Despite DeJoy's vows to halt changes, serious problems persist, postal workers say

In Albuquerque, New Mexico, mail handlers tell NBC News first class and priority mail is still running several days a week behind schedule on average.And in Tacoma, Washington, multiple postal workers said new mandates mean many mail trucks per week are being ordered to set out on their routes five minutes early — often entirely empty.One week after Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced he was temporarily suspending changes to the United States Postal Service, NBC News spoke with eight postal union representatives from throughout the nation, all of whom expressed concerns and provided examples of ongoing delays in mail delivery. They said the recent removal of hundreds of postal sorting machines and rigid new operational directives for mail trucks and carriers have exacerbated the slowdown.“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Keith Richardson, president of the American Postal Workers Union, Chicago, Local 1, and a post office veteran who’s worked 28 years as a mail processing clerk.Postal workers associated with unions — seven of which represent nearly half a million workers — say their organizations offer them some protection to speak openly about the problems. Instead, they referred to DeJoy’s comments and the Office of the Inspector General report on the issue.As a result, Richardson and other postal workers NBC News spoke with say many postal facilities across the country remain backlogged and delivery in some locations has ground to a virtual halt, with mail carriers often forced to stop work for the day before all mail has been delivered.“You have customers used to getting letters six days a week getting only one delivery a week now,” Richardson said, adding customers served by Chicago’s Robert Leflore station are experiencing some of the city’s worst delays.In Albuquerque, Ramona Chavez, vice president of the American Postal Workers Union, Local 331, reports similar problems.“We have more packages in our facility right now than we do at the holidays,” she said, noting even priority mail packages are being delivered several days late. We’re all like mushrooms, being fed fertilizer but kept in the dark.”NBC News reached out to the Postal Service repeatedly to find out why the extra machines in Tacoma were removed but did not receive an answer.Postal workers in Texas, Pennsylvania and Indiana expressed similar frustrations about the recent removal of sorting machines.According to Yared Wonde, president of the Dallas chapter of the American Postal Workers Union, the greater Dallas area has lost a total of 12 postal sorting machines in recent weeks.Last week, after DeJoy announced plans to cease the removal of more sorting machines until after the election, maintenance workers in Dallas attempted to reinstall some of the sorters that had been taken offline, but were surprised to find that in four of the machines, the readers — software that make the reading of the barcodes on the mail possible — were missing and had apparently been thrown away, rendering the sorters useless.On Monday, Wonde said his team was told by plant managers to put a halt to attempts to reinstall the machines after the postmaster general said in his testimony to the House that he had no intention of putting the machines back online.“The postmaster general said he’s not going to put the machines back," Wonde said, referring to DeJoy’s comments Monday.