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The American postal service (USPS) works to meet our Shipping needs All year round, but the importance of the agency becomes even more apparent during the holidays, while we stress at the idea of obtaining online orders and gifts shipped. In fact, the USPS generally prepares all year round for its peak broadcast season, which occurs from Thanksgiving to New Years. It turns out that the efforts of the postal service may not have been sufficient for Manage the sharp increase in demand this year, because the agency is now criticized for delivery delays and "unacceptable" conditions.

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Recent complaints concerning missing mail have accumulated in several parts of the country. In North Carolina, Rocky Mount Resident David Radford said Wral News These postal services in the region are "sporadic", and it fears that delivery delays negatively affect the holidays.

"We command a lot of our Amazon belongings," said Radford. "If they do not bring these packages ... These are gifts from grandchildren."

Similar problems have an impact Angie Craig After talking about "persistent mail delays" in the region several times already in the past, the Star grandstand reported . "Unfortunately, I think the problems are increasing again," Craig told the newspaper in a new interview.

But a large part of the most recent reactions are out of Montana. On December 6, the senator Jumper wrote a letter to the president Joe Biden On "continuous concerns ... on delayed postal delivery in various parts of the State".

Meanwhile, Minnesota senators Amy Klobuchant And Tina Smith Are also "working to increase transparency and responsibility surrounding delays with the post office to increase the speed and reliability of USP", according to a December 8 x post from Klobuchar.

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It is not only the delays in delivery which are a concern. Smith recently said Local radio station wcco that postal employees of certain parts of Montana are also faced with difficult working conditions.

"This is what I find particularly unacceptable: people working 12 hours a day, six days a week. They drive their own vehicles, and they are not paid for this additional work they do," she explained. "It's completely unfair for them."

Three separate postal services in Missoula, Montana, spoke with the Missoulian This month about their Experiences in the workplace , saying that the environment is now the worst it has ever been. According to workers, there are not enough substitute carriers to allow them to work only five days a week. And if the carriers take leave, they often return to a huge bunch of unvilled mail, they still have to go out - which means that they are overworked in both directions.

"It's hostile here," an employee told the newspaper. "Some people are not brought to their routes. Everyone is crazy. We will have standing meetings, people are shouting. It's crazy here. It is because we are all worked on to death and we are tired . It's a circus. There is an atmosphere of "you can't take days off". You can, but people will go crazy. "

Smith told WCCO that the problem with overworked post staff is to create a snowball effect in which more workers are leaving and that delivery delays are exacerbated accordingly.

Kim Frum , a specialist in USPS strategic communications, told the Missoulian that the agency works to solve the problem.

"It is a well-known fact that the postal service faces personnel and hiring challenges in Montana and on a national scale," she said. "The need is particularly urgent in most areas for mail managers, clerks and message factors overcome personnel problems."

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But in a December 11 Press release , the USPS said its service performance "remains stable" on its entire network. According to the latest delivery measures, the agency took an average of 2.6 days to deliver a part or a package across the country during the ninth week of the first quarter for its 2024 fiscal year.

But for the whole first quarter - which took place from October 1 to December 1 - the amount of the mail delivered in time dropped for the three main categories compared to the last quarter. There was a decrease of 3.9% for first -class mail, a decrease of 1.2% for marketing mail and a decrease of 2.8% for periodicals, according to the press release. AE0FCC31AE342FD3A1346EBB1F342FCB

In addition to personnel difficulties, the agency has also recognized other problems that have contributed to recent delivery delays.

"Operational disruptions within our network, in particular the insurking of several surface transfer centers after a bankruptcy of the supplier, and the prolonged closure of a critical treatment center of St. Louis, Missouri, due to a Leakage of mercury of a package shipped illegally, which leads to a long period of decontamination, to have and will continue to have a negative impact on our service performance scores until the end of this month, "added the USPS in His communication.

In addition, the postal service noted that even if it will continue to undergo a request for volume of packages throughout the peak holiday season, as expected, it has always "effectively managed" this increase in the midst of disturbances in order to to deliver the mail and packages to 98% of the population of the nation in less than three days.

"The very low percentage of mail that is not delivered within this period is often the result of broader endowment and hiring problems within the local economies that we work aggressively to resolve," said the agency . "American public and American companies may and should be convinced that their mail and their packages will arrive where they must be timely during this busy season."

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