Hopefully this holiday season doesn't end up being like the 2020 / 2021 disaster, but being that USPS is already failing to deliver mail in Ohio, I have to admit I'm very concerned for the near-future.  

CLEVELAND, Ohio – A shortage of delivery employees in the U.S. Postal Service has led to slow or no delivery in communities throughout Greater Cleveland, elsewhere in Ohio and across the nation.

It’s a problem that was triggered by the coronavirus pandemic and continues to linger, as the postal service tries to fill open jobs – a task made even more complicated as aging workers retire.

“I think the pandemic really took a toll on the workforce,” Mark Camilli, a national business agent for the National Association of Letter Carriers, said in an interview. The association is the bargaining union for postal delivery workers.

“It’s been really tough for two-and-a-half, going on three years,” Camilli said.

The scenario in Greater Cleveland, where workers are stretched thin to cover for unfilled positions, is also playing out across the state, including in the Columbus and Cincinnati metro areas, Camilli said.

Camilli didn’t have a hard number on how many jobs were open in Ohio or his region. In part, that’s due to having multiple unions representing different groups of workers. Camilli is an agent for the that represents letter carriers. The American Postal Workers Union represents others, such as mail handlers and clerks.

But it’s clear from the job fairs and application workshops the postal service has been holding that just in Ohio there are hundreds and hundreds of job openings, for letter carriers and for support personnel including mail handlers, postal support employees, tractor trailer drivers and automotive technicians..

In Cincinnati in August there were more than 200 city carrier positions open. That month the postal service also announced Columbus needed to fill 160 open jobs. Cleveland was looking to fill more than 300 jobs in various positions when it held a job fair in July, including mail handlers, clerks, tractor trailer operators and city carrier assistants -- the entry level position for new carriers.

At least six other communities also held job fairs this summer.

Naddia N. Dhalai, a spokeswoman for the Postal Service in Ohio, confirmed there were worker shortages, although she said she could not provide specific figures. She suggested cleveland.com seek that information through a Freedom of Information Act filing, a process that generally takes months to complete.

“There are some employee shortages that caused delivery rotation in some areas, but not more than a day,” Dhalai said in an email. “We are flexing our resources, including using overtime and delivering on Sundays.”

Uneven service

Reports of delivery issues have cropped up in communities throughout Greater Cleveland during the pandemic. Various media reports early this year cited complaints from residents in Bedford, Cleveland, Cleveland Heights, Euclid, Parma, University Heights and elsewhere about mail not arriving.

Those delays were attributed principally to staffing shortages.

But they haven’t cleared up yet.

In one Cleveland Heights neighborhood, for example, mail was delayed regularly after a long-time carrier moved to another route. Some days there was no delivery. On other days mail would arrive well into the evening.

Delivery seemed to stabilize over the summer, but recently a resident posted a question on a neighborhood Facebook page: “Are we back to getting no mail delivered?”

Several others responded they hadn’t seen mail in a few days.

On Carroll Avenue this summer in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood residents called WEWS Channel 5 after several days without mail delivery. Since then, service has improved.

At one point, no mail was received for eight consecutive days, Carroll Avenue resident Dean Schaffer told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer in an interview. “I think us being on TV probably made a difference.”

Longtime resident Bob Smith said he was told by the postal service that the regular carrier for the street had been reassigned and that fill-ins were handling delivery until another permanent carrier could be found.

Shaffer said delivery had been consistent lately -- “Nothing to complain about” -- but there was still no regular schedule. He suspects the street is still in rotation.

“You never know when the mail is going to come,” Shaffer said. “Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon.”

A national issue

Staffing shortages have impacted delivery across the nation.

A recent online report from Scripps Howard identified several states, including Ohio, where delays in delivery were occurring. The problem is disconcerting, the report said, because much of America still relies on mail six days a week for deliveries of prescriptions, bills, payments and COVID test kits.

Compounding the problem are employees burning out, working 10- to 12-hour days, 6 days a week. They say many new hires don’t last long.

“We’ve been struggling. We had to overburden our employees,” an Ohio USPS worker told Scripps.

Staffing shortages have impacted delivery across the nation.

A recent online report from Scripps Howard identified several states, including Ohio, where delays in delivery were occurring. The problem is disconcerting, the report said, because much of America still relies on mail six days a week for deliveries of prescriptions, bills, payments and COVID test kits.

Compounding the problem are employees burning out, working 10- to 12-hour days, 6 days a week. They say many new hires don’t last long.

“We’ve been struggling. We had to overburden our employees,” an Ohio USPS worker told Scripps.

DeJoy noted that 200,000 people are expected to retire over the next 10 years. A report in May from the postal service’s Inspector General’s office said that at the end of 2021 there were 516,636 career employees in the Postal Service, with 121,020 (23%) currently eligible to retire.

Competing for workers

In addition to summer job fairs across Ohio, the postal service has continued to seek new employees.

This month, for example, workshops are available every Thursday from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. at the Cleveland Administrative Building on Orange Avenue where people can get help applying for work. Available jobs include city carrier assistants, mail hander assistants, postal support employees, rural carrier associates and tractor trailer operators. Starting salary is between $17.32 and $27.52 per hour.

Cleveland hosted a drive-through job fair in July. Other job fairs were recently held in Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, Delaware, Fairfield, Springfield, Toledo and Westerville for the whole range of job descriptions.

The postal service didn’t provide numbers for how many new applicants those events brought in, nor did it detail any strategies for drawing in workers, particularly younger workers who might be starting careers.

“The USPS is an equal opportunity employer and does not recruit based on age,” Dhalai said in an email. “Everyone is welcome to apply and again, will be afforded an equal opportunity in employment.”

Part of the problem is that the postal service is competing with the rest of the labor market for workers, and its jobs can involve tough work out in the weather, Camilli said.

City letter carriers, for example, lug a bag as they walk their routes in the chill of fall and ice and snow of winter. In the spring, delivery goes on through the rain. And in the heat of summer, workers must beware of dehydration from the heat.

The starting wage for a full-time city carrier is just over $21 an hour – a bit less than $44,000 a year.

“The postal service needs to get more competitive if they’re going to compete for workers,” Camilli said.

Despite worker shortages, the postal service insists it is ready for the heavy holiday delivery season. In a statement last week, it said 41,000 of its 655,000 employees were converted from part-time to full-time this year.

It also said it was aggressively working to hire an additional 28,000 seasonal employees across the country.

“Successfully delivering for the holidays is a cornerstone of our Delivering for America 10-year plan,” DeJoy said in the statement. “Thanks to the 655,000 women and men of the Postal Service, recent investments and operational precision improvements, we are ready to be the most used delivery provider this holiday season.”