Soon after Louis DeJoy arrived at the U.S. Postal Service’s L’Enfant Plaza headquarters in mid-June, Mark Dimondstein, the veteran leader of the agency’s largest union, called to get on the new postmaster general’s schedule.
He had urgent matters to discuss: The coronavirus pandemic was forcing widespread absenteeism among his 200,000 members. Protective gear was running low. The post office needed a plan to handle a historic crush of mail-in ballots.
Dimondstein had spoken weekly with DeJoy’s predecessor, Megan Brennan. But it would take six weeks for him to get an audience with the new boss, and by then, the labor leader had other priorities: to halt the rapid-fire cost-cutting moves DeJoy ordered that were degrading the delivery of mail, medicine, food and other staples to a country homebound as the virus was surging again. Continue reading.