[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                  WAITING ON THE MAIL: POSTAL SERVICE
                   STANDARD DROPS IN CHICAGO AND THE
                            SURROUNDING AREA

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                 SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS

                                 OF THE

                   COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                            OCTOBER 15, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-47

                               __________

      Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Reform
      
 [GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]     


                       Available at: govinfo.gov,
                         oversight.house.gov or
                             docs.house.gov
                             
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
46-023 PDF                 WASHINGTON : 2022                     
          
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                   COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND REFORM

                CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York, Chairwoman

Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of   James Comer, Kentucky, Ranking 
    Columbia                             Minority Member
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts      Jim Jordan, Ohio
Jim Cooper, Tennessee                Paul A. Gosar, Arizona
Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia         Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Raja Krishnamoorthi, Illinois        Jody B. Hice, Georgia
Jamie Raskin, Maryland               Glenn Grothman, Wisconsin
Ro Khanna, California                Michael Cloud, Texas
Kweisi Mfume, Maryland               Bob Gibbs, Ohio
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York   Clay Higgins, Louisiana
Rashida Tlaib, Michigan              Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Katie Porter, California             Pete Sessions, Texas
Cori Bush, Missouri                  Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
Danny K. Davis, Illinois             Andy Biggs, Arizona
Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida    Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Peter Welch, Vermont                 Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Henry C. ``Hank'' Johnson, Jr.,      Scott Franklin, Florida
    Georgia                          Jake LaTurner, Kansas
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland           Pat Fallon, Texas
Jackie Speier, California            Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
Robin L. Kelly, Illinois             Byron Donalds, Florida
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan
Mark DeSaulnier, California
Jimmy Gomez, California
Ayanna Pressley, Massachusetts
Mike Quigley, Illinois

                     Russell Anello, Staff Director
  Wendy Ginsberg, Subcommittee on Government Operations Staff Director
                    Amy Stratton, Deputy Chief Clerk

                      Contact Number: 202-225-5051

                  Mark Marin, Minority Staff Director
                                 ------                                

                 Subcommittee on Government Operations

                 Gerald E. Connolly, Virginia, Chairman
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of   Jody B. Hice, Georgia Ranking 
    Columbia                             Minority Member
Danny K. Davis, Illinois             Fred Keller, Pennsylvania
John P. Sarbanes, Maryland           Andrew Clyde, Georgia
Brenda L. Lawrence, Michigan         Andy Biggs, Arizona
Stephen F. Lynch, Massachsetts       Nancy Mace, South Carolina
Jamie Raskin, Maryland               Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Ro Khanna, California                Yvette Herrell, New Mexico
Katie Porter, California
                        
                        C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hearing held on October 15, 2021.................................     1

                               Witnesses

Mr. Eddie Morgan, Jr., Executive Postmaster, U.S. Postal Service
Oral Statement...................................................    18
Ms. Melinda Perez, Deputy Assistant Inspector General, USPS 
  Office of Inspector General
Oral Statement...................................................    20
Mr. Mack Julion, President, National Association of Letter 
  Carriers
Oral Statement...................................................    22

Written opening statements and statements for the witnesses are 
  available on the U.S. House of Representatives Document 
  Repository at: docs.house.gov.

                           Index of Documents

Documents entered into the record for this hearing, and Questions 
  for the Record, QFR's are listed below.

  * Postal Service Office of Inspector General Report; submitted 
  by Rep. Rush.

  * Reports regarding audit on mail delivering and customer 
  service; operational changes to mail delivery; nationwide 
  service performance; and service performance first-class single 
  piece letter mail; submitted by Chairman Connolly and Rep. 
  Rush.

  * Comments regarding individuals' concerns of Debra 
  Silverstein, two alderman, and Maria Haddon; submitted by Rep. 
  Schakowsky.

  * Statements for the record from the National Newspaper 
  Association; submitted by Rep. Connolly.

  * Letters regarding constituent concerns; submitted by Rep. 
  Davis.

  * Questions for the Record: to Morgan-USPS; submitted by 
  Chairman Connolly.

  * Questions for the Record: to Perez-UPSP; submitted by 
  Chairman Connolly.

The documents are available at: docs.house.gov.

 
                  WAITING ON THE MAIL: POSTAL SERVICE
                   STANDARD DROPS IN CHICAGO AND THE
                            SURROUNDING AREA

                              ----------                              


                        Friday, October 15, 2021

                   House of Representatives
                  Committee on Oversight and Reform
                      Subcommittee on Government Operations
                                                   Washington, D.C.

