Don Maston, president of the National Rural Carriers Association, which represents about 2,530 postal workers in Minnesota, said delivery problems across the nation “are all driven by the same issue – a lack of staffing.”
“There’s a need for better wages, and the job is just not attractive for many,” Maston said in an interview with MinnPost.
The pay for the carriers his union represents is determined in large part by the volume of the mail delivered in each route.
“While mail volume declines, parcel volume is increasing,” Maston said. So, carriers have a “love-hate” relationship with Amazon and other online retailers, he said, because those retailers are keeping volume up.
“But it’s a lot better to deliver mail out a window,” Maston said. “We do understand that we have a lot of frustrated carriers out there.”