Not surprisingly, DeJoy has a bad labor record. Letter carrying became much more stressful. Why not accomplish the same work, for the same pay, with less time and effort? But instead, management has used it to make the work harder-eliminating many jobs and forcing the remaining carriers to cover much larger routes. This technological advance should have made the job easier. Every wave of technological innovation since the 1980s has eliminated some jobs and made other jobs more difficult.įor instance, it used to be that each day a letter carrier would spend a few hours putting the mail in delivery order before going out on the route.

Postal workers have experienced “modernization” before. We can expect DeJoy to bring this same sensibility to running the postal service. In other words, the company specializes in the science of weeding out any worker who’s not super-productive and super-compliant, regardless of seniority or humanity. Once startup is complete, our managers use XPO Smart™ labor analytics to optimize productivity.” The funding that the postal board of governors is asking from Congress includes $25 billion for “modernization.” What might DeJoy’s version of modernization look like? Take a look at the website of XPO: “Our focus is on robotics, autonomous vehicles, automated sortation systems, drones and other cutting-edge technologies that speed goods through the supply chain. He served terms as XPO’s CEO and board member before retiring in 2018 the company continues to rent warehouse space from him, and he and his wife own between $25 million and $50 million in XPO stock. XPO Logistics does extensive business with the Postal Service ($57 million in 2017), potentially putting DeJoy in the position of overseeing decisions that affect his personal financial interests.

His experience in supply chain logistics was clearly a factor in his appointment.ĭeJoy’s New Breed Logistics (before it merged with XPO) was a contractor to the USPS for more than 25 years, “supplying the organization with logistics support for multiple processing facilities,” the USPS announcement revealed.

Posters by Mary Matthews, ĭeJoy, whose term begins June 15, is only the fifth postmaster general since 1971 not to come from within the U.S. There are seven designs showing a variety of postal jobs. These posters are designed to be printed out and posted in the window of your home, store, or vehicle.

Postmaster general