    The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:04 a.m. 
C.T., in Everett McKinley Dirksen U.S. Courthouse, 219 South 
Dearborn Street, Chicago, Illinois, and via Zoom. The Hon. 
Gerald E. Connolly (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
    Present: Representatives Connolly, Davis, Lawrence, Khanna, 
Porter, Krishnamoorthi, Kelly, Quigley, Rush, Schakowsky, 
Foster, Schneider, Casten, Garcia, Underwood, Newman, Maloney 
(ex officio), and Keller.
    Also present: Senator Durbin.
    Mr. Connolly. The Postal Service serves every household and 
business across this Nation every day, or at least it is 
supposed to. It employs 630,000 individuals who live in every 
single congressional district. According to Pew Research, 91 
percent of Americans have a favorable view of the Postal 
Service, making it the most beloved and popular Federal agency.
    During the coronavirus pandemic, the Postal Service's value 
to this Nation has proven greater than ever. A June 2020 Harris 
Poll found that the Postal Service ranked as the, quote, 
``single most essential company to Americans during the 
pandemic,'' end quote, outranking companies that manufacture 
PPE and sanitizers.
    According to a recent inspector general report, however, 
the Postal Service is not meeting the needs of every customer. 
In fact, the Postal Service Office of Inspector General found 
that the Postal Service only met service performance targets 
for 3 of 33 products in Fiscal Year 2020. Why are service 
performance targets important? The inspector general said that 
missing delivery goals, quote, ``could result in late fees and 
even a drop in credit ratings for consumers, as well as a 
disruption in cash-flow for businesses,'' end quote.
    They added that late deliveries may drive mailers away from 
using the Postal Service to more nimble electronic options. 
And, the IG added, quote, ``Once a consumer moves their bill 
payment online, they may be unlikely to go back to using the 
mail,'' end quote.
    Simply put, missing service standards hurts those who rely 
on the Postal Service and is ultimately a death sentence for 
the struggling agency. Despite the importance of meeting 
service standards, in the first three quarters of Fiscal Year 
2021, 3-to-5-day mail has been delivered on time only 61 
percent. In the first three quarters of Fiscal Year 2021, 
magazines were delivered on time only 64 percent. And, while 
service standards have improved in recent months, those 
improvements are likely attributable to a drastic decrease in 
service standard targets. So, in other words, when Louis DeJoy, 
the Postmaster General, noticed we weren't meeting targets, he 
lowered the targets.
    We're here in Chicago today because this area is among the 
hardest hit by substandard delivery and because Chicago is a 
city with a storied postal history. Charles Lindbergh once 
actually flew a postal plane here in Chicago. Our history goes 
back to 1831 with the appointment of Chicago's first postmaster 
general, an illustrious predecessor of yours, Mr. Morgan.
    By 1864, Chicago began at home mail delivery with the 
innovation of letter carriers. By the turn of the 20th century, 
Chicago's big businesses, like Sears and Montgomery Ward, 
relied on the post office to deliver their catalogs and 
advertisements that changed retail in America, paving the way 
for what is today a $1.6 trillion postal industry that employs 
7.3 million people.
    In 1966, massive mail delays in Chicago prompted 
congressional investigations, which led in 1971 to the law 
creating the U.S. Postal Service as an independent 
establishment of the executive branch of government. Today's 
hearing continues a robust and important tradition of Postal 
Service oversight by Congress.
    If you look at the screen--and hopefully see something 
other than me--there we go. This tells you a lot of what we 
need to know. We need to know why, in Chicago, on-time delivery 
rates dropped 7.8 percent during the third quarter when 
compared to last year's delivery rates. And this calculation 
does not factor in the postal services reduced delivery 
standards.
    In the slide on the screen, you can see that COVID-19 was 
declared a public health emergency in late January 2020, but 
service standards did not start to plummet until July. So,the 
idea that, well, this is all due to the pandemic is not borne 
out by the fact that from January to July that is not what 
happened, and arguably that was the worst of the pandemic 
because we were in strict lockdowns. There were strict 
regulations, strict measures being employed to try to keep 
people safe. We didn't have vaccines, and, yet, delivery did 
pretty well until July.
    As the slide also shows, these massive drops in service in 
Chicago are substantial and placed the city well below the 
national on-time average, but they're not the worst in the 
Nation. Baltimore has the largest reduction in service 
standards in the country, and you can see that with that very 
bottom line. That's Baltimore.
    In quarter two of fiscal 2021, two-day mail delivery in 
Baltimore was on time only slightly more than half the time, 
and 3-to-5-day delivery was on time only 32.4 percent. We 
expect and demand more from our Postal Service. To do that, we 
need to provide it the resources and staffing it requires to 
meet customer needs. Instead, we're witnessing service delay 
degradation and price hikes.
    Postmaster General DeJoy continues to make consequential 
and damaging operational changes in the Postal Service that 
affect postal delivery nationwide, and he repeatedly has done 
so without conducting the data analyses or customer engagements 
required to ensure he's not causing unwitting damage. I've 
written four letters just this year to the postmaster general 
and the Board of Governors of the Postal Service expressing 
grave concerns about these management decisions, fleet 
contracts, and conflicts of ethical concern.
    I am particularly concerned about his 10-year plan, which 
reduces service standards further and increases prices, a novel 
business model if successful. The Postal Regulatory 
Commission's advisory opinion of that plan to reduce delivery 
standards stated, and I quote: It is not clear that the 
tradeoff between financial viability and maintaining high-
quality service standards is reasonable, unquote.
    DeJoy's actions have, I think, contributed significantly to 
the ability of Chicago--in deteriorating Chicago's post offices 
and mail deliveries in order to meet customers' needs.
    According to the Postal Service Office of Inspector 
General, four of Chicago's busiest post offices had difficulty 
grasping the scope of their own problems. If you look at the 
screen again, you'll see a table from a recent OIG report 
showing that four Chicago area post offices undercounted or 
delayed mail in their facilities by 59,752 pieces, a 95-percent 
undercount, or, in other words, they only got 5 percent right.
    And, on the next slide, you can see that these same post 
offices underreported nondelivered mail by a 98-percent rate of 
under reporting. In other words, they only got 2 percent, which 
is kind of stunning. These are letters and packages we're 
talking about from family members to celebrate holidays and 
birthdays and anniversaries. They are bill payments that 
generate late fees for those who are trying to pay on time 
during a pandemic, I might add. These are paychecks people rely 
on to keep food on the table. We cannot allow this to continue.
    Today, we've got witnesses who can help us define the root 
problems at these Chicago area postal facilities, and we have 
witnesses who need to be part of designing and implementing 
solutions.
    The issues plaguing Chicago, however, should not be viewed 
as anomalies, unfortunately. These service delays are occurring 
throughout the United States. We're going to work together as 
colleagues to solve these problems and to hopefully change the 
governance of the Postal Service to ensure that we have a Board 
of Governors and a postmaster general who are, in fact, 
dedicated to the mission, which is delivering mail and packages 
on a timely and efficient basis to every household and every 
business in America every day.
    Thank you.
    I now call on the ranking minority member, Mr. Keller, who 
is on virtually.
    Thank you for joining us, Mr. Keller. You are now 
recognized for an opening statement.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you, Chairman. I appreciate being able to 
be here today. Although it's virtually, I appreciate being able 
to participate.
    Since the founding of our Republic, the United States 
Postal Service has been charged with one of the oldest and most 
important functions of Federal Government. In many ways, it was 
the Postal Service that made the earliest states, including my 
home state of Pennsylvania, the second state, become united 
because we could communicate across the country. Americans 
around the country rely on the Postal Service to deliver to 
over 160 million delivery points six days a week for their 
medications, bills, and any other kind of correspondence.
    Today's hearing is meant to examine the causes of service 
delays and how the Postal Service plans to address them. And 
the premise is that service delays directly correspond to 
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's tenure in 2020, let's make it 
perfectly clear, the post office has had issues far before the 
current postmaster general has begun his service with the post 
office. I'm not here to defend anyone or the Postal Service. I 
think there are a lot of things that need to be improved at the 
Postal Service since it lost $9.2 billion last year.
    And I know the ranking member of the Oversight Committee, 
Mr. Comer, and Chairwoman Maloney are working closely with the 
Postal Service and the Postmaster General DeJoy to craft a 
bipartisan solution to the problems the Postal Service is 
facing. However, we're having this hearing to supposedly 
examine the root causes of service delays at the Postal Service 
without actually having anyone from the Postal Service 
leadership explain what is being done.
    Republicans are focused on reforming the Postal Service, 
and I look forward to the suggestions that today's witnesses 
may have. As for the correlation between mail delays and 
Postmaster General DeJoy's tenure as postmaster general, 
there's another thing that began in 2020: the COVID-19 
pandemic. Canceled mail delivery flights, upwards of 14,000 UPS 
or United States postal workers calling in sick with COVID 
symptoms, a surge in online shopping, and a fundamental shift 
in the economy all push the Postal Service infrastructure and 
network to the brink.
    Are we going to ignore the pandemic to pretend the shift in 
Postal Service was just because of Postmaster DeJoy's things he 
tried? Are we trying to do this just to try and score political 
points?
    That approach lacks common sense. The problems that we've 
seen in the Postal Service, whether it's revenue or service, 
have been going on before that.
    When it comes down to tough tasks, even in tough years like 
2020, like distributing 99 percent of election mail on time, 
the Postal Service has delivered. While conspiracy theories 
about moving mailboxes in the middle of the night or sabotaging 
a Presidential election using the Postal Service were being 
pushed by Members of Congress, the men and women of the Postal 
Service did their jobs, and they did it well.
    I hope this hearing will be a real conversation about the 
Postal Service and how they can best serve both rural regions, 
like Pennsylvania's 12th congressional District, as well as 
urban areas, like Chicago. It's not the job of Congress to go 
to every city or town experiencing a slowdown in mail, and do 
the Postal Service's job for them. The issues affecting Chicago 
mail are part of a larger, mostly systemic issues in the Postal 
Service. We can keep playing partisan games like demanding the 
postmaster general or the Board of Governors be fired, but that 
isn't going to solve the problems facing people from Chicago, 
Pennsylvania, Illinois, or any other Americans.
    I'm encouraged to see the chair and the ranking member of 
the Oversight Committee working together with the postmaster 
general to come up with real solutions to fix the Postal 
Service. And I hope this hearing today will contribute to that 
effort and not devolve into a blame game. Again, if we look at 
what has been going on with the Postal Service, it didn't just 
sort of happen overnight. They have been losing money for 
years, and we need to make sure that we get to real solutions 
that will benefit the people that work at the Postal Service 
and the American people that rely on it for timely delivering 
of services, of mail, medications, whatever anyone may choose 
to use the mail for. Thank you.
    And I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Keller.
    And thank you for your opening statement.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished chairwoman of 
the full committee, the Committee of Oversight and Reform, 
Chairwoman Maloney, for her opening statement.
    Chairwoman Maloney, welcome.
    Mrs. Maloney. Thank you so much, Chairman Connolly, for 
holding this important hearing----
    Mr. Connolly. Excuse me one second, Madam Chairwoman. We 
want to turn your volume up.
    Mrs. Maloney. OK.
    Mr. Connolly. There you go.
    Mrs. Maloney. Thank you, Chairman Connolly, for holding 
this important hearing and Congressman Danny Davis for 
requesting the hearing. The Postal Service is one of our 
Nation's most cherished institutions. Our dedicated postal 
employees deliver to 161 million locations six days a week 
regardless of the weather. The Postal Service binds our Nation 
together in a way that no other institution can and ensures 
that millions of Americans have access to the medications and 
other materials they need every day.
    Unfortunately, as we all know well, the Postal Service's 
performance has been slow and often unreliable since Postmaster 
General DeJoy made changes last summer without testing them 
first and without communicating fully with employees or 
customers.
    In many of our districts, we are hearing from constituents 
about significant delays in the delivery of mail, medicines, 
food, and other supplies. These delays are especially 
concerning and potentially life threatening to affect many 
Americans, impacting many people who rely heavily on the Postal 
Service for essential items. While some of these changes were 
reversed, delivery has remained unacceptably slow ever since, 
particularly, in cities like Chicago and Baltimore.
    We understand that the pandemic has made staffing difficult 
for the Postal Service and that it has been facing record-
breaking package volumes, particularly during last year's peak 
season in December. But these issues are not insurmountable and 
the recent delays are unacceptable. In fact, it is the 
responsibility of a Postal Service, and Postmaster General 
DeJoy in particular, to find ways to overcome these 
difficulties to get the mail delivered on time.
    It is--to do this, it is critical that Postal Service 
leadership remember that it is not a private business but a 
public service. We all want the Postal Service to be 
financially viable. That's why we have been working together to 
get the Postal Service Reform Act on the floor as soon as 
possible. This bipartisan bill, authored by Democrats and 
Republicans, would put the Postal Service on a sustainable, 
financial footing for years to come.
    But allowing service to suffer while at the same time 
increasing prices will not increase the public's faith in the 
Postal Service. In fact, it might end up pushing people and 
businesses away from using the Postal Service. We must not 
allow the Postal Service to fail. It must continue providing 
the critical services that millions of Americans depend on.
    I want to thank the ranking member and the chairman for 
calling this hearing, and I look forward to today's discussion. 
Thank you, again.
    And I yield back the balance of my time.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you very much, Chairwoman Maloney. And 
thank you for your leadership on this issue, and hopefully we 
can all work together to bring that bill, which passed out of 
our committee on a bipartisan basis, to the floor soon. Thank 
you, again, so much for being with us here today.
    Now to welcome us to the Windy City is our colleague, Danny 
Davis.
    Welcome, Mr. Davis.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Subcommittee Chairman 
Connolly, Ranking Member Keller, members of the committee, 
Senator Durbin, the Illinois delegation, Postmaster Morgan, 
Assistant Inspector General Melinda Perez, Mr. Mack Julion.
    Let me begin, first, by thanking Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney 
for agreeing to hold this hearing in Chicago to examine 
declining delivery standards in the U.S. Postal Service. 
Representative Maloney has demonstrated tremendous leadership 
of the Oversight Committee, and it is indeed my pleasure to 
work with her.
    I also want to the thank you, Mr. Chairman, and your staff 
for coming to Chicago and for the leadership that you've 
provided to the Government Operations Subcommittee.
    Given the fact that my first full-time job was working at 
the Chicago Post Office for more than a year and then working 
short hours for 3 or 4 years, I've always had a great deal of 
affinity for the U.S. Postal Service. And when I worked for 
that agency, the motto with the group that I worked with was 
``Clean hands, gentle touch; surely we owe a letter that 
much.''
    The U.S. Postal Service has had a long history of excellent 
service in the Chicagoland area. However, during the last 
decade or so, there seems to have been a continuous downward 
spiral in service delivery, employees morale, and community 
relationships brought on by a number of contributing factors. 
It is my hope that this hearing will put us back on track to 
restore the expectations of our public who believe that when 
labor groups and management are working cooperatively together, 
with mutually shared interest and concerns, that the best of 
services will be the result.
    So,thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And I yield back the balance of my time.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Mr. Davis.
    And it is now a great pleasure for us to welcome the 
distinguished Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin.
    Senator Durbin. Thank you very much, Chairman Connolly.
    And my special thanks to Danny Davis and Robin Kelly and 
all those responsible for this hearing.
    Mr. Chairman, it takes a pretty hot topic to bring a 
majority of the Illinois congressional delegation together. 
You've done it today. If you take a look at the numbers that 
have turned out here, it's an indication of what we are hearing 
in our offices and have heard for a long, long time. I asked my 
office: Give me an example of someone who's contacted us about 
mail delivery. Well, they told me the story of June this year 
when we were contacted by Teamsters Local 786. They told my 
staff that they'd not received any mail since May 20, weeks 
before, but that, because of the failure of the Postal Service 
to provide service, their members fell out of status with their 
insurance due to delay or missing checks. Think of it: In the 
middle of a global pandemic, a critical group of frontline 
workers were at risk of losing their health coverage because 
mail didn't arrive. That is just inexcusable.
    So, we think about the mail service and I want to make it 
clear: I'm a champion of the Postal Service. I believe in them, 
not just because it's a constitutional authority and 
responsibility, but because they are good people doing good 
work, hard work on a regular basis. I think of, during the 
pandemic when I was down at our home in Springfield, Illinois, 
looking out the window for Greg to show up with the mail 
delivery, sometimes it was dark, eight o'clock at night, and 
there he was. Never missed it. Every single darn day, and there 
are people across America who count on that letter carrier and 
the postal workers who bring that mail to them. It's an 
important part of their life. It binds them together and all of 
us together as a Nation.
    Last night, my wife and I were walking back from visiting 
our granddaughter near north side around the Belmont Avenue 
area, 7:30 at night I see a cart in the middle of the sidewalk. 
It was a delivery cart for some letter carrier, seven o'clock 
at night. And I wondered what was going on. I look, he was 
inside, and he was feeding mail into the slots for the people 
who lived in that building. These folks are working hard, and 
they're finding it hard to keep up with some of the demands.
    What's it all about? Well, some of it's about COVID. COVID 
changed America in a lot of different ways, and I'm sure it 
challenged the Postal Service in terms of the health of their 
workers and their availability, but COVID was an opportunity 
for us to rely more and more on the Postal Service, and we got 
to keep that in mind. We're also living in a changing 
marketplace: emails over letters, parcels and packages now in 
greater volume. My letter carrier down in Springfield said: 
Senator, can you believe that today I was delivering boxes of 
duct tape as part of my mail delivery? It's just part of what I 
do every single day.
    There's some other things that are part of this. Retirement 
requirements. We all know that as Members of Congress. That's 
on us. The amount of money we ask of the Postal Service out of 
their operating expenses to prepare for future retirements, I 
think it's the highest in Federal Government, and the question 
is, is it realistic? Did we go too far? It's time for us to 
answer that question.
    And then there are management decisions, and they've been 
alluded to already. I'm not a business consultant, don't 
pretend to be, but if someone came to my business and said, ``I 
got an idea. I'm going to reduce the value of your product. I'm 
going to raise its price,'' you'd say to yourself, ``You think 
that's a winning combination?'' But that's what we hear about a 
future management plan. We're going to reduce or increase the 
time for delivery on items in the mail, and we're going to 
raise the cost of mail in the process. Those two things just 
don't work together. It seems to me we better think hard about 
that.
    So, let me close by saying, it's an honor to be with you. 
The turnout of the delegation tells you how important this 
issue is. We want to work with you and the leadership in the 
Postal Service to make it continue to be the best in the world.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Senator Durbin. And I'm 
reminded of the point you made about how personal the 
connection is between communities and their post office. When 
we were coming into this building, one of the gentlemen 
greeting us was a mail [inaudible] in this case in those 60 
years, three. And the neighborhood has adopted every one of 
them. They're sick, they get get-well cards. It's their 
birthday, they get--you know. I mean, they're part of the 
community. And what other business can really point to that 
kind of relationship, so great point. Thank you so much, 
Senator. Great to have you here today.
    Next, we recognize another former employee of the Postal 
Service who's now a Member of Congress, Brenda Lawrence. 
Brenda, you with us?
    Mrs. Lawrence. Yes, I am. I'm right here.
    Mr. Connolly. We're so glad to have you. You got your two 
minutes.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you. I want to thank you, Chairman 
Connolly, for hosting this event and to also Chairwoman 
Maloney.
    As the only Member of Congress who worked an entire career 
in the United States Postal Service, I continue to be alarmed 
by efforts taken to undermine the service element of this great 
institution. Serving as a letter carrier, serving as a person 
who sorted mail, serving as a supervisor, serving on management 
leadership, doing audits of service, we took pride in every 
single day every piece of mail leaving that building. And as a 
supervisor, as a manager, I had uniquely the responsibility and 
the pride of providing this service to America. But, as part of 
postmaster general's 10 year plan, we are seeing that he wants 
to lower the standards of delivery, which will transform who we 
are as a Postal Service.
    Last month, I led a letter with senior members of the 
committee requesting additional information. Why did I need 
additional information? Because where does lowering standards 
increase the productivity or the budget or the bottom line of 
the Postal Service? Where is it that there is a unyielding 
reason during COVID and everything else we went through to 
lower or dummy down our ability and to strike to me at the 
pride of postal workers to get the job done?
    We are there because of the Constitution. We are there 
because we are a service to the people of the United States. By 
undermining the agency's mission to provide prompt and 
efficient services, it'll do little but to chip away at the 
bedrock of this community, this service. As the American 
people, they deserve better. And just like we just heard from 
the Senator, the question was made earlier, we should not be 
interfering.
    I don't know about you, sir, but I have been inundated with 
calls and demands for action: Why is my mail late? Where are my 
prescription drugs, my checks that I rely on? Small businesses, 
think about that, who are now being held hostage to service 
standards that make no sense because they are dependent upon 
the Postal Service.
    So, the question is, if we don't stand up as Members of 
Congress who have oversight, who's going to fight for the 
people?
    I want to thank the chairman for yielding, and I look 
forward to this hearing today.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much for joining us and thank 
you for your leadership, Congresswoman Lawrence. We're always 
benefited from your experience in working in the Postal Service 
and understanding the nuts and bolts of the operations. Thank 
you so much.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished gentleman from 
Illinois, Mr. Krishnamoorthi.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Chair Connolly, thank you, 
Chairwoman Maloney, and thank you, Danny Davis, Congressman 
Davis, for convening us here today. All of you know this, but 
the United States Postal Service is the most popular government 
institution in America. More than 91 percent of Americans rate 
the Postal Service very highly, according to most recent Pew 
Polls. That's almost as high as Danny Davis's rating in this 
district.
    The Postal Service delivers 48 percent of the world's mail. 
In my district alone, the Eighth District of Illinois, the 
Postal Service employees over 3,000 people. These are 
hardworking men and women dedicated to one simple principle, 
which is the timely and safe delivery of mail. The USPS is 
supposed to be completely reliable for every American, proven 
by the fact that the USPS even delivers mail from a sack on a 
mule in the Grand Canyon.
    I am saddened to see that the USPS has been failing to meet 
its service standards. I've had constituents tell my office 
numerous stories, including one where it took three weeks for 
an envelope to get from Evanston to Oak Brook--I'm sorry, North 
Brook. That's only 11 miles. That's ridiculous.
    The onset of delayed mail can be traced to Louis DeJoy when 
he took over in July 2020. His reduction in service standards, 
especially the ones that were instituted on October 1 just a 
couple weeks ago have been a plague on the USPS, and we'll be 
