APWU Calls on PRC To Investigate Delayed Mail

APWU Executive Vice President Debby Szeredy called on the Postal Regulatory Commission to conduct an investigation into delayed mail at the agency’s public meeting on Dec. 11.

Szeredy described a Dec. 7 CNN report about a missing 16 year old girl from Conway NH who wrote to her mother within two weeks of her disappearance.

The letter was dated Oct. 22 and was postmarked Oct. 23, but it wasn’t delivered to Abigail Hernandez’s mother until Nov. 6, more than two weeks later, federal and state authorities told reporters at a news conference.

“I am a mother and if my son was abducted and he had tried to reach me through a letter I would be outraged that it took two weeks to reach me,” Szeredy told commissioners. “What upsets me is that I know that a plant in New Hampshire was consolidated.”

Mail processing plants are being consolidated all over the country, she said, and have adversely affected the mail service in a very drastic way.  The APWU has received reports of lengthy mail delays and of what appear to be management attempts to hide the delays, Szeredy told the panel.

“I am requesting that the PRC investigate why Abigail’s letter took over two weeks to reach her mother.”

Szeredy also reminded commissioners about Tyson Barnette, a 26 year old Letter Carrier who was murdered on Nov. 22 while delivering mail on a dark street in Maryland at 7:30 p.m. Consolidations have forced Letter Carriers all over the country to deliver mail late at night, she said.

“You are now seeing the USPS privatize our work, take away good union postal jobs, destroying our service network, and closing post offices to place them in retail stores,” she said.  “Postal workers are highly trained to secure the mail, protect the mail, and provide the best service to our customers.

“We have to save our service and it’s not only my job, but it is the PRC’s job too,” she said.