Carriers to Follow New Start Time to the Letter

If the mail is a little late in Garden Grove on Saturday, the letter carriers will say it’s their employer’s fault. But the U.S. Postal Service says any tardy deliveries would be caused by recalcitrant carriers who want to make a point.

Beginning Saturday, carriers in the city have been ordered to come to work an hour later--at 8:30 a.m. instead of their usual 7:30. It’s part of a general Postal Service plan throughout Southern California to adjust carrier hours because of automated sorting. It began about six weeks ago and will have swept through the rest of Orange County by the end of summer.

“I absolutely guarantee that your mail will not be delivered later because of these changes,” Postal Service spokeswoman Terri Bouffiou said.

Instead of sorting more than 70% of the mail, as they once did, carriers now sort no more than 30% before leaving for their routes, Bouffiou said. Most of the mail is sorted automatically at postal processing centers, such as the one on La Palma Avenue in Anaheim. The later hours are simply a way to make more efficient use of the carriers’ time, Bouffiou said. Too often there isn’t enough for them to do early in the mornings.

Angry carriers disagree, saying they will not be able to leave the post office to begin their rounds at the same time they used to. Several agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity, for fear they would be fired.

“If we’re standing around with nothing to do in the mornings, it’s because the trucks from the processing center are always late,” one carrier said. “There are lots of days when we deliver what’s called managed mail. That’s where the trucks are so late, the supervisor has to make a decision which mail we’ll take that day because there’s no time to wait for all of it.”

An Anaheim carrier said he and his colleagues have been told their hours will also soon be changed, and he doesn’t expect any of them to be happy about it.

“If we come in later, the mail will be later getting to your door. It’s as simple as that,” he said.

But Bouffiou said the mail will arrive late only if the carriers insist on making it that way.

“The carriers have a great deal of control over their routes,” she said. “If mail starts coming later in Garden Grove, then it will only be because some carriers decide to drag along just to try to prove their point. Some people just do not like change.”

Pickup times at mail drop boxes will not be changed, and the Postal Service will see to it they’re emptied on time, Bouffiou said.

The first shift adjustment began about six weeks ago in the San Fernando Valley and has caused hardly a ripple of concern among consumers, she said.

The carriers counter that residents complain to them, not to management.

The Garden Grove carriers’ anger doesn’t stem from customers getting their mail later. They acknowledge they don’t want to have to adjust day-care hours for their children or get home from work an hour later. But they also argue that many of their customers depend on mail arriving at a certain time in order to conduct the day’s business. And some homeowners are accustomed to getting their mail before they leave for work in the afternoons.

Some carriers had hoped for support from their union, the National Assn. of Letter Carriers, based in Santa Ana. Union officials declined to comment.