talking about that today. That's why I introduced the DEJOY 
Act, Delivering Envelopes Judiciously On-Time Year-round, to 
make sure that we return to the service standards that 
Americans deserve. But to borrow a phrase: Neither snow nor 
heat nor gloom of night will stop us from saving the post 
office. And that's why we're here today.
    So, thank you so much, Chairman Connolly, for convening us.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Congressman 
Krishnamoorthi.
    And thank you, again, for your wonderful contribution on 
the committee.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished gentlelady from 
greater Chicago, Robin Kelly.
    Ms. Kelly. I want to thank Chairman Connolly for holding 
this important hearing and all the witnesses who are here 
today.
    Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney, and thank you to my 
colleague Danny Davis for having this great idea to invite the 
committee out.
    My office, like everyone's here, has been slammed with post 
office casework. I don't need to tell anyone the effects of 
slow mail, but I have constituents who are not getting critical 
prescription medications on time. I have other constituents 
without broadband access who pay their bills by mail being 
charged late fees due to the slow mail. For many, the late fees 
are causing financial hardship for them and their families. My 
district is urban, suburban, and rural, and this has been an 
issue for everyone. People depend on the reliability of their 
post office to get their medications, pay their bills, send 
birthday cards, or letters to loved ones.
    Even though they were having problems leading up to the 
time of DeJoy under the leadership of Postmaster DeJoy, first-
class mail in my district has gone from an on-time delivery 
rate of 90.9 percent in quarter two of 2020 after the pandemic 
that shut everything down and before DeJoy was appointed to a 
69-percent on-time delivery rate, according to the U.S. Postal 
Service. This is unacceptable. Almost one out of every three 
pieces of mail is not getting to my constituents on time. And 
it's not that the mail is a few days late; some are taking 
weeks or even months to get to people. I received a Christmas 
card in February.
    I've never worked for the post office, but my mom retired 
from the post office, and my brother is a postal worker now. 
So, this is personal to me also. I hope we can have a 
productive hearing today and find solutions so my constituents 
can stop worrying about missing their prescriptions and their 
bills.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Congresswoman Kelly, and 
thank you for your service on our committee as well.
    The chair recognizes the distinguished gentleman from the 
great state of Illinois, Mr. Quigley, for his opening 
statement.
    Mr. Quigley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Chairman, first of all, thank you for agreeing to bring 
this subcommittee to Chicago and thank your staff for working 
with my office to put this hearing together. There are issues 
all across the country, but the subcommittee decided to come to 
Chicago, and we're forever grateful.
    I also want to thank our witnesses for being here today and 
the work that you do on an ongoing basis, but we have work to 
do. The problems are numerous. In Chicago, there are about 100 
mail routes across the city going undelivered daily. It's been 
as high as 150. Mail theft, random post office closures, 
delayed mail carrier start times, and slow case work, just to 
name a few. Unfortunately, about 75 percent of the first-class 
mail in my district is getting delivered on time. These 
problems have consequences for Chicagoans who rely upon USPS to 
deliver their mail.
    Now, I get it. I've been doing public service in one manner 
or another since about 1980. The problems have existed on an 
ongoing basis, but I do think they've been made worse by the 
measures that the postmaster has put in place. The notion of 
decreasing standards while increasing prices defies business 
logic, and it's really a disservice to the American people. And 
I understand that these problems can't be solved by USPS alone. 
We have seen remarkably slow progress made by USPS to try to 
address them all. It's simply unacceptable. So, that brings us 
to today.
    I look forward to learning why the problems in Chicago have 
been so persistent and what actions will be taken to resolve 
them quickly and permanently.
    And thank you, again, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate your 
being here.
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Quigley, thank you so much. And thank you 
to you and your staff, as well as Mr. Davis and his staff, have 
really helped us, along with the courthouse staff here in 
Chicago. So, thank you so much for making this possible. We 
really appreciate it.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished member of the 
Illinois delegation, Congressman Bobby Rush, for his opening 
statement.
    Mr. Rush. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I want to thank Chairwoman Maloney, who was my friend since 
we were both elected together in 1993, and I certainly want to 
thank my colleague, Congressman Danny Davis, for all the work 
that he's done on this issue.
    And Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for the opportunity 
to waive on this subcommittee for this vital field hearing. We 
all know my constituents are celebrating your arrival and 
celebrating this hearing.
    Mr. Chairman, missing mail, along with delayed and 
inconsistent delivering, have consistently plagued my 
constituents. This poor service has had real impact and 
resulted in missing bills that are overdue, lost medication, 
and trouble checking on the vital documents and packages.
    As you stated, Mr. Chairman, these issues, while worsened 
by the coronavirus, pre-date the onset of the public health 
emergency and point to a wider systemic neglect by the Postal 
Service. This is why, after hosting a townhall meeting in July 
2020 with over 3,500 of my constituents, I've been questioned--
that the U.S. Office of Inspector General ordered four stations 
in my district that were the subject of high volume of 
complaints to my district.
    I'm so glad that this report served as part of the evidence 
for today's hearing, and I ask unanimous consent to enter it 
into the record. Furthermore----
    Mr. Connolly. Without objection, so ordered.
    Mr. Rush. Furthermore, Mr. Chairman, due to the rampant 
neglect on my constituents and concern and failure to rectify 
this situation in a timely manner, I single-handedly call for 
the termination of the Chicago Postmaster General Wanda Prater. 
I was pleased that the USPS heeded my call for new leadership 
here in Chicago and that Ms. Prater was ultimately transferred 
to another state.
    Mr. Chairman, I look forward to this frank discussion 
today, and I'm eager to continue working with all of today's 
distinguished witnesses, who are also my friends, to help at 
long last raise the standard of Chicago's mail delivery to 
where it should be.
    Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
    And I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mr. Rush.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished gentlelady from 
the great state of Illinois, Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, for 
her two-minute opening statement.
    Ms. Schakowsky. So, thank you so much, Mr. Chairman, for 
convening this hearing.
    Thank you, Danny Davis, for helping to make this happen. 
Yes, it's true that for years residents of the Ninth 
congressional District of Illinois have faced significant mail 
delivery delays at times, but over the last year, my district 
office has opened thousands, yes, thousands of cases with the 
Postal Service for only four Chicago neighborhoods--Uptown, 
Rogers Park--I'm going to take this off--Rogers Park, North 
Town, and Edgewater. My staff has also worked on many other 
cases, including those in Evanston and Skokie and Arlington 
Heights, and everything in between.
    We must not forget that each one of these cases represents 
real people--real people--who rely on the Postal Service to 
ensure that they are going to receive their bills, their Social 
Security checks, and their lifesaving medicine. Unfortunately, 
under the leadership of Postmaster DeJoy, what we have seen is 
a beloved agency that has become mired in corruption and 
mismanagement.
    Earlier this week, just this week, over 200 residents from 
my district wrote postcards--this is just an example of the 
200--over 200 postcards that were written. Some people said, 
one person said: We often go 3 to 5 days without any mail 
whatsoever. Some pieces are never delivered at all.
    And another person wrote: Why does it take so long to 
receive mail these days?
    I hope that today's hearing will find the answers to these 
questions and, more importantly, the solutions to the problem. 
Our residents and our letter carriers deserve better. Thank 
you.
    And I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Jan. Thank you for your 
leadership as well.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished gentleman from 
Illinois, Mr. Bill Foster, Congressman Bill Foster, who I 
believe is on screen. Bill?
    Mr. Foster. Yep. Audible and visible here?
    Mr. Connolly. Great. You're recognized for your two-minute 
opening statement.
    Mr. Foster. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Congressman 
Bill Foster. I'm a scientist and businessman, though I'm proud 
to represent the 11th congressional District of Illinois, a 
district that contains Aurora, Joliet, and Naperville, the 
second, third, and fourth largest cities of Illinois.
    I want to thank the Committee on Oversight and Reform for 
holding this hearing today and especially thank my colleague, 
Chairman Connolly, for leading the fight to resolve these mail 
delivery and the inadequacies in the Chicagoland area and 
around the country.
    The Postal Service is critical for many Americans, 
including the people that I serve in the 11th District. 
Unfortunately, on-time delivery rates have declined 
significantly between July and December 2020 to a low of 67 
percent at the end of December 2020, and they remain inadequate 
today.
    This decline has had a very tangible impact, and every 
Member of Congress has been hearing about it. These lapses in 
service mean late medications, difficulties for small 
businesses that rely on the Postal Service, and a level of 
inconvenience and uncertainty for our constituents that's 
simply unacceptable.
    As our economy finally gets up off the couch and gets 
moving again after the pandemic, there are going to be sore 
muscles and snafus and bottlenecks, we get that, but the postal 
delivery service should be a source of strength and certainty 
in our economy and our lives and not just an additional source 
of uncertainty. So, as we examine the dramatic drops in postal 
delivery service standards in today's hearings, I want to make 
it clear that Members of Congress need and expect a realistic 
plan from the postmaster in advance of the coming peak season 
that addresses the issues we're going to be discussing here. We 
need to tackle these problems now before the situation becomes 
more difficult, and that's why I'm glad we're all here today.
    I look forward to hearing from and working with you to 
improve delivery times and the overall quality of service from 
the U.S. Postal Service. Thank you.
    And I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Perfect timing, Mr. Foster. And 
thank you for also reminding us, as bad as the problems are 
right now, we are coming up in peak season. So, it could get a 
lot worse given the volume we're facing. Thank you for 
reminding us of that.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished gentleman from 
the great state of Illinois, Mr. Brad Schneider, who is also on 
screen, for his two-minute opening remarks. Brad?
    Mr. Schneider. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman Connolly, 
I'm so grateful that you are hosting this hearing on a 
critically important issue and doing it in our great city of 
Chicago.
    I want to also thank our witnesses for speaking on the 
current state of the Postal Service and particularly how the 
Chicagoland area has been affected by changes in postal 
operations, drop in service standards, and mail delays.
    As Senator Durbin noted, it doesn't take a business 
consultant to know that lowering service value while increasing 
service price is not a formula for success.
    I'm a huge advocate for the United States Postal Service. 
Unlike Congress, the Postal Service is held in very high regard 
by all Americans, and every American fairly expects quality, 
timely service with rising service standards. Unfortunately, 
over the past year, we've experienced the opposite.
    Since Louis DeJoy took over as postmaster general in July 
2020, the Postal Service has experienced dramatic drops in 
delivery service performance, and this hearing today is being 
held in Chicago because the circumstances are even more dire in 
our community. In my district, Illinois' 10th District, which 
is located just north of this hearing facility, we felt the 
effects of DeJoy's changes and mail delays even before the data 
started rolling in. The drop in service standards has had real 
impact on my constituents, and my heart breaks every time I 
talk to someone who shares that they aren't getting their 
medication to treat a chronic condition on time or that their 
bills are arriving sometimes months late leading to late fees, 
cessation of services, or lowering of their credit rating, or 
the Social Security recipient who says her check hasn't arrived 
forcing her delay the payment of her bills and other real 
financial stress.
    Since 1970, the Postal Service has been a critical, 
independent Federal agency that ensures that mail reaches every 
address in our Nation.
    During the pandemic, all of us experienced just how 
essential the Postal Service was and is to our everyday lives 
and that is why I've called on DeJoy time and again on behalf 
of my constituents and our Nation as a whole to fix the 
operational changes that clearly aren't working to address mail 
delays, and it's also why I've been and will remain a great 
advocate for funding our Postal Service.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And, with that, I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Congressman Schneider.
    The chair recognizes the distinguished gentleman, who 
represents my old stomping grounds when I was in college in 
DuPage County, the distinguished gentleman from Illinois, Mr. 
Casten, for his opening two-minute remarks.
    Mr. Casten. Thank you to Chair Connolly or, as we refer to 
him, the pride of the Sixth District for organizing this 
hearing and allowing me to participate.
    The Postal Service provides an absolutely critical function 
of this Nation, especially in this moment with seniors relying 
on the Postal Service for Social Security checks, folks for 
prescriptions, families right now for the child tax credit 
checks that are going out, and, yet, for the last year in the 
Sixth District of Illinois, the calls that have come in from my 
constituents have had a strong, kind of Mark Anthony vibe. They 
have not called to praise the Postal Service.
    We've received calls from members asking our office to help 
them figure out how to get out from under penalties that they 
are being charged for bills that are unpaid but they never 
received. We're getting calls from families asking how to get 
the economic impact payments that we structured to get them--to 
help recover from COVID that they never received but were 
counting on for their finances. I got one call from a 64-year-
old woman, who had waited three weeks to get critical 
prescription drugs, in a panic. We've gotten a whole lot of 
other calls from folks who have not received their medicines at 
all. Had one family who reached out because their birth 
certificate was lost in the mail as they were renewing their 
passport and was wondering how they are going to be able to 
identify themselves going over and if somebody else is going to 
use their identity.
    One call is a fluke. Two is a coincidence. Three is a 
pattern, and we've gotten a lot more than three calls. Now, the 
service degradations that we've seen just from that sample have 
not correlated with the weather. They've not correlated with 
periods of increased demand. And, as you point out well, Mr. 
Chairman, they seem to be nationwide. This is a problem that's 
driven from the top, and I would submit to you that it's been 
deliberately imposed by Postmaster Louis DeJoy to weaken and 
ultimately privatize the post office. He's more or less said so 
about as openly as you can.
    The OIG report details how DeJoy's efforts this past year 
and a half to close processing facilities, remove sorting 
machines, restrict carrier movements have strained our mail 
system from the top down and, of course, the October 1 service 
standard reduction, which will slow down our mail system even 
more at a time when everything else in society is getting 
faster. I know that the post office is filled with dedicated, 
hardworking individuals who want to do a good job, but when 
there's a problem at the top, the buck has to stop at the top.
    I commend the letter carriers, the mail handlers for 
doubling down in spite of these operational challenges. Through 
rain, sleet, and snow, our country relies on the U.S. Postal 
Service, and it's imperative we have a working system with a 
postmaster general who actually believes in improving the 
system, not degrading it, especially in this moment when 
reliable, affordable mail is a necessity for millions. Thank 
you.
    And I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Casten.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished gentleman from 
Illinois, Jesus ``Chuy'' Garcia, Congressman Garcia, for his 
two-minute opening remarks.
    Mr. Garcia. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for convening this 
important meeting, and as my colleagues have noted, the Postal 
Service is a lifeline to our constituents. At its best, it is 
an equalizing institution that ensures critical packages, like 
medications, Social Security checks, and important paperwork, 
are delivered to every doorstep in the U.S., but, 
unfortunately, in the neighborhoods I represent, people's 
experience has been very different from that ideal.
    Long before I came to Congress, I heard concerns about mail 
service and delivery in my district and across the Chicagoland 
area. And, since I became Congressman, I've noticed, I've 
continued to hear messages loud and clear that my constituents 
are waiting unacceptable periods of time to get their mail. In 
some instances, they're not getting mail at all. All of this 
was before the selection of Louis DeJoy as postmaster general. 
His changes, as demonstrated in USPS OIG reports, made a 
situation worse.
    As we know from the reports, on-time delivery rates 
plummeted and this at the same time as mail delivery became all 
the more critical for service that people had previously sought 
out in person. Constituent complaints accelerated, like the one 
from a small business that shifted away from mail payment after 
delivery proved too unreliable or a constituent whose bank 
canceled her credit cards after she didn't receive them or an 
elderly couple, one of whom is bedridden and dependent on mail 
delivery for critical medication.
    In all, we receive thousands of constituent complaints, 
over 100 which we filed formal complaints with USPS. And look: 
I still believe in the power of the post office. It's got the 
potential to keep us together and connected even as the 
pandemic continues to keep us apart, but in order for it to 
fulfill that incredible potential, the mail's got to get 
delivered. And I'm committed to working with postal leadership, 
union representatives, and congressional colleagues to make 
that ideal a reality.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Congressman Garcia.
    The chair now recognizes the distinguished gentlewoman from 
the great state of Illinois, Lauren Underwood, for her two-
minute opening remark.
    Ms. Underwood. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I'm so delighted to be here today because the drastic drop 
in delivery standards that Illinois has seen under Postmaster 
General DeJoy's leadership is unacceptable. I know we'll hear a 
lot today about how Chicago has been affected, but I also want 
you to hear what this has meant for rural and suburban 
communities like mine, where we are incredibly reliant on USPS.
    Since Mr. DeJoy became postmaster general, postal case work 
in my office has quadrupled. Small businesses have been hobbled 
by slow and unreliable delivery. Families separated by the 
pandemic have been missing opportunities to connect. Holiday 
cards were delivered late or not at all, and passports have 
taken weeks to arrive after they were mailed. All because of 
policies from the previous administration and Postmaster 
General DeJoy that are undermining our Postal Service.
    Let me be clear: This attack on USPS is an attack on 
seniors, veterans, and small businesses across the country. 
It's an attack on frontline workers, who have worked harder 
than ever during the pandemic, and on economic prosperity for 
Black Americans, who comprise almost a quarter--a quarter--of 
USPS employees. It's an attack on voting access as more of us 
safely and securely cast our ballots by mail.
    I see an all-too-familiar pattern in these attacks. 
Regrettably, there are those operating in our political system 
who want to dismantle and privatize much of the government. A 
great way to do that is to degrade our most popular and 
impactful government services until we are so understandably 
frustrated that we look elsewhere.
    Senator Durbin described Postmaster General DeJoy's plan as 
designed to sink the Postal Service, not save it. And, sadly, I 
think he's right.
    That's why today's hearing is so important, and I look 
forward to working with my colleagues here to conduct oversight 
and pass legislation to protect, strengthen, and modernize the 
Postal Service.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank you to our witnesses for 
joining.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Congresswoman Underwood, 
and unbelievably precise timing. Great job.
    And, last but not least, the chair is happy to recognize 
the distinguished Congresswoman from the great state of 
Illinois, Marie Newman, for her two-minute opening remarks.
    Ms. Newman. Good morning and thank you, Chairman.
    Good to see everybody and so pleased to be to talk with 
everyone. I want to thank our witnesses for being here, and I 
also just want to make the statement that so proud of our 
postal union workers and all workers throughout the postal 
systems. We stand with you, behind you always.
    As everyone in the room already knows, the primary function 
of the USPS is to deliver mail on time to residents every day 
except Sunday. Frankly, Chairman, I am disappointed to say 
that, on Chicago's southwest side, that has not been our 
reality. In fact, it's been the exact opposite.
    I represent Illinois's Third District, which is home to 
over 700,000 residents that all rely on mail to receive their 
checks, pay their bills, access their medication, and 
communicate with loved ones.
    Between the months of March and May of this year, my 
district was home to 3 of the top 25 worst performing offices 
in the country. Chairman, I have been in office for less than a 
year, and in that amount of time, our office has received 
nearly 500 constituent complaints on postal delays, lost mail, 
or other delivery issues. And, in Chicago, there's been an 
exceptionally poor job in recruiting and maintaining carriers, 
although I believe that it's getting slightly better, which is 
only further exacerbated by the pandemic. And we realize there 
is a pandemic here to be clear.
    It is crucial we work to hire more carriers right away. I 
also want to be clear that these service delay issues represent 
an economic divide that historically and largely affects our 
Black and Brown neighborhoods. Our low-to moderate-income 
communities lack access to financial technologies that allow 
them to pay for their bills electronically; therefore, they 
rely on the Postal Service all that more.
    So, Mr. Chairman, when mail doesn't arrive on time, it may 
very well stand in the way of my constituents having food to 
eat, roof over their heads, and paying their bills. And, as a 
former small business owner, I hear from them every day and 
have great empathy. I know that our local entrepreneurs rely on 
the Postal Service to deliver their products every day. So, 
when the mail doesn't arrive on time, it may well mean the 
difference between an open or shuttered business.
    Let's be clear: This issue comes from the top down at the 
United States Postal Service. And today I look forward to 
demanding answers from them because, when mail isn't delivered 
on time, we fail our small businesses, our most vulnerable 
communities, our seniors, our veterans, everyone. And I just 
want to make one additional comment about the shuttering of 
sorting machines. That is one of the key reasons we're having 
trouble recruiting carriers because when you shut down 30 
percent of sorting machines in one state, as we have in 
Illinois, it really affects all of our workers and also affects 
management, to be clear. They've had a really rough time of 
that as well.
    So, I just want to be clear that that is a problem.
    And I yield back. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much.
    And let me just say, I don't--I want to thank all my 
colleagues for being so disciplined in trying to keep the time 
limits. We were able to get through all the opening statements 
in one hour.
    I also think it's an extraordinary thing that there are 13 
members from the state of Illinois alone, plus others of us not 
from Illinois, who are participating in today's hearing. That 
is--that's a profound statement about the level of interest, 
the level of concern, and the commitment of these men and women 
who represent Illinois proudly in the U.S. Congress to 
improving Postal Service to all of our constituents. So, thank 
you all for being here today.
    I'd now like to introduce our three witnesses, and thank 
you for your patience, but I think it's instructive and 
important for you to hear the concerns of Members of Congress.
    Our first witness today is Eddie Morgan, Jr., Chicago 
Postmaster from the U.S. Postal Service. Then we'll hear from 
Melinda Perez, deputy assistant inspector general for Audit, 
U.S. Postal Service Office of the Inspector General. And, 
finally, we'll hear from Mack Julion, union representative for 
the National Association of Letter Carriers.
    And, actually, I think more than union representative; 
you're a regional--you're the regional head of the letter 
carriers here, yes, and national trustee. Thank you.
    The witnesses, if you would rise and be unmuted so that we 
can swear you in. It is the custom of our committee and 
subcommittee to swear in all witnesses.
    If you would raise your right hand.
    Do you swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to 
give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 
so help you God?
    Let the record show that all three of our witnesses 
answered in the affirmative.
    Thank you. You may be seated.
    Without objection, your written comments will be entered 
fully into the record. We would now ask that you summarize your 
testimony in a five-minute time slot.
    And first to go is you, Mr. Morgan. Welcome.

