Lost in the mail – Budget cuts, Congressional meddling force local carriers to work through the night to deliver mail
Letter carriers across the Beach Cities have been working past dark in recent weeks. A blue headlamp bobs along the sidewalk in North Redondo, weaving down driveways, in-and-out between parked cars, and across streets. The postal carrier wearing the lamp is heard opening the metal locks of mailboxes and prying free rusty hinges to deliver the day’s mail. As she walks back to her truck, the sky fades from dark blue to black. She will be walking the streets delivering mail until well after dark. Change is afoot within the United States Postal Service, and across the nation mail carriers are carrying the brunt of this change. A combination of financial strain and the implementation of new labor-saving technology at sorting stations has resulted in fewer carriers working longer hours. “Recently, the U.S. Postal Service went through some route adjustments,” said Richard Maher a USPS spokesperson, adding that the Redondo Beach branch is implementing a new way of sorting larger pieces of mail, like catalogues and legal-sized envelopes, in the order each carrier delivers his or her route. Called a Flats Sequencing System (FSS) and now located at the Los Angeles central USPS facility, it…
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