Minnesota U.S. Senators Tina Smith (D) and Amy Klobuchar (D) are sounding off against the United States Postal Service, saying evidence shows service delays in their home state and other parts of the country contradict the Postal Services claims.
Smith says she has heard from Minnesotans that aren't getting their mail in a reliable way and postal workers, primarily in the northern Minnesota town of Bemidji, are facing some tough working conditions.
"And that is what I find particularly unacceptable," says Smith. "Folks that are working 12 hours a day, six days a week, they're driving their own vehicles and they are not getting paid extra for this extra work that they're doing. It's completely unfair to them."
Both Senators say delays have become substantially worse and workers have reported "chaos" due to the influx of Amazon packages.
Smith adds that it seems the postal service is turning its back on the very real issues ahead of them.
"The letter that I received from them just a couple of days ago said that they wanted to opportunity to address some misinformation about what's happening," Smith explained to WCCO. "They won't even accept that there is a real challenge that their postal workers are experiencing, some hardship and there's problems with the mail getting delivered."
"Americans rely on the mail for prescriptions, Social Security checks, and to pay bills," Klobuchar said on X (formerly Twitter). "Tina Smith and I are working to increase transparency and accountability surrounding delays with the post office to increase speed and reliability at the USPS."
Smith says that the issues with overworking staff are causing even more postal workers to quit, exacerbating the problem.
On Friday, Smith's and Klobuchar's offices released information that the Postal Service has fully hired only 24 employees for the 112 vacancies they have this holiday season. Smith and Klobuchar have introduced legislation to fix the USPS's tracking systems the inspector general says is riddled with false data.