STATEMENT OF EDDIE MORGAN, JR., CHICAGO POSTMASTER, U.S. POSTAL 
                            SERVICE

    Mr. Morgan. I'm sorry. I see it. All right.
    Good morning, Chairman Connolly, members of the 
subcommittee, and Illinois' delegation. Thank you for calling 
this important hearing to examine service performance in 
Chicago.
    My name is Eddie Morgan, Jr. And since June, I have served 
as acting executive Postmaster of Chicago, where I oversee 
service to 1.3 million delivery addresses. I have nearly 24 
years of service as a postal employee and served four years in 
the United States Air Force.
    Several factors have led to the current instability of the 
Chicago Post Office work force and service. Street crime, 
including frequent assaults, robberies, and two carriers being 
shot, has raised understandable fear, leading to deficiencies 
in recruiting and retaining work force. We have additionally 
faced problems with retention between the time applicants 
accept the job and the time they complete the four-day carrier 
academy. Pandemic-related leave and other employee availability 
issues have further hampered the ability to achieve and 
maintain service excellence.
    While we have seen an improvement in attendance since the 
expiration of the Emergency Federal Employee Leave benefit, we 
continue to struggle with commitments from our new hires and 
even some career employees who refuse to deliver in certain 
zones within the city of Chicago due to violent crime. Though 
our level of authorized positions is appropriate to the daily 
workload and on some days surpasses the need, daily employee 
availability challenges our ability to achieve consistent, on-
time delivery.
    Chicago city carrier employee availability--ability--
availability--I'm sorry--began steadily improving from April 
through August. Working within our collective bargaining 
agreements, we have taken appropriate, progressive 
administrative actions for individuals with high unscheduled 
absences. We are also in the process of filling 27 vacant 
station manager and supervisor positions.
    I have also taken the following steps to enhance training 
and build the skill sets of local leadership teams: 
Establishing daily cadence calls with senior operating 
managers, holding supervisor summer school to develop our 
leaders who handle the day-to-day oversight of our craft 
employees, holding in-person trainings when any new internal 
dashboard is launched, and supporting peer-to-peer coaching.
    Since my arrival in June, we have hired 243 city carrier 
assistants and postal support employees. By the end of the 
year, we are projecting to hire 180 additional carrier 
assistants and 68 postal support employees.
    In September, we adjusted letter carrier start times to 
align with mail availability and provide increased and more 
reliable service. This change was based on analysis of when 
mail was arriving at each unit, and start times were 
individually adjusted in accordance with those arrival times. 
On average, start times were adjusted by 30 to 45 minutes. 
Before the adjustments, carriers were reporting to the office 
before the last dispatch arrived for mail processing plants for 
delivery. At no fault of their own, they simply had no work to 
perform during this waiting period.
    I want to stress that a later start time does not equate to 
later delivery times. Since implementation, we have seen 
carriers returning from their routes at the same time of day 
they did previously, while providing more consistent delivery 
to our customers.
    Other steps I have taken to improve service and customer 
experience include hiring a contracted team to improve internal 
and external facility maintenance until we are able to fill 17 
custodial vacancies, establishing a retail customer experience 
recognition program to reinforce national goals and 
expectations, mandating that employees wear uniforms to 
maintain the brand and reinforce public trust, reestablishing 
consumer advisory councils to connect customers with their 
local office.
    Three councils are currently in place, and we hope to 
expand to at least one for each alderman's area. And I have 
also mandated contacting customers within two hours of 
receiving an inquiry to gather any additional information 
needed to resolve their concerns.
    While I have only served the city of Chicago for a short 
time, please note I am committed to providing high-quality, 
reliable service to our residents. We have seen service 
performance improvement over the last eight weeks as a result 
of the processes we have established, and we will continue to 
refine those processes as any new challenges arise.
    Thank you, Chairman Connolly and members of the 
subcommittee, for the opportunity to address these matters. I 
welcome any questions that you or members of the Illinois 
delegation have.
    Mr. Connolly. Wow. You had 11 more seconds. Good, good job. 
Thank you so much. And thank you for joining us today, Mr. 
Morgan.
    Ms. Perez.

STATEMENT OF MELINDA PEREZ, DEPUTY ASSISTANT INSPECTOR GENERAL 
  FOR AUDIT, OFFICE OF INSPECTOR GENERAL, U.S. POSTAL SERVICE

    Ms. Perez. Good morning, Chairman Connolly, Ranking Member 
Hice, members of the subcommittee, and the Illinois delegation. 
Thank you for----
    Mr. Connolly. Excuse me. Is your mic on?
    Ms. Perez. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Connolly. Can you pull it closer? It's a little hard--
--
    Ms. Perez. Can you hear me better now?
    Mr. Connolly. Much better. Thank you.
    Ms. Perez. OK. Thank you for inviting me here today to 
discuss our work related to the Postal Service's operational 
changes and service performance.
    The mission of the OIG is to ensure the efficiency, 
accountability, and integrity of our Nation's Postal Service 
through independent oversight under the authority of the 
Inspector General Act of 1978. We take our mission very 
seriously.
    For a long time, Chicago has experienced delays in mail 
delivery. Last year, the issues intensified, and Members of 
Congress expressed concern about deteriorating mail service. In 
response, we visited several Chicago Post Offices to analyze 
the extent of the problem to see what was causing the service 
failures. During our visits we observed mail and parcels that 
had been sitting for up to 19 days without being delivered. 
This was driven, in part, by not having enough employees to 
fully cover all carrier routes, a challenge that increased for 
Chicago, along with the rest of the country, due to the COVID-
19 pandemic.
    We also found the full extent of these delays was not 
evident in internal postal data systems because they were not 
reported properly. Accurate data may have allowed postal 
management to more proactively address these issues.
    In addition, during an earlier audit, we found delivery 
delays were sometimes the result of difficulties that occurred 
prior to the mail arriving at the post office. Issues with mail 
processing and transportation led to mail being sent to post 
offices late or not fully sorted for the carriers, which, in 
turn, increased the risk of mail not being delivered on time.
    As a result of our observations and findings, we made 
several recommendations to help the Postal Service address 
these issues. To help postal stakeholders more easily find 
service information, we recently deployed a new service 
performance website that shows how Chicago and the rest of the 
country performed over time. Service scores for Chicago were 
generally worse than the national average, and most of the 
first-class mail scores in Chicago this year have been lower 
than they were in previous years.
    Looking at the recent data reported for April through June 
2020, Chicago had the second worst service score of all the 
postal districts for two-day letter mail. Specifically, the 
Postal Service only delivered around 82 percent of this mail on 
time, compared to the national average of just over 90 percent. 
However, this 82 percent score marks an improvement over the 
preceding quarter. And this recent positive trend in service 
was seen across almost all of Chicago's service scores. We will 
continue to monitor this trend as the Postal Service releases 
new service performance information.
    Though things seem to be improving, we recognize the 
importance of timely mail delivery across the country and have 
a body of work focused on this topic. For example, in the fall 
of 2020, we issued reports on how the Postal Service's 
implementation of operational changes across the country 
impacted service. We found that the operational changes, on top 
of employee absences due to COVID, negatively impacted the 
quality and timeliness of mail delivery.
    More recently, we looked at nationwide service performance 
and identified the most common root causes behind service 
failures. These included insufficient capacity to handle the 
increase in parcels, sending parcels to the wrong facility, 
staffing shortages, and mail not being fully sorted when it 
arrived at the post office.
    The Postal Service has plans to address these concerns. 
However, implementing multiple initiatives to correct these 
issues will be challenging, especially now as the Postal 
Service is entering the holiday peak season.
    Timely mail delivery will continue to be a focus of our 
work. This work is vital to ensuring the American public has an 
efficient Postal Service. We will soon release a report on the 
Postal Service's readiness for the upcoming holiday season. 
Another project will assess how the Postal Service manages its 
delivery operations, with a focus on undelivered routes. In a 
third project, we will be reviewing the 10 lowest-performing 
mail processing plants, which include two in greater Chicago. 
We will look at multiple data sources to determine what is 
causing their poor performance and what solutions should be 
considered.
    We understand that getting mail on time is critical to 
everyone. We look forward to continuing to work with you to 
evaluate service concerns in Chicago, as well as the rest of 
the country.
    Thank you for the opportunity to discuss our work. I am 
happy to answer your questions.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Ms. Perez. And thank you; 
you had 19 seconds more to go.
    And we're going to be very interested in those 10 you're 
going to be looking at. And, hopefully, you'll stay in close 
touch with us on the subcommittee, given our interest and this 
level of interest all around the country.
    It now gives me great pleasure to recognize Mr. Julion for 
his five-minute opening remarks.

