Ex Post facto Office?

When packages started arriving on Sunday, a little before Christmas, I wondered about it a little bit.  I was reminded, by a friend who works there, that they've done that before Christmas the last couple of years.  So I didn't think much more about it until I got a Sunday package (from Amazon) in January.

That had me curious, until I ran into this article about what's going on.

Essentially, they've signed an agreement with Amazon for special delivery.  Which sounds great, until you find out how that's being carried out.

Basically, there are two classes of deliverymen, the full career people and the non-career "assistants" (CCAs).  You can certainly see why they did this:

the USPS [is] being financially burdened by congressionally mandated pre-funding for retiree healthcare packages (paying 80 plus years in advance at 100% compensation —a burden no private company has had to nor could endure)

And I did already know about that.

The assistants (now; more details in that article) make about 2/3s what the career carriers do, which still isn't bad money.  However,

Before the Amazon reveal, CCAs in Greensboro were already working six days a week at roughly 8-10 hours worked per day. The work we perform is grueling and the days are long. We spend the entire workday combating weather extremes, making sense of unfamiliar routes, and dealing with management’s repeated calls to hurry things up while making our rounds.

With the Amazon deal, that's now seven days a week.  And that's harsh, to put it mildly.  I suspect they'll end up grinding those people down like dog food.  Twice minimum wage doesn't seem worth it if you have no time (that's a 60-80 hour workweek); at least not for long.  Half of your time at work, and (at least) a third of it sleeping and eating doesn't leave much room for living.

And there is another point in there at the end, suggesting that the USPS might be involved with wage fraud for the Sunday deliveries.  As one of the package receivers, that ain't worth it.  I can wait until Monday.