January 16, 2025
By Scott Reeder
https://www.illinoistimes.com/news-opinion/postal-problems-19628953
Springfield postal workers are bracing for bad news as federal officials ponder moving some functions of Springfield’s packaging and distribution center to St. Louis.
The move would be part of a national effort to consolidate functions within the nation’s mail system. In May, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy paused plans to consolidate centers until January 2025 amid requests from both Congress and local elected officials to stop the postal reorganization.
Now that January has arrived and a new president will soon be sworn in, postal workers are becoming more anxious. Proponents of the move say it will save money, but critics contend it will delay mail delivery. Everyone agrees it will mean fewer jobs in Springfield.
At this point, postal union officials say they have been told nothing.
“If you lose the distribution, you lose your postmark. If you mail any kind of letter (from Springfield) that’s got to be canceled, it’s going to go all the way to St. Louis. And St. Louis is historically always late with mail. Everybody felt that during Christmas time. If anything went through St. Louis, it sat there for 10 to 14 days,” Johnny Bishop, Springfield branch president of the American Postal Workers Union, told Illinois Times. “It will affect people getting their medications. … There are some people who still pay (bills) through the mail. That’s a complete disaster for us.”
U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Springfield, has been one of the more vocal critics of the proposal. She told IT that members of Congress are being kept in the dark about the Postal Service’s immediate plans.
“We right now are below the national average on-time mail delivery,” she said.”Consolidating our distribution centers is just going to further exacerbate this issue. So, legislation I’ve introduced on a bipartisan basis would say you can’t close our distribution centers unless you, at the very least, get our on-time delivery of mail up to the national average.”
Bishop said he believes that post offices are being deliberately understaffed to reduce the quality of service and make the public more open to privatizing the mail.
“We normally get about 35 to 40 (seasonal) employees. And I believe this year we got possibly four. They don’t even want to give us any help for Christmastime. I think it is to get the public discouraged,” Bishop said. “I read social media where a lot of people back us and they understand how busy we are. And then there’s people out there who say, ‘Well, we’re tired of it being a mess. They ought to just privatize it.’ That is their goal, to get the public upset with the post office.”
Budzinski noted that Donald Trump has been open about considering privatization.
“President-elect Trump has specifically said privatizing the USPS is on the table in his administration,” she said. “I think we should take him at his word when he tells us he’s going to do something. That is something he is, at the very least, going to explore.”
If a private company were to deliver the U.S. mail, rural areas would be adversely affected, Budzinski said.
“The USPS has provided good-paying union jobs to the middle class in this country for generations. They have ensured mail delivery to all corners of our country and our rural communities,” she said. “To privatize that would be a disaster. And I will be leading the charge against that in this next Congress if that is something that the President-elect decides to pursue,”
Scott Reeder, a staff writer for Illinois Times, can be reached at sreeder@illinoistimes.com.