   STATEMENT OF MACK JULION, UNION REPRESENTATIVE, NATIONAL 
                 ASSOCIATION OF LETTER CARRIERS

    Mr. Julion. Thank you.
    Good afternoon, Chairman Connolly, Ranking Member Jody 
Hice, and to all the other members of the Subcommittee on 
Government Operations, the Illinois delegation, and, of course, 
Senator Durbin. I thank you for the opportunity to be here 
today on behalf of the 4,500 members of the National 
Association of Letter Carriers, local Branch No. 11 located in 
Chicago.
    Like other craft employees of the Chicago Post Office--mail 
handlers, clerks, and custodians--ours is a very proud, 
hardworking, and dedicated work force. We believe in the 
mission of which we were sworn, and that is to move and deliver 
the mail of the United States Postal Service. Unfortunately, 
the reason we are here today is to discuss the crisis that has 
befallen the Chicago Post Office, a crisis that was not borne 
of the recent pandemic or the questionable policies of the 
current postmaster general but, rather, was years in the making 
and only exacerbated by COVID-19.
    In order to get a clearer picture of the current state of 
the Chicago Post Office, I will frame my testimony with a 
passage from title 39 of the U.S. Code: Postal Policy.
    A. The United States Postal Service shall be operated as a 
basic and fundamental service provided to the people by the 
Government of the United States, authorized by the 
Constitution, created by act of Congress, and supported by the 
people.
    It goes on to say: It shall provide prompt, reliable, and 
efficient services to patrons in all areas and shall render 
Postal Service to all communities.
    B. The Postal Service shall provide a maximum degree of 
effective and regular postal services to rural areas, 
communities, and small towns where post offices are not self-
sustaining.
    The Chicago Post Office today resembles nothing of the 
aforementioned Postal Policy. Yet it is consistent with the 
report of the Office of Inspector General dated May 13, 2019, 
on the Graceland Annex. The audit was done at the request of 
Congressman Mike Quigley. This report identified late-arriving 
and unsorted mail, falsified scans to stop the clock on 
packages, the underreporting of delayed mail, the mismanagement 
or insufficient supervision of employees' work hours, all of 
which can be attributed to the staffing issues noted in this 
report.
    Like other offices in Chicago, this postal unit lacks the 
number of employees needed to provide prompt, reliable, and 
efficient services to postal patrons. Of course, this was pre-
pandemic.
    Fast-forward to February 1 of this year and the OIG 
conducts another audit at the request of Congressman Bobby 
Rush. This time it was four units on the South Side of Chicago. 
The results are eerily similar: delayed mail, improper 
scanning, inaccurate reporting of mail conditions, and below-
par employee availability directly related to staffing.
    These stations are not anomalies, but rather, the status 
quo of the Chicago Post Office. As recent as August of this 
year, an average of 100 to 200 full and/or partial routes were 
not getting delivered in Chicago daily. Each route accounts for 
up to 1,000 delivery points. These reports of delayed mail are 
based on the firsthand account of carriers on the workroom 
floor, because as noted by the OIG, postal management data is 
consistently unreliable.
    They no longer manage operations to provide the maximum 
degree of effective and regular mail service. They are managing 
to provide misleading reports to appease upper postal 
management. These same reports are then given to the 
congressional offices seeking answers to constant complaints by 
your constituents. We know their complaints because we are 
postal customers too.
    The understaffing and mismanagement of the Chicago Post 
Office have taken a toll on our dedicated work force, and 
letter carriers are tired. We are tired and we are embarrassed. 
We are tired from working multiple assignments late into the 
night, because despite the OIG reports, local management has 
failed to properly staff the operations for which it has been 
entrusted. We are tired of monitoring our check stubs due to 
the rampant timecard fraud by Chicago postal supervisors. We 
are tired of the disrespect on the workroom floor that is shown 
to postal workers who have worked this past year through a 
deadly pandemic, yet there is total disregard for our personal 
safety.
    Letter carriers and clerks are the face of this 
organization, and we are embarrassed by what the Postal Service 
has become. Our members come to work every day in a uniform 
that represents a tainted product because the Chicago Post 
Office is in utter disarray.
    Although recent reports provided to congressional offices 
by this union indicate improvement in some delivery areas, we 
are of the belief that this is not sustainable. From the flawed 
onboarding process, training, and retention of new hires to the 
erratic and unpredictable daily operations, the Chicago Post 
Office is dysfunctional at best. Although the OIG reports 
provided detailed recommendations to improve service, nothing 
changed because there is no real accountability. We hope that 
this hearing today will move us toward that accountability and 
improve the service to our customers.
    Thank you, and I am prepared to answer any questions that 
you have for us.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you so much, Mr. Julion.
    We're now going to go into direct questioning by members. 
I'm going to ask all of my colleagues to follow the same 
discipline you've shown in opening statements. Everyone gets 
five minutes. I'm going to have to be fairly strict because we 
have 17 members who are going to be exercising their right to 
ask questions. So, we're going to have to move along smartly, 
and I would ask our witnesses to try to be concise in their 
answers as well.
    The chair now calls on the distinguished chairwoman of the 
full committee, Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, for her five 
minutes of questioning.
    Chairwoman Maloney.
    Mrs. Maloney. Thank you so much, Chairman Connolly and 
Danny Davis, for calling for it, and all my colleagues from 
Illinois. What an incredible show of support and caring for the 
post office.
    I want to thank all of our witnesses for being here today. 
We appreciate all that you do for the Postal Service and the 
American people.
    As we have already heard this morning, the Postal Service 
has not been living up to its responsibilities to deliver mail 
on time, and, for many, this is not merely an inconvenience but 
a life-threatening concern when medications are delivered late 
or lost entirely.
    It is obvious that mail is not being delivered on time, 
yet, in many cases, it is unclear how long mail is taking to be 
delivered in different locations. That is why the Postal 
Service Reform Act includes a provision to require the Postal 
Service to provide weekly updates on service performance on a 
public-facing website.
    Mr. Morgan, would increased transparency about where mail 
is not being delivered on time help you better target areas 
that need additional attention and resources so that we could 
improve mail delivery?
    Mr. Morgan.
    Mr. Morgan. Thank you for the question, Representative. I 
do have increased transparency. We have new dashboards, and 
those dashboards provide life----
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Morgan, can I interrupt one second? Would 
you just bring that closer so we can hear you?
    Mr. Morgan. Sure. Can you hear me now?
    Mr. Connolly. Yes. Great, great.
    Mr. Morgan. Awesome.
    Yes, ma'am, we do have reports currently that helps us stay 
transparent. Our dashboards are live, meaning our letter 
carriers carry a scanner with them that feeds back live 
information that is critical information that helps us 
understand when we could possibly have a delay. We have those 
reports, coupled with office visits and audits to help us.
    Mrs. Maloney. So, when you see that there are delays, do 
you assign more personnel? How do you address the delays?
    Mr. Morgan. When we learn of a delay, we shift our flexible 
work force. So, with--from the surrounding offices in the city, 
we move the available work force to fill the gap.
    Mrs. Maloney. Thank you.
    I also believe more oversight from the Postal Regulatory 
Commission is needed over the Postal Service and pricing 
changes the Postal Service is implementing. I plan to introduce 
a bill that would strengthen the Commission's oversight of the 
Postal Service. In particular, if a Postal Service tried to 
make a change without fully testing it, as DeJoy did, the 
Commission would be able to request additional information 
before issuing an advisory opinion.
    The bill would also require a two-thirds vote of the Postal 
Service Board of Governors to implement a change if the 
Commission determines it did not have enough testing to prove 
that it will benefit the American public.
    Mr. Julion, would increased checks on the Postal Service be 
helpful to ensure the Postal Services only makes changes to 
their prices and services after they have gathered sufficient 
evidence that it's in the best interest of the American people?
    Mr. Julion.
    Mr. Julion. Yes, thank you. I believe increased oversight 
at every level of the Postal Service can only help improve 
performance.
    Looking specifically at the Chicago Post Office, and the 
OIG reported, that the problem that they had was that a lot of 
the information, the transparency that Mr. Morgan just referred 
to, was indeed absent. In fact, their ability to accurately 
document mail that's not being delivered is a big problem in 
the Chicago Post Office.
    Mrs. Maloney. OK. And, Mr. Julion, what resources and 
support do you and your letter carriers need to get the job 
done on time?
    Mr. Julion. Right now, we blatantly need more carriers out 
there on the street. Using the postmaster's own metric in a 
recent correspondence where he stated that they were fully 
staffed to the extent of having 4,000 letter carriers in the 
Chicago Post Office, our records indicate the number is more 
like 3,500. So, their ability to move resources as needed is 
limited. And we know that there are many offices. In fact, I 
provide reports daily or at least weekly to the Chicago 
delegation on mail that is not being delivered. And as recent 
as yesterday, we still see close to 100 full or partial routes 
not being delivered, but it's also not documented by postal 
management.
    Mrs. Maloney. OK. So, the American people deserve better 
from the Postal Service. I look forward to working with you to 
ensure that we turn this situation around and get mail 
delivered on time.
    My time is expired, and I yield back.
    Thank you. Thank to you all of the participants.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Chairwoman Maloney.
    Mrs. Maloney. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. And we look forward to working with you on 
this latest bill with respect to the PRC.
    Our acting ranking member, Mr. Keller, is recognized for 
his five minutes of questioning.
    Mr. Keller.
    Mr. Keller. Thank you, Representative Connolly.
    I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and I just have a 
couple of questions.
    Mr. Morgan, first, thank you for your service. And I say 
that to all our postal employees. I really appreciate the work 
that you do on behalf of the American people.
    Mr. Morgan, you've been 24 years with the Postal Service, 
and you've, as I see your biography and what I'm looking at, 
you've been in Kansas City. You've been in the Arizona 
district. So, you've been to many, many areas in the Postal 
Service. And then you mentioned about things that you were 
doing here in Chicago.
    Some of the things you're implementing here, have you done 
that throughout your career in the Postal Service when you were 
at different locations, working on customer service?
    Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, I have.
    Mr. Keller. So, you--does the Postal Service do 
benchmarking to see which locations have higher rates of 
customer satisfaction and implement those policies across the 
board where other post offices might not be reaching that level 
of customer service?
    Mr. Morgan. Yes. We have benchmarks, we have reports, and 
we do know where we have concerns and issues. And we do utilize 
the processes that are working around the country, and we share 
that information to provide better service and world-class 
service to the American public.
    Mr. Keller. Another question, because you mentioned in your 
testimony, that you had employees that came in and the mail 
hadn't arrived yet, so they were--and no fault of their own. 
I'm not faulting them. But then you adjusted some of those 
times. Had you done that previously in your experience working 
at other locations, made some of those adjustments?
    Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir, I have.
    Mr. Keller. Over the 24 years?
    Mr. Morgan. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Keller. OK. So, the things that we're looking at to 
deal with customer service don't lead back to Postmaster DeJoy; 
it leads back to a bigger issue where these things aren't being 
implemented across the board, because you just got to Chicago, 
being here 24 years and having done some of these same things. 
It seems like we really need to have a clear path forward in 
how we address these issues, because, as you mentioned, you 
came in earlier this year and implemented these things that 
might have been done at other locations in some cases years in 
advance?
    Mr. Morgan. What I would say, sir, is that I can't speak 
for what happens on the national level. I came here. I was 
asked to come to Chicago to help improve service. Upon my 
arrival, I analyzed what was going on. You are correct, I have 
24 years of service, and I enjoy my work. I love providing 
service to the American people. There was one glaring issue 
that I--that stood out amongst all of the data, and it was our 
employee availability.
    And so when you talk about our start times, let's speak 
about that, our start times was misaligned. The mail arrives at 
a set time. And if we're not starting at that right time, we're 
wasting work hours. By adjusting the work hours to the workload 
or the work need, we gain more hours.
    Every letter carrier, every postal employee has a maximum 
of 12 hours that they can work. So, I'll give an example. If we 
start at seven o'clock, the mail arrives at nine o'clock, and 
the carriers are on the clock at seven, we've lost two hours 
where we've lost the ability to deliver mail. By adjusting the 
start time, improved our delivery.
    Mr. Keller. If I could ask a question. So, that start time 
that you're talking about, how many years had they been 
starting at the same time with the mail arriving later? I mean, 
is that something that just changed recently, or has that been 
going on for a period of time? How long before you arrived had 
that been going on?
    Mr. Morgan. Sir, I can't answer about what they've done in 
the past. I just know this is what, when I came in, after 
analyzing the data, this is what I learned. And then that's 
what we moved to start to address.
    Mr. Keller. And did you do similar things like that at 
other locations over your career with the post office?
    Mr. Morgan. Yes, I have.
    Mr. Keller. So, because I've heard a lot of people talk 
about how the Postal Service's performance metrics are a result 
of what Postmaster DeJoy has done, and that clearly is not the 
case if for 24 years you've had to come in to places and 
improve the customer service. It certainly, to me, leads to a 
bigger issue of the Postal Service implementing the best 
practices at all locations to ensure that there's on-time 
service.
    I mean, so looking at this, I would say that you're 
adjusting the start times. The Postmaster--does the Postmaster 
tell the different mail facilities, whether it's in Chicago or 
Detroit, what time they have to start their employee staff or 
control that, or is that up to the person at each location?
    Mr. Morgan. Are you asking if Mr. DeJoy instructed me to 
change the start times? Is that what you're saying? Or does he 
instruct----
    Mr. Keller. What I'm saying is, does he set the start 
times? Does he set the start times or does he allow the 
managers at each area to manage the postal--I mean, I guess the 
point I'm making--and I'll just be blunt with it. The point I'm 
making is these problems existed before Postmaster DeJoy came 
in. And like with any big organization, it takes time to get 
things going in the right direction. And you're doing that, and 
I compliment you for that. But wouldn't that be an accurate 
statement that a lot of these problems existed----
    Mr. Connolly. The gentleman's time has expired, but Mr. 
Morgan may answer.
    Mr. Morgan. What I can say is I can't--again, I can't speak 
of nationally. But locally, I can tell that I've been a 
Postmaster here in Chicago, Kansas City. I've been Arizona, 
Michigan. And I set the start times according to the data 
everywhere. No one gives me that direct instruction. That's in 
my purview or my authority to set those times, and that's what 
I did.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Morgan. And thank you, Mr. 
Keller.
    Mr. Keller. I just want to followup with that because it's 
an important thing to show----
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Keller--Mr. Keller----
    Mr. Keller. No, Mr. Connolly, everybody's trying to blame 
the Postmaster.
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Keller, I get----
    Mr. Keller. It's not the result of his actions per se.
    Mr. Connolly. We get your point, and your time has expired.
    Mr. Keller. It's many more things.
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Keller, your time has expired.
    Mr. Julion----
    Mr. Keller. That's because people don't want to hear it.
    Mr. Connolly. No, we heard it loud and clear. In fact, 
maybe you could listen for a minute.
    Mr. Julion, Mr. Keller's trying to make the point that all 
of this problem began long before Mr. DeJoy, and he has 
virtually nothing to do with it. In fact, he's solving 
problems.
    Now, I--before I call on Mr. Davis for his five minutes, I 
got to say, maybe I'm suffering amnesia. Let's take overtime. 
We're in a pandemic, and a lot of members got sick. Some, 
sadly, died. That meant we had to do something, either hire 
more people or allow more overtime so the job got done. Is that 
correct?
    Mr. Julion. That is correct.
    Mr. Connolly. And who sets overtime policy?
    Mr. Julion. Well, the overtime policy is set by our 
collective bargaining agreement.
    Mr. Connolly. Yes, but did Mr. DeJoy, when he became 
postmaster general, actually halt overtime when he took over in 
July?
    Mr. Julion. I believe that there were some directions given 
to postal management, but we----
    Mr. Connolly. By the postmaster general, which had a direct 
impact on quality of service.
    And, second, again, maybe I've got amnesia. Weren't there, 
in fact, opinions that were issued by Federal judges to roll 
back Mr. DeJoy's so-called reforms because they were injurious 
to Postal Service, and they cited that it was directly 
political, that it was aimed at affecting an election that was 
pending in November 2020? Is that not the case?
    Mr. Julion. There was some judges' decisions on that.
    Mr. Connolly. Ah, yes. I just wanted to make sure for the 
record I got that right. Thank you.
    Mr. Davis is recognized for his five minutes.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And thank 
you again for bringing this hearing to Chicago. I thank all of 
the witnesses for your testimony.
    Mr. Julion, let me ask you. You mentioned that poor 
staffing was a key reason for the longstanding--longstanding 
meaning long period of time--degradation of service in Chicago. 
I understand that service hired 243 city carrier assistants and 
other support employees to address the shortage. What was the 
letter carriers' position relative to that action?
    Mr. Julion. Well, basically, we felt, and we still feel--
basically, our position has been that the staffing has been 
inadequate prior to the pandemic, during the pandemic, and even 
now. By their own admission in the most recent meeting we had 
with them, they stated that they were at least 500 carriers 
short--or it was their objective to hire 500 additional 
carriers in the upcoming months.
    Mr. Davis. Have they given any reasons why they have not 
been able to hire?
    Mr. Julion. I don't know if it's just the inability, the 
lack of people ready in the work force. But what we are seeing 
is a poor onboarding process that have people who have been 
told that they were being hired by the post office not being 
brought on. The training is wholly inactive--inaccurate and 
unacceptable. We're seeing those who are not properly trained 
put out on the streets before their time. And because of that, 
they're having a problem with the retention.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you. Thank you very much.
    Ms. Perez, in your testimony, you highlight operational 
changes made across the country, as well as COVID, as causes 
for absences and for some work force participation. And I've 
heard this morning that maybe paid family leave might also be. 
And as a hard-nosed, staunch supporter of paid family leave, 
could you share what it really came up with as the causes for 
absence, that employees were not coming to work?
    Ms. Perez. As far as the employee absences, as noted, the 
