• The US Postal Service’s new Postmaster Normal has proven new expense-conserving procedures that could gradual down mail company.
• Mail carriers are getting advised to go away mail at the rear of at distribution facilities alternatively than using late visits, taking extra excursions, or logging additional time, in accordance to memos initially described on by The Washington Submit and subsequently reviewed by Business enterprise Insider. 
• The Postal Services is on fiscally shaky ground because of to the coronavirus pandemic, with Organization Insider earlier reporting that it may perhaps operate out of funds by the close of September. 
• Visit Company Insider’s homepage for more stories.

As it struggles to continue to be afloat for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, the US Postal Assistance has carried out “challenging” value-slicing actions that may sluggish mail supply, The Washington Write-up very first noted. 

The alterations, recognized by the USPS’s new Postmaster Normal, Louis Dejoy, have been disseminated Monday in memos that have been viewed by The Submit, verified by the American Postal Personnel Union, and corroborated to The Publish by 3 men and women with information of the files who spoke less than the condition of anonymity. Business Insider also received and reviewed the memos.

In the paperwork, Dejoy instructed workers to cease logging time beyond regulation and to leave mail at distribution facilities if it would delay their route.

“If the crops operate late, they will retain the mail for the up coming day,” reads a single of the paperwork. “If you get mail late and your carriers are long gone and you can’t get the mail out with out OT, it will remain for the next working day.”

This new directive goes towards the teaching postal staff ordinarily acquire, which claims they should really stay away from leaving letters guiding and need to make positive goods are delivered promptly, even if that means building several trips, The Write-up notes.

“1 facet of these improvements that may be tricky for workers is that — temporarily — we may perhaps see mail left driving or mail on the workroom flooring or docks,” a second memo states, incorporating that “any mail remaining driving will have to be effectively claimed.”

In the similar document, the USPS stated that late excursions and further trips — which it estimates price tag the agency around $200 million in “added fees” — are now prohibited. 

The price tag-cutting procedures arrive as the USPS is scarcely scraping by during the coronavirus pandemic. In spite of a ton of package deal deliveries, overall letter-mail volumes have plummeted due to the fact the pandemic commenced and corporations shuttered. Even with a $10 billion line of credit rating granted by the CARES Act, the Postal Support has found alone in dire straits — as of May perhaps, estimates were being that the agency could run out of money by the end of September. 

While acknowledging the Postal Service’s rocky financial posture, Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Employees Union, sharply criticized the new steps — arguing they hit at the quite core of the agency’s mission, which is to “present prompt, reliable, and productive company.”

“These supplemental moves by the new Postmaster Standard seem to be sending the opposite concept, which is that mail can wait around,” Dimondstein informed Company Insider in a cellphone phone on Tuesday. “It will likely undermine the mission we’re committed to. And in conditions of the folks of the country, it will possible guide to slower, much less prompt, and less dependable, and seriously significantly less successful services.”

When questioned about the memos, a spokesperson for the USPS instructed Business enterprise Insider that the company is “acquiring a enterprise approach” to keep on being economically secure when offering “reliable, affordable, risk-free and protected shipping and delivery of mail, deals and other communications to all Us residents as a critical component of the nation’s vital infrastructure.”

“When the over-all approach is not nonetheless finalized, it will definitely include things like new and innovative techniques for us to satisfy our mission, and we will concentrate right away on effectiveness and items that we can command, which include adherence to the powerful functioning designs that we have produced,” the spokesperson stated. 

This story has been up to date with remark from the US Postal Service.