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Comment by junofan | Hacker News Reader

I thought the USPS was a government agency with unionized employees. What’s the explanation for this abhorrent behavior?

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If you read the article, it's pretty clear that this abhorrent behavior is coming from management, with the union pushing back. I'd guess it will be an issue during the next contract negotiations.

Agreed. Management’s actions, which are shameful regardless, seem further exacerbated by their ability to track carriers’ position to the minute and possibly having too few employees [0]. The latter may be the after effects of a requirement, since repealed, that required USPS to pre-fund pensions. (That’s not in the article)

To re-emphasize, these factors don’t excuse management’s actions.

[0]: https://apwu.org/press-release/angry-about-late-erratic-miss...

Unions for government employees are usually weird and impotent, because the government has either gutted the right to strike, or is straight up willing to just fire everyone.

Or much much worse, just completely ignore all bargaining that the Union attempts. This puts the Union in an odd position in that, people don't usually want to strike, but negotiation doesn't happen.

How did the USA end up in this position? Here, whenever the gov tries to limit the right to strike, the unions respond with an all sector whole country mother of all strikes.

Unions simply existing don't magically make thing amazing for every employee and the US government doesn't actually care about people any more than corporations do.

Louis DeJoy is still in charge.

Its an "independent agency", which as we've seen, acts more or less like a capitalist corporation.

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