Postal workers, customers protest throughout nation

A national protest about the quality of work of the United State Postal Service was held Thursday, but Havre’s postal workers say they are too sparsely staffed for them to have partaken in any of it.

Gary Philippe, the president of Montana Postal Workers Union that oversees Montana’s smaller post offices, oversees Havre’s smaller post offices including in Havre. Havre is actually the largest post office he oversees.

“I just don’t have the whereabouts and the means to organize something to get the people,” Philippe said. “I can’t do it.”

Many of the offices he oversees are too small to partake — down to two-person staffed offices in small towns on the Hi-Line.

“If one of the locals called me and asked for a thousand bucks, I would do it,” Philippe said.

A post office worker at the Havre office said the employees are already working six days a week and there was no way they could take part in the protest.

The protests were in response to reports that revealed long delays in mail delivery, reduction in service standards and closure of mail sorting centers.

If someone in Havre sends mail to another Havre residence, the letter must travel to Great Falls before it gets sorted and then travel back to Havre.

Many cities and offices around the nation protested Thursday in response to the lowered quality of the postal service, which has seen a rapid decline in past years.

“U.S. Postal Service executives and the agency’s Board of Governors are using a manufactured financial crisis to justify their strategy of reducing service, delaying mail delivery, and dismantling a great national treasure,” said American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein in a press release.