EDITOR:

The United States Postal Service has made changes negatively impacting your mail service throughout the Upper Peninsula and adjoining Wisconsin communities. Your help is needed to demand that service be restored to previous levels.

Prior to Jan. 8, 2024, mail from the 498-499 area zip codes was transported at the close of each business day to Kingsford’s Upper Peninsula Mail Processing Center to be processed, shipped to other facilities outside the 498-499 area (outgoing mail to Minnesota, Green Bay, Oshkosh, Lansing, Gaylord).

Upper Peninsula mail (Newberry to Ironwood and Copper Harbor to Menominee) was processed in Kingsford overnight and sent back out for delivery within the 498-499 area in the early hours of the morning.

Effective Jan. 8, the USPS changed the trucking schedules for the mail collected at the aforementioned post offices. Instead of picking up the mail each evening for processing in Kingsford, the routes were eliminated. The mail now sits in those offices overnight and is finally trucked to Kingsford’s Upper Peninsula Mail Processing Center in the early morning hours of the following day and processed there at approximately noon, causing a delay in outgoing mail and causing Upper Peninsula mail to take two days for delivery instead of overnight.

Not only is first-class mail affected but Upper Peninsula Express Mail now takes two days as well, instead of guaranteed overnight.

Following is a partial list of mail affected by these regressive changes:

— First-class letters and packages and Express Mail.

— Medical supplies and prescriptions from local pharmacies.

— Live animal and plant shipments — poultry, bees, crickets, fertilized eggs.

— Food — any dry ice shipments.

— Medical samples.

— White Water Associates water samples requiring one-day turnaround for testing.

— Stormy Kromer, one of the largest business mailers in the U.P.

— Tourists mailing postcards or goods and anything they purchased in the U.P. that cannot be taken home in their luggage.

— Testing of time-sensitive material by law enforcement.

— Newspapers.

— Retail deliveries.

— Small business–the U.P. has a lot of people working from home selling goods online that depend on the postal service for timely delivery.

These reductions in service have the potential of destroying the trust Americans have in the postal service to get their mail delivered in a timely manner.

Postal workers take pride in what they do and do not want service to the public to suffer.

Here is the link to the USPS for complaints in relation to the changes in mail processing: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/mpfr-iron-mountain-mi.

Please take the time to let the USPS know what your concerns are with the delays of mail.

Michelle Yuhasey

President

The American Postal Workers Union SCF 498-499 Area Local No. 1189