Postal workers in Tennessee are urging the public to support them as they struggle to keep delivering mail while sorting machines get removed, employee overtime is cut and mail piles up at distribution centers and post offices. Five processing machines that sort mail at a rate of 38,000 pieces per hour have been removed from the Memphis area in the past 30 days, U.S. Postal Service union representatives said Tuesday. Another important machine that sorts larger pieces of mail also has been taken offline in Memphis. “We connect the dots in America through this beloved service,” Melvin Richardson, president of the American Postal Workers Union Local 96, said during a news conference in Memphis. “When you take the resources away, you make it impossible to complete the mission that [the U.S. Postal Service is] here to do for the American public.” The U.S. Postal Service has sent Tennessee and 45 other states a heightened warning that mail-in ballots for the November election may not arrive in time to be counted.
Tennessee postal workers struggling amid cuts, backlogs
Aug 19, 2020 | 5:00 AM