More Problems Arising in Partnership Between the Postal Service and Amazon

The Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) has been investigating the United States Postal Service’s (USPS) fiscal problems and business foibles.  With a loss of $5.5 billion in fiscal year 2014 and more than $45 billion in unfunded liabilities, taxpayers will surely be on the hook if the USPS can’t meet its financial obligations.  TPA has also been concerned about USPS’s expansion into the grocery delivery business and the delivery of Amazon packages.  TPA submitted public comments to the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC) voicing concerns of mission creep and intrusion into the private sector.  Despite those warnings, the PRC approved the expansion of the grocery delivery service. Now there are claims that the Amazon packages are getting preferential treatment at the expense of their core mission of delivering the mail.

Peter Fricke of The Daily Caller News Foundation reported on some troubling accounts of delivering packages for Amazon from a former USPS employee:

A former postal worker is alleging that preferential treatment of Amazon packages by the United State Postal Service is part of a larger trend toward valuing corporate partners over regular citizens.

In an article for AlterNet, Paul Barbot asserts that because of a secretive arrangement between the USPS and Amazon, “an Amazon package trumps all others received to deliver that day; even the ones that are more profitable to the postal service.”

The Daily Caller News Foundation article related a chilling story:

Barbot relates one instance in which he was instructed to return mail to the station, leading to a confrontation with the evening shift manager, who told him, “there better not be any Amazon packages in there!” Upon discovering two very small Amazon packages among the mail, the manager complained that, “great! Now I’m going to have to take these back out!”

In contrast to the manager’s concern for the Amazon packages, Barbot says he found it odd “that she left many Priority packages which the shippers paid top dollar to have delivered,” especially since they have a much higher profit margin for the USPS than do Amazon packages.

It is becoming clear that the negotiated service agreement (NSA) that USPS has entered into with Amazon may be putting USPS and their employees under the control of Amazon. Mr. Barbot has written multiple posts alleging some serious wrongdoing by the USPS in order to “appease” their NSA partner. Recently Mr. Barbot discussed the arrangement and the creation of City Carrier Assistants (CCA), the “low-wage, non-career, complement workforce within the USPS”:

The postal service entered into the largest NSA to date with e-commerce giant Amazon.com, specifying that Amazon Prime packages would be delivered on Sundays. This gives Amazon a monopoly on Sunday deliveries while making USPS management salivate over the potential financial gains that could be made off the backs of those in the CCA position. It is important to note that all the work brought in by NSAs is being doled out only to the CCA position—the CCAs career counterparts have been left unscathed by this new development.

What started out as a partnership to deliver groceries, which should have never happened in the first place, might very well have turned out to be the USPS giving Amazon preferential treatment and using taxpayer money to benefit their services over the mission of the agency to deliver mail from one postal service customer to another.  All of this is happening while the USPS hemorrhages money.  True USPS reform means greater transparency and a return to their core mission of delivering mail.