USPS Inspector: Amazon Sunday Deliveries Wear Out Workers And Cost More Than They Should

The U.S. Postal Service’s experiment with Sunday deliveries for Amazon is attracting criticism from both workers and the USPS’s own Inspector General, according to eCommerceBytes.

Some of the workers doing Sunday deliveries, who are primarily “non-career employees” (part-timers or regular postal workers picking up extra hours), say they are working 12-hour days and going for weeks without a day off, Geekwire reported.

A report this month by the USPS Office of Inspector General confirms those complaints, and says the extra workload and other problems are actually costing the postal agency more than $350,000 a year on the Sunday deliveries. The Inspector General’s report blames the added costs on managers who aren’t working by the book.

According to the Inspector General’s report, “Operational inefficiencies existed during Sunday parcel deliveries in scanning, sorting, vehicle loading, and using the DRT [routing] software in street delivery at 40 of 134 hubs we visited in four districts. These inefficiencies occurred primarily because management did not always enforce policies and procedures and supervision was inconsistent at some hubs.”

The report added, “As a result, the Postal Service spent 17,446 more hours from June 15 through July 13, 2014, than DRT software required to conduct Sunday delivery operations. By improving efficiency, the Postal Service could reduce operating costs annually by $356,736 for 134 hubs in the districts we visited.”