Rural Mail Carrier Workers Shortage

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Severe Shortage of Rural Mail Carriers

When I first started at the USPS over 19 years ago, I can remember having to take the civil service aptitude tests and being placed on a “waiting list” for future job opening with the US Postal Service. My oh my how things have changed! I feel like nowadays, if you have a pulse, you are eligible to work as a rural carrier. No felonies in the last few months? You’re good to go! Only convicted of 3rd degree manslaughter? When can you start?

If your office is anything like the one I work in, you are encountering the same shortage of rural mail carriers including RCA’s and ARC’s. This is a serious problem that needs to be addressed as I fear it’s only going to get worse.

Not only does this shortage of rural carriers cause added stress and additional work hours to those of us who still show up for work every day  but it leads to mail delivery delays, angry customers, angry workers and should be a wake up call for those in USPS management.

Worker morale at the USPS has hit an all-time low at our office and I’m betting it’s the same at your post office and around the country. Whatever happened to those worker surveys the USPS used to hand out every 3 months? We haven’t seen any at our post office for at least 6 months and I’m sure it’s because management knows how bad things have gotten and want to pretend that all is OK by not having to read the poor results that they are guaranteed to see if they do hand out another survey.

This past holiday season at our post office was brutal. The amount of Amazon packages has gotten out of control and nobody in management seems to realize that what they thought was going to be the “savior of the USPS” is going to come back to bite them. USPS was not equipped to handle the volume of packages that Amazon is flooding us with and this is leading to a number of negative impacts to our workers that far outweighs any benefits they may claim it is bringing to the bottom line at the USPS.

Let’s face it. Things need to change or the situation is only going to get worse for life as a rural mail carrier. I have shared some thoughts and ideas with my co-workers that I’ll write about in an upcoming post on this site.