Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said Friday he doesn’t plan to bring back any decommissioned mail sorting machines.
“There’s no intention to do that. They’re not needed,” he told Sen. Gary Peters, Michigan Democrat.
Recent media reports have shown the USPS intended to put 671 high-volume sorting machines out of service.
The Postal Service said that those removals were part of a routine policy of moving around sorting resources every year.
“”The mail volume, you know, is dropping very rapidly and especially during the COVID crisis. And package volume is growing, and when I spoke with the team — when this too became —got a lot of air play, we really are moving these machines out to make room to process packages. We still have hundreds of these machines everywhere and still not any kind of drain on the capacity,” Mr. DeJoy said.
He also claimed to not know anything about the removal of about 700 mail collection boxes, which he said are also routine but decided with other Postal Service leaders to stop that until after the election.
Despite Mr. DeJoy’s assurance that those policies are on pause, it isn’t clear that any resources pulled will be restored.
Sen. Maggie Hassan, New Hampshire Democrat, grilled Mr. DeJoy on why there’s a report about the Postal Service’s maintenance director telling local workers not to reconnect any decommissioned sorting machines.
Mr. DeJoy said he had “no idea” about it, but “I’m sure there’s logic behind that.”
Ms. Hassan pushed back, arguing that is risky to rely on only a handful of machines with any technical difficulties forcing all mail to pause until its fixed.
“By refusing to restart or replace these machines you’re really sabotaging the postal service’s ability to sort mail efficiently and you’re undermining postal workers’ commitment to that everyday delivery,” she said.
Mr. DeJoy said he didn’t agree with the senator but would respond in writing to her request for a plan to put some machines back in service.
• Gabriella Muñoz can be reached at gmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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