Manor Road Postal Collection Mailboxes’ Removal Just The Beginning: Update From Union President On Current Status, What You Can Do

Removal of Postal Collection Boxes at Manor Road, Port Richmond Avenue, Just The Beginning

Staten Islander was able to reach out to John Cruz, the president of the Staten Island Brooklyn Letter Carriers Branch 41 Merge Union. Readers may remember our story a couple of weeks ago regarding the permanent removal of blue collection mailboxes at the Manor Road General Post Office on Staten Island. We also reached out to the press office for the US Postal Service, but we have not heard back.

According to an article on Mailing Systems Technology, the Postmaster General was quoted as saying the following about the ten year plan: “… When looking back to our DFA projections published in March of 2021, we forecasted that we would break even this year. Our efforts to grow revenue and reduce labor and transportation costs were simply not enough to overcome our costs to stabilize our organization, the historical inflationary environment we encountered, and our inability to obtain the CSRS reform we sought, none of which were accounted for in our forecasts.”

“Many of you know of our ongoing efforts to redesign our network from 430 randomly deployed, inadequately equipped, and poorly maintained facilities to a logical and efficient network of 210 facilities suited for their intended purposes that are safe and habitable for postal employees.”

Here is a link to the summary of the plan provided by the Post Office. 

According to John, these removals are actually part of a publicly available plan by the Postmaster General to “save” the Post Office over the course of 10 years. He is already into about the 8^th year of this plan, since he was the same postmaster general during the time of the Trump administration. For a little background on the blue collection boxes. We have all seen them, but until they have been taken away, mot people didn’t know how they worked.

Collection from these mailboxes is done by special employees who ONLY collect this type of mail. These are not your street delivery postal workers who then go and collect from these boxes. They are called mail collection boxes, and each is attended by a dedicated collector. This is a postal employee whose job it is to empty these boxes. There are four carrier routes on Staten Island.

The postmaster general has not provided any actual evidence to John or anyone that he knows that these mailboxes are being robbed or vandalized, nor have they tried any other tactics to reduce this. They have simply removed them. From his counting on the island, he counted 25 boxes that have been removed so far. However, in the General Post Office (the one at Manor Road), in one of the rooms that is not open to the public, there are 51 boxes that he counted simply stacked in this room.

Here is the concern that he was raising, however. He has one postal employee who collects at one of the four routes on Staten Island. This person is going to be retiring soon. Since they have removed so many boxes on his route, they may simply not hire a new employee to continue to collect from these boxes, since they are no longer there. This appears to be an attempt to reduce the number of employees they have to pay.

The ten year plan’s main purpose is to “save” the post office. This is the same plan that saw Staten Island lose its sorting stations, causing our mail to be sent to Brooklyn or Long Island for sorting, then return to us. This adds at least two to three days to the overall time it takes a letter to reach us.

It can be asked, however, what they are being saved from. The Post Office has agreements with DHL, FedEx, Amazon, and other delivery services, and they deliver mail to every address across the country. There are people who cannot get deliveries in any other way. The postmaster appears to be attempting to downsize the staff of the post office by getting rid of workers to save the post office money. These are good paying, lifelong jobs that pay well and give good benefits. This situation is completely artificially caused, as the theft and vandalism claims are unproven. John has seen no evidence that this is the case.

This same situation of collection box removal is also occurring in Brooklyn, which location this union also serves. He is in the process of reaching out to the Queens, Manhattan, and Bronx branches of the union to see how far this issue is going.

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Where the issue stands today:

Basically, John has initiated the procedures available to him to remedy this situation. He filed a grievance for the union, whose initial phase can take 6 months to a year. Once he became aware of the issue, he had to file an informal grievance within 14 days. After 14 days, it can go to the next level, which is called a Formal Step A. If this also brings no resolution (which can take up to a year to resolve), they will get to a dispute resolution team, which can take yet another 3 months. If this, too, gets no resolution, they they go forward to arbitration.

This can take another 6 months to a year just to get a first arbitration date. He then will present the case in front of an arbitrator. Once the case has been presented, the arbitrator has 30 days to render a decision. He is hoping there will be a resolution before that happens. In case you were counting, the worst case scenario dictates that we are looking at 2 years and 3 months (!) before a resolution is reached. For all of that time, there will be no mailboxes.

Since he is labor management, he has also reached out to the postmaster himself to try to set up a meeting with management and labor management where a resolution can be reached.

Where You Can Come In

Considering all of these grievance processes, etc, that are involved, the best way to cause an earlier resolution is through public and political pressure. We will be reaching out to local politicians to update them on the situation, and you, the concerned community members, can certainly do the same.

We have already met multiple islanders who have been inconvenienced by this new situation, when their trusted and true postal collection mailbox was suddenly gone with no explanation. This happened not just at Manor Road, but also at the Port Richmond Post Office and on Richmond Avenue by Sumner Avenue’s corner.

We will continue to follow this issue, as it is an important way for members of the community to mail simple letters and small packages to their friends, family, and bill collectors.

Banner Image: Blue Mail Collection Box. Image Credit – Luke Witter

Staten Islander News Service Staff Writer

This byline indicates that this article was penned by a member/members of the Staten Islander News Organization office team. Our staff writers are the backbone of our newspaper, performing all sorts of important tasks like conducting interviews, investigating leads, besides writing the news stories you see.