Postal workers credit regional manager Jim Gallagher for returning to a once-ignored USPS policy of "first-in, first-out."
"Gallagher has been all over the place," said Gwen Ivey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, Local 89. "We talk and he's busy, and he's only been here a week."
After a yearlong ban, overtime for postal workers was reinstated last week in an effort to reduce the backlog at the processing plant.
"I haven't seen space like that since we moved in the building," one postal worker said, referring to the fact that bins filled with delayed mail had covered the floor for months.
Even the Kerala Express, a Chicago-based weekly that publishes news from India, was "only one day late," said Vincente Emmanuel, the Kerala Express circulation manager based in Philadelphia.
The newspaper's case of extreme delay was highlighted in a Daily News story about how the slow mail was hurting local businesses.
"That's the first time that's happened since 2006" when the mail-sorting operation moved from 30th and Market streets to Southwest Philadelphia, said Emmanuel.
For years, Emmanuel said, the newspaper has been "two or three weeks late," prompting 30 percent of the Philadelphia-area subscribers to drop the newspaper.
Emmanuel first noticed an improvement in mail delivery a week ago, when the newspaper was only a week late, instead of two.
At the Olney post office, "we were overloaded with parcels" yesterday, a postal worker said. "We've had a busy week."
However, postal workers say that staffing issues are still a problem at local branches.
A postal worker said the supervisors at the Olney station are allegedly not counting the mail volume correctly for the carriers.
"Usually we carry four trays of mail, but now we're getting five or six trays," said a letter carrier. "They want us back in eight hours, but it takes more than eight hours to deliver."