low employee availability hit Chicago particularly hard. With 
regards to the post office that we have looked at, the four 
post offices here in the Chicago area, the--what they did is 
then they prioritized the delivery of the mail and with the 
employees that they did have available. And so the, you know, 
fundamental procedures that the Postal Service has, the--they 
didn't always have the time to, you know, address, for example, 
scanning of packages or, you know, reporting the delayed mail.
    So, you know, as far as, again, the employee availability, 
I would say that it is as a result of the pandemic, the leave 
that was offered to the employees through the different acts 
that were passed.
    Mr. Davis. And they were having problems before there was a 
Federal paid family leave program?
    Ms. Perez. Yes, sir. Chicago, as we noted, has been one of 
the, I would say, lowest-performing locations across the 
country for quite sometime. And, again, we do have ongoing 
work, not only looking at, you know, delivery issues, but as I 
mentioned in my opening statement, looking at some of the 
lower-performing processing facilities to determine whether or 
not there's additional challenges upstream of the delivery 
units that we can hopefully identify and provide 
recommendations that the Postal Service can address.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you very much.
    Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. I thank the gentleman.
    The distinguished Congresswoman from Michigan, Ms. 
Lawrence, is recognized for her five minutes of questioning.
    Ms. Lawrence.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Thank you so much.
    Mr. Morgan, I want to just emphasize in your statement why 
the need for leadership from the top is needed. You can't 
cherry-pick across the country with particular leadership and 
every manager going in, setting their own agenda. And one of 
the things that we hear is that this plan is supposed to lower 
the standards. And I hear your passionate commitment to 
improving the standards, but we have a postmaster general who 
on the record wants to lower the delivery standards, and we're 
hearing the outcry from the community.
    I want to ask Ms. Perez. You are responsible to look at and 
make recommendations for the Postal Service, for their 
accountability and their overall effectiveness. Can--what can 
the inspector general do in providing oversight or 
accountability for this 10-year plan?
    And I wanted to add something to that. When the Postal 
Service does not adhere to the recommendations of the IG, 
what--what happens then? So if you, as you have, outlined all 
these issues--and Michigan has been one that has been subject 
to audits and recommendations are being made, but I don't see 
them being followed by this current postmaster general. What is 
the proper oversight to ensure that not--so we don't have to 
hire 100 Morgans to go around and try to figure it out on their 
own and set standards and change deliveries processes and start 
times, which every--that should be a national standard.
    So, what--where is your power? And what do we need to do to 
ensure that we're living up to what the expectation of the 
Postal Service is?
    Ms. Perez. Sure. To answer your first question with regards 
to the oversight of the 10-year plan, Delivering for America, 
we have identified several audits that we will be soon 
launching or have recently launched that will look at different 
initiatives that the Postal Service has identified, and we'll 
be providing robust oversight and watching those initiatives 
closely.
    One particular audit that we recently announced is looking 
at the aggregate of the plan with regards to the underlying 
assumptions in the 10-year plan, as well as how the Postal 
Service will implement and measure performance.
    To answer your second question with regards to when we make 
recommendations, we have a robust process with regards to the 
Postal Service being required to provide us with support and 
evidence with regards to the measures that they've taken to 
implement the recommendations, and we do not close 
recommendations until we're satisfied that the intent of the 
recommendations have been implemented.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Do you report to Congress when your 
recommendations are not followed or they're--you see in the 
reports that they're not--they're not being--implementing the 
change that you're recommending?
    Ms. Perez. Yes, ma'am. We do through our semiannual report 
to Congress, we do call attention to the recommendations that 
have not been implemented.
    Mrs. Lawrence. So, again, I wish I had someone here from 
the Board of Governors or from the leadership of the Postal 
Service. But if we implement this 10-year plan, in lowering the 
standards, all these issues that were brought up by the 
National Association of Letter Carriers, by Mr. Morgan, who's a 
Postmaster, how is that going to improve the delivery? It 
doesn't improve it. That's what's so staggering about that. The 
plan does not improve the service that all of us as Members of 
Congress are hearing from the public.
    So, you're saying that if you're supposed to get a four-
year degree and you refuse to get it, let's reduce it down to 
two years, and then you'll be eligible for a four-year degree. 
It is mind-boggling to me that the leadership----
    Mr. Connolly. And will charge you more for it.
    Mrs. Lawrence [continuing]. Of this organization is 
continuing to lower the standards.
    I thank you, and I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. And, Ms. Lawrence, forgive me for 
interrupting, but I was just adding to your point about 
lowering that standard from a four-year degree to a two-year 
degree and will charge you more for it.
    Mrs. Lawrence. Exactly. In addition to that.
    I'm sorry. The dots, they're just not connecting.
    Mr. Connolly. Yes. Thank you so much.
    The distinguished Congresswoman from the great state of 
Illinois, Robin Kelly, is recognized for her five minutes of 
questioning.
    Ms. Kelly. Thank you again, Chairman Connolly, for holding 
this hearing. And thank you to all the witnesses for taking the 
time to be here today.
    Postmaster Morgan, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, 
on-time delivery for my district is down almost 20 percent 
since Postmaster DeJoy took over USPS. We have reports of mail 
being marked as delivered when they were not and mail taking 
months to deliver, and just different things you've heard 
today. And I understand you have not been overseeing the 
Chicago Post Office for all of this time, but what do you 
attribute to the delivery being down 20 percent? And I know you 
said you put in changes. And how long do you think it'll take 
to improve the mail delivery?
    And let me just get my other question to you. And what can 
we do? What more can we do to help you and actually other 
postmasters around the country implement the OIG's 
recommendations? So, what help can we give you?
    Mr. Morgan. First of all, thank you for the question. When 
you ask, I want to make sure I understand it. Basically why, 
why are there delays in your region?
    Ms. Kelly. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Morgan. Part of my analysis, I wanted to know that 
answer as well. Why? And so you look at--I'll use an example. 
If there is 40 assignments in a building and I have 60 
employees scheduled there, I look at that, and I believe that I 
should--I'm properly staffed and should be able to carry out 
the mission. What I learned was I have the staffing on record. 
I have the staffing. So, if that building has 40 carriers, I 
have 60. So, to say that I have a staffing problem would mean 
that I only have 20. That's not the case. I have the employees 
on the rolls. We have an attendance problem. So, that is where 
my focus is, is addressing those unscheduled absences.
    What I--what I would like Congress to do is to assist us, 
you know, continue to assist us with the--your networks, with 
our job fairs, our hiring, and also supporting a Delivering for 
America plan.
    Ms. Kelly. So, it sounds like you attribute it to not 
really having the staff that supposedly you are supposed to 
have and, also, there is an attendance problem with the staff 
you do have.
    Mr. Morgan. The staff--I don't say that we have a staffing 
problem.
    Ms. Kelly. Oh, you don't. OK.
    Mr. Morgan. I don't. We do not have a staffing problem.
    Ms. Kelly. It's the attendance.
    Mr. Morgan. We have an attendance problem. And, therefore, 
it's hard to deliver the mail when those that I have already 
hired, trained, and expect to come to work do not.
    Ms. Kelly. OK. Thank you.
    I do want to shift to how labor shortage or--well, I'll get 
Mr. Julion's take on it--is affecting the post office. 
Obviously, we have seen the nationwide labor shortage and have 
been cited as the reason for slower mail delivery as postal 
staff is being stretched thin. And we do have job fairs and we 
did have the post office there.
    Mr. Julion, as the union rep for the National Association 
of Letter Carriers, can you discuss how this has impacted 
letter carriers and post office? And what is your comment about 
the attendance issue?
    Mr. Julion. Well, let me just say, like Postmaster Morgan 
here, I've been a letter carrier for 24 years myself. And when 
I started as a letter carrier, there was a sense of urgency in 
getting the mail delivered. We delivered everything everywhere 
every day. As one manager told me, we do not warehouse mail, we 
deliver mail. That's not the same mindset in the post office 
right now.
    The rules of our collective bargaining agreement in the 
workplace has not changed in 24 years. If people don't come to 
work, you discipline them. You get more carriers. That is a 
reality that's not happening in the Chicago Post Office. He may 
be correct that their rolls reflect that they have enough 
carriers. But as the OIG pointed out, they don't keep up with 
their rolls. They have people on the rolls who no longer work 
for the Postal Service. They've been firing people recently who 
have already quit the post office, in an effort to clean up 
their rolls. There's a definite staffing issue in Chicago.
    And the most important metric we have to look at is not how 
much time we're saving in the office but whether we're getting 
the mail delivered. That is our objective, delivering the mail. 
That's not the objective of the current Chicago Post Office, 
not how much time we're saving in the office but whether the 
customers are getting their mail. And you know what your 
constituents are saying. They're not lying. They're not getting 
their mail.
    Ms. Kelly. And what would you say about the morale of 
people that work in the post office?
    Mr. Julion. The morale right now I would have to say is 
pretty much at an all-time low, and it's directly related to 
the start time. You have carriers doing everything they can 
with a shortened work--short work staff who have worked through 
a pandemic, who are trying desperately to get the mail 
delivered. And now you've compressed their hours of operation 
by shortening their day. Yes, we have 12 hours to deliver the 
mail, but if you don't have enough carriers to get it done, it 
won't get done.
    It's not so much that the mail is arriving late. It is the 
process--it is getting--not getting the mail to the station on 
time. And they're managing to the problem as opposed to fixing 
the problem in terms of getting the mail to the station 
earlier. Then we can keep our same starting time and provide 
efficient service.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
    Ms. Kelly. My time's up. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you very much, Ms. Kelly.
    And if I might followup on a point you made, did I 
understand you to say, Mr. Julion, that the OIG found that one 
of the attendance problems is that we're still showing here in 
Chicago people holding jobs who, in fact, are no longer holding 
those jobs?
    Mr. Julion. I believe that was in the initial report that I 
cited.
    Mr. Connolly. Is that correct, Ms. Perez?
    Ms. Perez. Yes, it is. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Connolly. Can somebody help with this mic?
    Is that correct?
    Ms. Perez. Yes, sir. Oh, there we go.
    It is correct. We did find that in our February 2021 report 
that employees that were not no longer with the Postal Service 
and not showing up to work were not being removed from the 
rolls. However, as I mentioned earlier, when we closed 
recommendations, we're provided evidence from the Postal 
Service with regards to actions taken. So, as of March 2021, we 
did receive some evidence that they had removed some employees 
from the rolls. But we haven't done additional work in that 
regard since then.
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Morgan, do you want to comment on that? 
Because this is something you inherited presumably. That seems 
like a fairly simple problem to fix. You said it's not a 
staffing problem, it's an attendance problem. Well, if I'm a 
staff member who's left or quit, presumably you're right. My 
attendance is not perfect because I'm no longer working there. 
Have we fixed that problem?
    Mr. Morgan. That is being addressed. You are----
    Mr. Connolly. Being addressed.
    Mr. Morgan. That is being addressed, correct. I have----
    Mr. Connolly. That's a historical present tense.
    Mr. Morgan. OK. So, let me explain. What I inherited is--
I'll use an example of 35--let's call it 3,700 carriers. We 
have an attrition rate. So, those that worked with us and 
resigned, unlike--we have a collective bargaining agreement, so 
we have to take them off the rolls in a particular way. That 
being said, those numbers are minute, very minimal. The staff 
that we have, as we're improving, since my arrival, we're up 
about just about 13 percent if you go up. And those employees 
are coming back. So, those aren't employees that were on the 
rolls and they quit. Those were employees that had attendance 
issues that we are addressing, and they are now back to work 
and is reflective in the service----
    Mr. Connolly. Which is a different issue.
    Mr. Morgan. That's--that's--no, that's addressing the 
staffing.
    Mr. Connolly. No, I mean, that's not people who left and--
--
    Mr. Morgan. Correct. Correct.
    Mr. Connolly. Yes.
    Mr. Morgan. Those who are on the roll but are not coming to 
work.
    Mr. Connolly. Great. OK. Thank you.
    The distinguished vice chair of the Government Operations 
Subcommittee, the Congresswoman from California, Katie Porter, 
is recognized for her five minutes of questioning.
    Ms. Porter.
    Ms. Porter. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you 
for convening this important hearing.
    Ms. Perez, your office, the Office of the Inspector 
General, released an audit of the Postal Service in September 
of this year. And, basically, they graded the U.S. Postal 
Service on its ability to deliver mail on time. And the audit 
found that by the spring of 2020, mail delivery was right 
around 92 percent. That is, about 92 percent of the mail got 
there within the standard of on time. That dropped to 80 
percent by the fall of 2020, and by January 2021, was hovering 
at around 61 percent.
    I realize this has gone up somewhat since then, but I 
wanted to ask you: When did Mr. DeJoy take over as Postmaster? 
Do you know?
    Ms. Perez. The summer of 2020.
    Ms. Porter. The summer of 2020, so June 2020. And what 
happened after he took over? Did the rate of on-time mail 
delivery go up or down?
    Ms. Perez. Went down.
    Ms. Porter. And I'm a professor, and I used to grade--do a 
lot of grading. And 92 percent is considered widely, like, an A 
minus. A-B is considered hanging on, hanging on to the lowest 
possible B. Sixty percent is, at best, a D minus.
    The Postal Service delivers 48 percent of the world's mail. 
It is an institution. It is a civic treasure. And we let it get 
all the way--what we found is we let it get all the way to that 
D-minus level. How, in your opinion, did this happen?
    Ms. Perez. So, yes, last summer when the Postmaster 
arrived, he had implemented several measures and operational 
changes, along with 57 additional initiatives that were 
implemented by the postal executives. And it was in order to 
improve service, as well as ensure financial stability. And as 
we all know, those initiatives were rolled back a few months 
after that and prior to the 2020 general election.
    But one of the things we had found with regards to the 
rollout of those operational changes, as well as the rollback, 
was that there was inconsistent communication amongst the 
Postal Service employees. So, it, you know, it led to having, 
you know, issues and challenges with regards to consistent 
implementation of those initiatives across the board and across 
the country.
    Ms. Porter. So, to summarize, after Postmaster DeJoy took 
over, he began to make changes. And what followed from those 
changes was this precipitous decline. And what we ended up with 
was postal delivery that was borderline failing, because we had 
a Postmaster who, in my opinion--I'm not saying you said this--
but, in my opinion, was failing and continues to fail today.
    I wanted to ask you about something else that you--in your 
testimony, which is your office talked about employee 
availability. Why weren't postal facilities prepared to manage 
their workload when workers went on paid leave?
    Ms. Perez. That--that's a good question. I respect that 
question. As far as, you know, why wasn't the Postal Service 
prepared for it, I think that would be better asked of the 
Postal Service.
    When we do go out to different facilities or delivery 
units, we do analyze the postal data to determine what employee 
availability is like as far as percentages of employees that 
are available to conduct their jobs and process and transport 
and deliver the mail. But it is definitely one of the causes as 
things had exacerbated during the COVID-19 pandemic as far as 
the hindering the Postal Service's ability to deliver the mail 
on time.
    Ms. Porter. I mean, it seems to me that postal workers are 
going to have--they're going to get sick, they're going to have 
family members who get sick, they're going to have children, 
they're going to have medical issues, and that we ought to be 
planning for this paid leave.
    One of the recommendations you made is to increase employee 
engagement, try to retain these workers. And I think that paid 
leave is one of the tools we have to maintain people's 
connection to their workplace as they go through these 
transitions.
    Mr. Morgan, I just wanted to turn to you for one second. 
This is a map of service delivery standards based on mailing 
things from my area, the Santa Ana area. I am hard-pressed to 
understand why it is almost faster for me to walk my mail 
halfway across the country than it is to deliver it through the 
Postal Service.
    Mr. Connolly. The gentlelady's time has expired, but Mr. 
Morgan may respond to the question.
    Mr. Morgan. I am not aware of the Congresswoman's area, so 
I can't answer that.
    Ms. Porter. Is it fast--well, I'll yield back. But I just 
want to say that it takes 9, 8 days to deliver mail from Santa 
Ana to Portland, Oregon. And I'm not that fast of a walker. I'm 
not in that good a shape. I could walk there in 13 days. So, 
you're not even having the walk time with postal delivery.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Ms. Porter. Your time has expired.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi, you are recognized for your five 
minutes of questioning.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Chairman.
    Mr. Julion, in your testimony you said, ``We are tired of 
the disrespect on the workroom floor.'' What are you referring 
to?
    Mr. Julion. Well, it is well-known within the Postal 
Service that there is, in some workplaces, an unhealthy level 
of hostility in the workplace when you're trying to get more 
out of less, when you don't have enough employees, and you're 
making unreasonable demands of those who are at work every day.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And have you brought this to the 
attention of your--of the management of USPS?
    Mr. Julion. This indeed has been brought to their 
attention. In fact, I believe we still have a work--a task 
force in place on a national level dealing with the hostility 
on the workroom floor.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I think that in an interview with WGN 
earlier this year you said, ``We had staffing issues prior to 
COVID.'' And so is it fair to say that we--you were 
understaffed at USPS prior to the pandemic?
    Mr. Julion. Yes, it's fair to say that. And, in fact, I 
believe the complaints that you get from your constituents 
predate the pandemic. And a lot of them will say that the 
troubles that they had--in fact, the town hall meetings, a lot 
of them that we were involved in with Congressman Davis and 
with Congressman Rush were pre-pandemic. And they had the same 
issues at that time.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Very good.
    Ms. Perez, in your testimony, you say that two of the 
lowest performing mail processing plants in the country are in 
greater Chicago. So, 20 percent of the lowest processing plants 
in the country are in Chicago, correct?
    Ms. Perez. That's correct, according to the Postal Service 
data that we analyzed.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And you also said that Chicago--on page 
two of your testimony, Chicago had the second worst service 
score of all the postal districts in the country for two-day 
letter mail. Isn't that right?
