between Your Post Office and Amazon Sunday” — was published in February, when Barbot still worked for the Postal Service. … Read More

Giving Away the Store: The Postal Service discounts the mail

SteveBlog

MARK JAMISON In her book Captive Audience:  The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, Susan Crawford describes how the American public has been imprisoned by monopoly arrangements in the delivery of broadband and wireless Internet services. Using pricing and discount strategies, communications corporations have colluded to circumvent competition and make private fiefdoms out of what should … Read More

Premature motion: PRC dismisses bid to view non-public Amazon docs

SteveBlog, Jamison Articles

MARK JAMISON Almost three months ago, I filed a request with the Postal Regulatory Commission seeking access to documents filed under seal in the docket that dealt with the Postal Service’s deal with Amazon to deliver its parcels on Sundays.  Last week, the PRC finally responded to the request. The Commission ruled that my motion was “dismissed without prejudice” as being “premature,” meaning I … Read More

The Washington Post asks, Why not the Amazon Postal Service?

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The Washington Post has apparently gone off the deep end.  It has actually penned an editorial suggesting that Amazon and the Postal Service merge.  “Sure, there are a lot of details to work out; the Postal Service isn’t Amazon’s typical rinky-dink acquisition, and the financials could be challenging even for chief executive Jeff Bezos’s ever-permissive investors. But with no obvious … Read More