    Ms. Perez. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. I have a poster board with me which 
illustrates what we're dealing with here in the Chicago area 
and the country. And so, basically, what this illustrates is 
the change in postal delivery standards. Before October 1, if 
you were in my ZIP Code 60193, before, right here, you could 
expect to send a piece of mail by first-class mail, basically 
in the Great Lakes region, certainly including the Chicago 
area, and have it reach in two days. That's this light blue 
area, and then the rest of the country was three days. Isn't 
that what this is showing?
    Ms. Perez. Correct.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And today, if you look at what was 
implemented on October 1, that same two-day service standard 
area has shrunk to Chicagoland and part of Wisconsin. Is that 
right?
    Ms. Perez. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And then the part of the country that 
is three-day has now gone to this region of the country, 
basically the Eastern Seaboard and the Great Plains, and the 
rest is 4 and 5 days. Isn't that right?
    Ms. Perez. Correct.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. So, why is it the case that, when a 
constituent comes to me and says that a piece of mail was sent 
from Northbrook, Illinois, which is in the greater Chicago 
area, to another part of the Chicago area, namely, Evanston, it 
took three weeks? How could that be?
    Ms. Perez. So, again, as we noted in several of our audit 
reports, it's oftentimes that there are challenges that are 
faced by the Postal Service with regards to whether it's at the 
delivery unit, but it could also be at the processing center or 
within the transportation.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Could it be that, because we have some 
of the worst performing plants in the country and some of the 
lowest service scores in the country, that it's only logical 
that we would have some of the lowest delivery standards in the 
country?
    Ms. Perez. So yes. We'll be looking at those two plants 
that we mentioned--that I mentioned in my opening statement----
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. And now we're going into the holiday 
season----
    Ms. Perez. Correct.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi [continuing]. Where we're about to see a 
ton, tons and tons and tons of parcels and pieces of mail and 
holiday cards go through this very system, and here we have a 
Postal Service that's not ready to handle it.
    And so what I'm trying to get at, Mr. Julion, is, do you 
think that we're ready for this holiday season?
    Mr. Julion. No. We're not.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Well, thanks for your candor. Now tell 
us what needs to be done to get ready for the holiday season 
right now because I know a lot of families are really hoping 
for a little bit more normal of a holiday season in terms of 
postal delivery.
    Mr. Julion. To get ready for the holiday season, this 
holiday season?
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Yes, sir.
    Mr. Julion. You should have started this summer. I mean, 
right now, we're on path to get ready for Easter. When you're 
talking about bringing people on board and properly trained to 
deliver the mail, it takes time. So, that's why the staffing 
issue was important prior to the pandemic because, once the 
pandemic hit, we were already exposed, and we were already in a 
place that we were not going to be able to handle it like we're 
not going to be able to handle the upcoming holiday season if 
we're not properly staffed.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. We're not ready.
    Mr. Julion. We're not ready.
    Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Thank you, Mr. Julion.
    Mr. Davis. [Presiding.] Thank you, Mr. Krishnamoorthi. Your 
time has expired.
    The chair now recognizes Mr. Quigley for five minutes.
    Mr. Quigley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Ms. Perez, you talked about the mail not being fully sorted 
before it gets to the carriers. Why is that the case? What is 
not happening?
    Ms. Perez. So, oftentimes, we find at the processing 
center, as I mentioned, they may also have employee 
availability issues or other, you know, procedural things that 
they're not following at the processing center, and they often 
deploy the mail down to the delivery unit without it being 
sorted in what's called carrier sequence.
    Mr. Quigley. And they're told that's OK, your 
understanding? It's out of procedure, right?
    Ms. Perez. Correct. That is out of procedure. My 
understanding is, based on the location of the country and the 
availability of the staff at the delivery unit, they may have 
the time to sort the mail into carrier sequence or they may 
not. So, I do believe it's a case-by-case basis across the 
country.
    Mr. Quigley. Well, let me ask, Mr. Morgan, what's the case 
here in Chicago? The question had to do with the mail not being 
fully sorted before it gets to the carriers.
    Mr. Morgan. The letter carriers receive their mail in 
various forms. Since my arrival, do we have a challenge here 
and there? Yes. Do we have a problem? No. But before--I would 
like to go back for a quick second, and I want to ensure that 
everyone understands from my perspective as the Postmaster of 
the city of Chicago, I am ready for peak season. I ask that our 
employees that are on the rolls, please come to work. We are 
staffed. We have the availability----
    Mr. Quigley. Sir, I want to get to that, but I want to stay 
on this stream. So, you're saying you think there's a problem, 
but it's being addressed?
    Mr. Morgan. No. I'm saying that--no, that's not what I'm 
saying. I can't speak nationally; what I can speak about is in 
Chicago----
    Mr. Quigley. That's all I'm asking.
    Mr. Morgan [continuing]. So, to say that does the mail come 
100 percent prepared every single time, no. Is there a problem? 
No, there is not.
    Mr. Quigley. Sir, same question.
    Mr. Julion. There has to be a problem if you're moving back 
the starting times because you're not getting the mail to the 
stations in a timely manner.
    Mr. Quigley. To your understanding, is the mail getting to 
the carriers not fully sorted?
    Mr. Julion. It's getting to the carriers not fully sorted. 
And, in fact, there's a lot of carriers on the workroom floor 
who are doing clerk work because there are not enough clerks in 
these offices as well.
    Mr. Quigley. Very good.
    Mr. Morgan, back to you. So, at least--there's, at least, 
some issue with the mail being fully sorted before it gets to 
the carriers. You're changing the whole structure, the 
management, and I get it. You're moving things back because you 
don't want people sitting around for two hours because the 
mail's not getting there on time. But, to your understanding, 
what has to happen--to get to the original point--that the mail 
is--the mail gets to the carriers that two hours earlier? 
You're delaying everything, and it's going to get dark sooner 
because it's not getting to you on time and it's not being, at 
least in some cases, fully sorted. So, you're managing around 
the problem at the beginning, which is what, I think, our 
gentleman from the union is trying to tell us. Can't we sort 
out the initial problem so you don't have to manage around it.
    Mr. Morgan. OK. I'm making sure it was on. Let me state, 
again, as an example. There's always going to be a first and 
someone's always going to be last. Someone's going to receive 
their mail first at four a.m., and there's going to be a unit 
that may receive their mail last at nine o'clock. Formally, 
Chicago was a district of its own. We're now--all of the area 
is now one district. The start time alignment has nothing to do 
with--it had everything to do with when the mail is available. 
So, on the trip--someone's going to get it first, so if the 
truck arrives at four----
    Mr. Quigley. Well, let me respectfully stop you. If you got 
the mail at the beginning of the day on time, you wouldn't have 
to manage around it, which pushes everything back to that 
person at the end who gets it in the dark. And I'm here to tell 
you, most the members will say, when things get delivered 
later, it's more likely that they'll be mistakes. But we also 
hear from carriers that they don't like delivering in the dark. 
They feel less safe, and it's more difficult to do the job.
    So, back to the original question: If we could solve that 
two hours at the beginning and the issue that has been raised 
about the not being fully sorted, you wouldn't have to manage 
around it? I know you want to defend the Postal Service, and I 
know you're doing a good job. You're doing the best you can, 
but you got to describe it warts and all, sir. If we could 
solve that problem where you get that mail and it's properly 
sorted two hours before, you wouldn't have to manage around it, 
right?
    Mr. Morgan. I'm not managing around it now.
    Mr. Quigley. It's supposed to get there two hours earlier.
    Mr. Morgan. It's not. That's a misunderstanding. It is not 
supposed to get there two hours early. Every facility has a 
mail arrival profile and a set time that the mail arrives. I 
changed the start times here to match the workload when the 
mail arrived.
    Mr. Quigley. And my time's up. You're managing around the 
original sin.
    Mr. Davis. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Quigley.
    The chair now recognizes Mr. Rush for five minutes.
    Mr. Rush. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This has been quite a 
hearing.
    Ms. Perez, I want to thank you for your timely completion 
on the audit that I requested that you did in August 2020 and 
confirm the glaring issues around mail delivery that were also 
clear to my constituents. The audit found that nearly 16,000 
delayed mail pieces was not reported to the customer service 
daily reporting system. And I was more concerned to learn that 
the Henry McGee and Ashburn stations did not report any--not 
one--delay in piece of mail despite having over 10,000 delayed 
mail pieces between them.
    So my question, how does this underrepresented--how does 
this underreporting, rather, and lack of transparency around 
mail delays impact the ability of customers, and particularly 
low-income Chicagoans, to reliably track and receive vital 
items that they desperately need?
    Ms. Perez. Sure. Can you hear me?
    Mr. Rush. No.
    Ms. Perez. OK. So, when the mail is not accurately 
reported, it doesn't allow postal management to be able to 
adjust fire and implement mitigating factors to be able to 
address that so that constituents can get their mail on time.
    Mr. Rush. Mr. Julion, you and I have had many--hours and 
hours of intense conversation about the mail and delivery. I am 
interested in the national systemic issues that the U.S. Postal 
Service is confronted with, the DeJoy issues, but--elderly 
people in my district, they don't want to hear DeJoy excuses. 
And you and I have talked over the years about facing the 
leadership, and that was my most strongest disagreement with 
Ms. Prater. She just did not provide adequate leadership. And 
so--and I just want you to know that I'm looking at leadership, 
not excuses. I'm looking at, if there's a problem, then let's 
work together to solve the problem. I'm looking at veracity, 
people who are upfront, straightforward. Tell my constituents 
the problem. They're very intelligent. They can understand it, 
but they don't want to be lied to. Work with them and let's 
solve these particular problems.
    So, Mack, I'm just going to ask you, you have--has there 
been a leadership change that you can pinpoint since Ms. 
Prater's departure?
    Mr. Julion. Well, upon the departure of Ms. Prater, we 
still have the same district manager. In fact, the OIG report 
was addressed direct to the district manager Randy Stines, and 
he failed to address those issues. We have been willing to and 
open to working with the new Postmaster. We told him that from 
day one. He may be put in a position to fail and not even 
realize that. I know we've had three area vice presidents in 
the last year, and the last of which has refused to meet with 
us.
    So, we're trying to work with them. We compromised on some 
of the workplace issues. We expedited the bidding process. We 
created multi-unit assignments months ago, and some of them 
they still have not assigned employees to these assignments.
    Mr. Rush. Well, I also want to ask, Mr. Morgan, this 
attendance problem was a clear example of what I was concerned 
about. If you had people who don't show up for their job 
consistently, then you ought to fire them. What prevents you 
from firing people who don't show up?
    Mr. Morgan. Nothing prevents. What I would say is we have 
to do better on our side of the table in training our leaders 
to properly address that. We have a collective bargaining 
agreement. So, when it's time to address attendance issue, 
there's a process. And, even if the individual is guilty by 
their actions and if there's a gap in the process, the 
individual is retained because of a flaw in the process.
    So, my responsibility is to train up my staff so they can 
properly address and know how to handle those cases when 
they're presented.
    Mr. Rush. Firing people who don't show up for work?
    Mr. Morgan. Addressing those who are unregular in 
attendance, correct--irregular in attendance. I apologize.
    Mr. Connolly. [Presiding.] Thank you, Mr. Rush.
    And I would also add just listening to Mr. Julion say that 
there's a regional vice president who won't meet with union 
reps. Is that correct?
    Mr. Julion. The latest area vice president I believe he's 
been in his position for approximately two months now, Eric 
Henry, and we have made multiple requests to meet with him 
because we're not getting results from the district manager.
    Mr. Connolly. Does that fall within your purview of 
responsibility, Mr. Morgan?
    Mr. Morgan. No, it does not.
    Mr. Connolly. It does not? OK.
    Mr. Julion. Area vice president is over him.
    Mr. Connolly. Right. Right. So, I know that's going to 
concern every member of this delegation to learn of that, and 
if we can be helpful in facilitating that, let us know.
    The distinguished gentlelady from the great state of 
Illinois, Jan Schakowsky, is recognized for her five minutes of 
questioning.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you.
    Mr. Morgan, I have to stay local because we have a couple 
of real problems in my congressional district. I have a bunch 
of post offices, but just two of them, the Rogers Park and 
North Town have consistently--we've had townhall meetings. We 
have 200 postcards from the 50th ward just last week. I can't 
understand why these post offices have been so consistently bad 
and why we continue to have these delivery problems, which are 
really serious.
    I mean, I hear about medication that isn't delivered, small 
businesses that are in real trouble because they aren't 
getting--so can you somehow explain to me, and, by the way, you 
mentioned the criminal behavior in some of the communities, 
this is not true of these particular post office neighborhoods. 
What's the deal and why can't we--after a long time and 
particularly in this last year when we have literally thousands 
of complaints that we can't deal with this? How do you explain 
that this happens in just these communities?
    Mr. Morgan. I can't. I can't explain how it happened. One, 
I wasn't here. What I can say is, since my arrival, what I have 
done is, again, we hired additional staff to get to cap. I want 
to make sure so it's not that I'm contradicting myself. We 
continue to hire to address the attrition. Those who come on 
board go through the Carrier Academy, choose not to keep the 
assignment, and different things, what we have to do on the 
management side. I'll talk about the management side. We have 
to do better understanding our job, my staff is extremely new. 
We've attrited. We've had a lot of senior leadership retire 
out, and now we have new leadership. So, I have to bring them 
up to speed so they know how to properly run the facility, to 
do better running the facility and giving instructions.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Well, let me ask you, Mr. Julion, as 
someone who's on the street all the time, how do we quickly 
address problems when there are particular problem areas like 
we are seeing in my congressional district? What can we do?
    Mr. Julion. Well, first and foremost, we have to 
acknowledge that a problem exists. I believe in the first step 
program. The first step is admitting that there is a problem.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you.
    Mr. Julion. We've had meetings with the Postmaster. The 
same reports that your office has received. He has stated that 
he do not believe those reports, that they are inaccurate. You 
get the complaints from your customers. You tell me are those 
reports accurate or not. I've invited him to meet me on any 
workroom floor and to see if mail was not being delivered. We 
have yet to meet on a workroom floor, but I understand recently 
he has been on several workroom floors, and he has seen for 
himself that mail is not being delivered, that mail was being 
hidden, in the case in Cicero. You were there recently, that he 
had to walk some managers and supervisors off the workroom 
floor because they are still falsifying information, stopping 
the clock on packages. You hear this from your customers--your 
constituents all the time, that a package was scanned delivered 
or attempted, and they were at home. There was no delivery or 
there----
    Ms. Schakowsky. Some of my constituents are told it was 
delivered, even though it wasn't delivered.
    Mr. Julion. Yes. I'm a customer, and I would go on the 
internet, and I'm waiting on a package, and they say it's 
delivered; I expect it to be at my home. The reality of it is 
it's not right now because they're still falsifying data. Let's 
be honest: No one is trying to put the Postal Service down 
here. I think there's no greater love for the Postal Service 
than us who work for the Postal Service. We know that, when 
we're at the top of our game, we're the best at what we do. We 
deliver for FedEx. We deliver for Amazon. We deliver for UPS. 
They come to us because we are the best. Right now in Chicago, 
we're not the best, but we can be the best. But we have to have 
an honest assessment of the problem and be willing to work 
toward fixing it. We're willing to work with them toward fixing 
this problem.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Well, and I want to work with you to make 
sure that we can clean it up in my community. And if I have a 
minute, I don't know if I do still--am I out of time?
    Mr. Connolly. No.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Oh, OK. I just want to, again, ask 
Postmaster Morgan, I would like to just close with this 
question by asking that you provide Congress with a plan and a 
timetable for addressing the issues that are highlighted by the 
inspector general's report. Can we get a timeline and a report 
on how we're going to solve these problems in the Chicago area?
    Mr. Morgan. You're asking for a response to the OIG report, 
am I understanding you correctly?
    Ms. Schakowsky. Yes.
    Mr. Connolly. The gentlelady's time has expired, but Mr. 
Morgan may respond.
    Mr. Morgan. I believe that we did have a response, but I 
will get with our government affairs team, and I'll provide an 
official answer for the record.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you.
    Mr. Morgan. You're welcome.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
    Distinguished gentlelady from the great state of Illinois, 
Ms. Lauren Underwood, is recognized for her five minutes of 
questioning.
    Ms. Underwood. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    And thank you to our witnesses for joining us here today. 
Today we've heard about unacceptable declines in service 
nationwide and specifically here in Chicago, but I also want to 
highlight what it means for the rural communities, like the 
ones in my district where USPS is often the provider of last-
mile delivery.
    Ms. Perez, has the Office of the Inspector General or USPS 
itself analyzed how the recent declines in service levels have 
specifically impacted rural communities?
    Ms. Perez. We do have some ongoing work looking at that, 
and I believe it'll be issued later this fall.
    Ms. Underwood. OK. So, going forward, has USPS developed a 
strategy to ensure that rural communities are not 
disproportionately impacted by reductions in service standards 
or other changes laid out in the Postal Service's 10-year plan?
    Ms. Perez. Unfortunately, I don't have that information 
readily available, but I'm happy to provide it to you after the 
hearing.
    Ms. Underwood. For the record?
    Ms. Perez. Sure.
    Ms. Underwood. OK. As part of the consolidation of district 
offices, USPS plans to combine the Chicago district with other 
parts of northern Illinois. Ms. Perez, as is the case with most 
regions, the Postal Service is a major employer--a source of 
good-paying, union jobs. Has there been an analysis of how this 
consolidation will impact the postal work force in northern 
Illinois?
    Ms. Perez. I can't speak to that. I'm not sure.
    Ms. Underwood. Will you get back to us for the record?
    Ms. Perez. Yes, ma'am.
    Ms. Underwood. OK Postmaster General DeJoy's 10-year plan 
involves raising prices while also cutting services. 
Ostensibly, the goal here is to save money, but this could have 
a major impact on small businesses operating on tight margins 
and could even drive more customers away from the Postal 
Service. Accelerating the reduction demand for U.S. mail could 
harm the long-term financial health and stability of the Postal 
Service.
    Ms. Perez, has there been any analysis or modeling of the 
impact these price increases or lowering of service standards 
could have on consumer demand for first-class mail?
    Ms. Perez. So, with regards to the 10-year plan, Delivering 
for America, we personally have not done any analysis of the 
plan as of yet. We do have an ongoing audit looking at the 
underlying assumptions of the plan, as well as how the Postal 
Service will monitor implementation. And, of course, with 
regards to the changes outlined in the plan, we'll be 
monitoring that going forward as well.
    Ms. Underwood. And who would do the analysis of that plan?
    Ms. Perez. So, we would do independent oversight and our 
own analysis to determine whether or not there's 
recommendations we can make with regards to the implementation 
of different initiatives with regards to the plan, but as far 
as whether or not the Postal Service did any independent 
analysis of their own, you would have to ask that to the Postal 
Service.
    Ms. Underwood. OK. And, Mr. Morgan, are you aware of that 
type of analysis?
    Mr. Morgan. No, I am not. That's a national issue so that 
would have to be directed to headquarters.
    Ms. Underwood. OK. And, Mr. Morgan, in your role as the 
Chicago Postmaster, I assume that you work closely with other 
postmasters across the region?
    Mr. Morgan. I have conversations with them, but my purview 
is strictly the city of Chicago.
    Ms. Underwood. OK. And so, in those conversations, do you 
address service delivery times or any kind of bottlenecks that 
you're seeing within the larger Chicagoland region among 
service delivery times?
    Mr. Morgan. If I have an issue that pertains to Chicago, 
yes, we absolutely address it.
    Ms. Underwood. OK. So, in terms of your supervision then, 
are you all held to a larger, you know, regional standard 
around--can you just talk about any kind of lines of 
communication or formal practices between the Chicago 
Postmaster region and where I represent, right, which is the 
suburbs and rural areas outside the city?
    Mr. Morgan. No. So, you have to understand the structure. 
So the rural area, they have their own independent Postmaster.
    Ms. Underwood. Correct. That's right.
    Mr. Morgan. They receive their mail from our processing 
plants. So, we all receive our mail from the processing plants, 
so we do come together daily. And if there's, as you said, a 
bottleneck, we have that conversation. If the mail is stuck 
here or if there's an availability issue or whatever may arise, 
we get together, and then we fix it, yes.
    Ms. Underwood. And then, during your tenure, I understand 
that you're newer in this role.
    Mr. Morgan. I am.
    Ms. Underwood. Yes. Can you give us some metrics that 
you've seen regarding the processing times leading to 
bottlenecks to the larger service delivery area?
    Mr. Morgan. Metrics, no, I can't. I can't particularly give 
you metrics, but I can provide some for the record.
    Ms. Underwood. OK. Oh, but USPS does track those things?
    Mr. Morgan. I can give you our service numbers, yes. I can 
have those submitted, and I'm pretty sure we also gave service 
numbers in my written testimony.
    Ms. Underwood. OK. Thank you all so much for being here.
    I yield back.
    Mr. Connolly. The gentlelady yields back.
    Ms. Newman----
    Ms. Newman. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly [continuing]. In whose district I intend to 
visit tonight and tomorrow, welcome. And you are recognized for 
your five minutes of questioning.
    Ms. Newman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And please have a good 
time. It's the best district, really.
    So thank you, Mack, for being here. I appreciate it so 
much.
    Mr. Morgan, I really appreciate you. You've had a hard job 
since you came in, and we recognize that, and thank you for 
working with me on the Mount Greenwood and some of the Illinois 
three postal issues. You were very helpful, and we did bring 
delays down. So, I want to commend you for that.
    Mack, I'm going to go back to a comment you made that was 
really concerning to me. You said something about postal 
supervisor fraud, and that's a big word. So, let's talk about 
that.
    Mr. Julion. It's a big word, but it's rampant. It's a 
reality. It contributes----
    Ms. Newman. Can you define it?
    Mr. Julion. It attributes to some of the low morale in the 
workplace. When we're talking--I think it was recently reported 
about the instances of management stealing time, time clock 
fraud. This is an effort to show that we're getting more work 
done in a less amount of hours. It has been something rampant 
in the Chicago post office for the past few years to the extent 
that a grievance settlement--we have three letter carriers 
working full time--no, we need letter carriers on the street 
working full time to audit the clock rings of supervisors, yet 
they were still shaving hours, knowing that they're being 
watched, shaving hours off the carriers' time.
    Recently, we had a grievance settlement roughly about half 
a million dollars paid out to letter carriers across Chicago 
because they were stealing time. This is over and above the 
time that they had to restore back to them. It is a reality.
    Ms. Newman. Mr. Morgan, can you--I'd like to hear your side 
of that.
    Mr. Morgan. Absolutely. One, what we are speaking of is a 
past audit or grievance, if you will, and there was a team 
done, and my understanding of that, there was fraud, and that 
was being addressed. It was wrongdoing.
    Now, upon my arrival, I did learn of the team and, again, I 
can't fix the past, but all I can do is to start to put things 
in place and then address it going forward. Now, in our line of 
work, I'm managing people. So, depending on what people do, 
it's my response. So, we are taught, we are trained to do the 
right thing. Should someone's behavior veer the wrong way, then 
it is addressed. And that the text audit or grievance that 
we're speaking of, that was, I want to say--correct me if I am 
wrong, Mack--2018, 2019, I believe, 2018, 2019, and, currently, 
it was closed out. Our latest sweep found no flaws. That was 
the most recent, but that was a review of the past, and that 
was found and that was the grievance was sustained.
    Ms. Newman. OK. Thank you.
    And then would you respond to that, Mack? Are there any new 
cases?
    Mr. Julion. Yes. It was closed out as a matter of 
settlement, but one thing that we can say, as far as 
accountability, those supervisors are still on the workroom 
floor. So, you have opportunity to address them and their 
habits and what they've done. They are still in the workplace.
    Ms. Newman. OK. Couple more questions during my time here. 
So, recruiting staffing and training, kind of hard all over the 
place and just hard in regular times as I've run organizations. 
So can you estimate, Mr. Morgan, what level of productivity 
increase we might have if we brought back those 30 percent of 
the sorting machines that were taken away by DeJoy a year, year 
and a half ago, two years ago, whatever it was?
    Mr. Morgan. No, I can't. That's logistics, and that's not 
my area of expertise.
    Ms. Newman. Yes. I would like an answer to that. So, if 
there's a way for your team to identify how much more 
productivity we might be able to receive if, in fact, those 
sorting machines were reinstalled that were taken out, we'd 
appreciate that for the record, and it would be helpful to us.
    Mr. Morgan. I'll take that back to our government relations 
team and I'll see----
    Mr. Connolly. Would the gentlelady yield without prejudice 
to her time?
    Ms. Newman. Sure.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you.
    Mr. Morgan, just to followup on that. You have sorting 
machines?
    Mr. Morgan. No. I do not. I am the Postmaster of Chicago. 
The sorting machines are inside of our mail processing plants. 
That is not my authority.
    Mr. Connolly. OK.
    Mr. Morgan. I do not have any machines.
    Mr. Connolly. Are you familiar with sorting machines?
    Mr. Morgan. I am.
    Mr. Connolly. And what on a daily basis can one sorting 
machine process? How many pieces of mail?
    Mr. Morgan. Thousands.
    Mr. Connolly. Thousands?
    Ms. Newman. Mr. Chair, I believe it's close to 30,000, 
actually.
    Mr. Connolly. Correct.
    Mr. Morgan. Well, that would depend on the machine. We have 
multiple machines, and there are some that can do 30,000, 
correct.
    Mr. Connolly. My point would be, you would certainly 
concede, even though it doesn't fall within your purview right 
now, that Ms. Newman's point, the withdraw of machines clearly 
would have an impact on volume of mail being sorted and thus, 
ultimately, delivered?
    Mr. Morgan. I wouldn't concur with that without analyzing 
the data, looking at everything. Those machines don't run--will 
run on its own. It needs volume to process. It needs people to 
process. So, I couldn't say that, hey, we bring those back, 
because I would have to look at the entire picture to make that 
determination.
    Mr. Connolly. OK. So, at least, would you not 
intellectually concede that, in theory, the withdraw of a 
number of machines be on the normal maintenance schedule could 
have an impact on delivery schedules?
    Mr. Morgan. Again, that's a very big ask.
    Ms. Newman. Chairman, if I may answer because I do know 
this.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you for yielding.
    Ms. Newman. Thank you. And thank you for yielding back. 
Because I have experience with USPS as management consultant, I 
can tell you the answer is yes. I just don't have the exact 
number, but the answer is definitely yes.
    Mr. Morgan. So, again, this is what I will say, and this 
will just be an example, if I am in the plant and I have a 
million pieces of mail, and that's, just for an example, it 
takes two machines, and I got rid of two machines because I 
already have two to do that work, I would have excess. So, why 
would I run excess when what I have can do the job that's 
needed?
    Now, I can't debate what's national and what's in each 
district. I'm just saying that's what I will look at. I'm 
looking at an entire picture; I wouldn't universally just jump. 
I would analyze and then make that decision.
    Ms. Newman. For sure. Let's give you that opportunity to 
work with the plant to discern that. However, what I can tell 
you right now, because I talk to postal workers every day is 
that things are not getting sorted. We also know how many 
machines were taken out. That's well documented in the public 
record. So, we know two things, is that on the folks that work 
inside the postal station and the letter carriers are seeing 
the backlog, and it would be largely prevented by sorting 
machines. There is no question about that.
    So, what I'm saying is, is that what I would like you to do 
is engage with your plant and understand, because they have 
those metrics because I know they do, and ask them, how could 
we benefit from having more productivity from our machines? And 
the answer is to reinstate those machines Mr. DeJoy had taken 
out. So, that's what we're asking you to discern and put in the 
record for us. I appreciate that. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you. Let me just ask a final question. 
I have not used my five minutes yet, but I have interrupted now 
and then. Listening to this whole hearing, one thing that 
really struck me as extraordinary, Mr. Morgan, was that the 
postmaster general of Chicago is pleading with his own 
employees to come back to work and work.
    Mr. Morgan. Uh-huh.
    Mr. Connolly. What is the adjudication of people who are 
under contract to work, namely, an employment agreement, who 
don't show up for work?
    Mr. Morgan. We have a collective bargaining agreement. So, 
what I would say is that it's not the union's job to address 
attendance. I would appreciate the union's efforts in promoting 
being regular in attendance, public statement to draw those who 
are at home to come back to work. It's our job, again, as I 
stated earlier, we have a collective bargaining agreement----
    Mr. Connolly. I understand. So, what do you attribute the 
fact that they're not coming to work?
    Mr. Morgan. That's the million dollar question. I would 
love to know that.
    Mr. Connolly. Do you know, Mr. Julion?
    Mr. Julion. I don't think it's simply a matter of people 
who are not coming back to work. I think it's a matter of not 
having enough. I've been in the Postal Service for 25 years----
    Mr. Connolly. Not having enough what?
    Mr. Julion. Not having enough employees because we've been 
in the Postal Service for 24 years, and there's one provision 
that will get you removed from the Postal Service, and that's 
failure to maintain regular attendance. We tell this of new 
hires. Two quick ways to get out the door: take something 
that's not yours and failure to maintain regular attendance. 
Now it's incumbent upon management to enforce that.
    Mr. Connolly. Exactly. I understand the collective 
bargaining agreement, I understand consulting with the union. 
But you just heard from the union saying, hey, if you don't 
show up to work, that's a great way to be shown the door by 
management and management needs to enforce that.
    Is that your--are you prepared to do that, Mr. Morgan?
    Mr. Morgan. Absolutely. Currently, Chairman Connolly, I 
have an attendance team, three dedicated specialists that does 
nothing but address attendance for----
    Mr. Connolly. OK. All right. Well, I thank you all. For the 
record--and I think Mr. Rush and I want to insert into the 
record several reports: the audit report on mail delivering and 
customer service issues in select stations here in Chicago; 
operational changes to mail delivery, also an inspector general 
report; the nationwide service performance report of the 
inspector general; and, finally, the service performance first-
class single piece letter mail for the--I ask unanimous consent 
that they be entered into the record.
    Without objection, so ordered.
    Mr. Foster. Mr. Chair? Mr. Chair?
    Mr. Connolly. Hold on. Hold on. Is that Mr. Foster?
    Mr. Foster. It is indeed.
    Mr. Connolly. It is. I'm just about to recognize you, Mr. 
Foster. I was buying you some time.
    Our final questioner in this hearing is Mr. Bill Foster, 
Congressman from the great state of Illinois.
    Mr. Foster, you are recognized for your five minutes.
    Mr. Foster. Well, thank you, Mr. Chair, and to our 
witnesses. I really appreciate it.
    You know, and I guess I have sort of hyperlocal question. 
In my district, especially in Woodridge, Illinois, we've had 
huge numbers of reports of very severe mail delivery from 
residents who live east of Route 53, but the answer we get back 
and what appears to be a fairly local concern is that we just, 
you know, chronic under staffing problems, which we've been 
talking about a lot in this hearing.
    And so, you know, my questions, when you look at the job 
market today and the fact that record numbers of people are 
quitting all of their jobs, and then, if you say, what are the 
reasons people are quitting, is they just don't find it 
rewarding. So many of us spend so much time scowling at screens 
these days instead of feeling like we're doing real work. And, 
you know, maybe--I always whenever I see postal delivery 
personnel, they're smiling, and I was just wondering, have you 
had any success just saying that this is actually a rewarding 
job, instead of getting into, you know, all of the different 
ways that you're trying to be competitive? Do you find that 
this is actually seen the way I think it's felt by postal 
workers as being a job where you're really doing something 
important for society? Does that work? Mr. Julion? Mr. Morgan?
    Mr. Julion. Absolutely. As I stated earlier, you know, we 
do, indeed, have absolute love for the Postal Service. That's 
why we're here. That's why we raise concerns about the service 
issues, and I do want to take the opportunity to--I know there 
has been some critique of the FMLA leave and that which was 
passed by Congress as reason for poor mail service. I want to 
thank you on behalf of the letter carriers and postal workers 
because COVID is real. It was real then, and it's real now, and 
some of our members had to utilize that. And we would've really 
appreciate the--what you were trying to do with the HEROES Act 
in terms of the hazard pay, and maybe there's funds still left 
over that you can consider that, but no.
    We definitely appreciate the mission for which we were 
sworn, and that's delivering mail. We love our jobs.
    Mr. Foster. Yes. And there's one thing I think that all 
Americans should understand is that, when they see a postal 
delivery worker, smile and wave and just let them know that you 
really appreciate the Postal Service because this is a deeply 
nonscientific question, and it doesn't have to do with contract 
terms or all the things you normally wrestle with, but it's an 
important part.
    And so--and then, specifically, are you addressing the 
recruiting and training people from the point of view of the 
VER, the Voluntary Early Retirement, option in place, and 
what's the resulting impact of that, and did that have a 
significant direct effect on the shortage?
    Mr. Morgan. Are you asking that locally?
    Mr. Foster. Well, locally and globally both.
    Mr. Morgan. I can't speak globally, sir, but locally the 
VER did not have a drastic impact on our staffing. No. It did 
not.
    Mr. Foster. OK. So, it's not like in many businesses, 
they're just large numbers of people who have been counting the 
days until they can retire and are now leaping at it, so that's 
not it. OK.
    Well, anyway, I just really appreciate your attending to 
this issue. It's a big deal for the people we represent, and 
thank you all.
    And I'll yield back.
    Mr. Morgan. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Congressman Foster.
    And, just following up on what you just said, I think it's 
important to note that in that HEROES Act we talked about, 
Congress, in fact, had provided I think $25 billion for postal 
relief for an injection of liquidity and to try to help out an 
extraordinary cost during a pandemic, including overtime and 
other things. And that actually got into the draft final of the 
bill, and then Secretary Mnuchin went to President Trump, and 
President Trump threatened to veto the entire bill over this 
item. He wanted no relief to the Postal Service. And so the 
only relief in almost $6 trillion of COVID-related 
appropriations was a $10 billion loan that we finally converted 
into a grant, a loan that originally, because of the terms 
Steve Mnuchin, the Secretary of Treasury, set were so 
unacceptable to the Postal Service, they couldn't use it. And 
here we are talking about how beloved the Postal Service is. We 
bailed out the cruise industry. We bailed out the airline 
industry, on and on, but we certainly did not bail out the 
Postal Service. And that's why postal reform is so important 
right now because it's the only mechanism for direct relief 
that is so badly needed.
    You have a unanimous consent request, Ms. Schakowsky, for 
the record?
    Ms. Schakowsky. Yes. I would like to insert in the record--
I think it's good to have these individuals inserted into the 
record on their comments and their concerns. And there are also 
a couple of elected officials, including Debra Silverstein that 
have asked to be included in the record.
    Mr. Connolly. Without objection, it is so ordered.
    Mr. Connolly. The chair would also add two statements for 
the record from the National Newspaper Association.
    Mr. Connolly. Mr. Davis?
    Mr. Davis. I ask unanimous consent to insert into the 
record letters from constituents.
    Mr. Connolly. Without objection, it is so ordered.
    Mr. Connolly. Is there anything else for the record?
    Seeing and hearing none, without objection, all members 
will have five legislative days within which to submit 
extraneous materials and submit additional written questions 
for the witnesses through and to the chair, which will then 
be--what's that? Sorry.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Can I just say----
    Mr. Connolly. Which will be forwarded to the witnesses for 
response.
    Ms. Schakowsky. It was Debra Silverstein and two alderman 
and Maria Haddon. I wanted to say their names.
    Mr. Connolly. OK.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you.
    Mr. Connolly. Thank you for clarifying that.
    I also want to thank my colleagues, especially from the 
Chicago area. I can't think of a field hearing that's had this 
kind of attendance and interest and commitment.
    And I think it really does speak volumes about how critical 
this issue is, Mr. Morgan, for you and your colleagues and also 
how important it is to the people who live here, and I know you 
know that. And I sensed you're committed to try to make that 
better for them, but we cannot settle for lower standards and 
then charge higher prices. We have to get performance back up 
to where it was. The American people deserve no less, and 
during a pandemic, it's about life and death in some cases.
    So, this is serious business, and that's why we had this 
hearing and why it got so much--very high-level participation 
and interest.
    So, with that, I thank our witnesses for being here today 
and this hearing is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 1:43 p.m. C.T., the subcommittee was 
adjourned.]

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