*Kathy Hunter has been a mail carrier since 1996. Today she is the union president for Branch 246 of the National Association of Letter Carriers* in Kalamazoo. She says the job has become unrecognizable since the U.S. Postal Service consolidated local delivery units in 2024.

The consolidation merged delivery operations in Portage, Schoolcraft and Kalamazoo into a single Sorting and Delivery Center in Oshtemo Township. The Postal Service said the move would make mail delivery faster and more reliable.

Two years later, carriers say the opposite happened.

Routes got longer. Deliveries got slower.

Hunter said mail sent between local addresses used to be sorted locally and delivered in a day. Now that mail goes to Grand Rapids and can take up to four days.

Carriers are working 11-hour days, six days a week. Start times are later. That means more walking in the dark during winter months.

"What we're also seeing is with the later start times and the mandatory overtime there's more injuries," Hunter said. "People are working longer. They are working in the dark, you know, and can't see where they're walking."

Hunter estimated that at least 24 Kalamazoo-area letter carriers have quit or transferred since 2024.

A veteran carrier calls it quits

Heather Clark was a USPS veteran of over 20 years. She quit in March, more than five years before she was eligible for a pension.

Clark said she was injured when she slipped on ice making holiday deliveries. She called the first holiday season after the 2024 consolidation "hell on Earth."

That was the first time a supervisor told her to leave mail behind and focus only on packages, Clark said. She said it was embarrassing to leave The Wall Street Journal at the sorting center instead of delivering it on publication day.

"It got to the point that I'm like, I'm tired of fighting this. I'm tired of fighting to go back to this failing environment, you know, and it was just like, it's like war," Clark said. "It's exhausting. After 20, almost 21 years of it, I'm just tired, you know, I'm tired of doing it."

The union contract expired. Mediation starts now.

The NALC collective bargaining agreement covering 205,000 letter carriers nationwide expired on May 22, 2026. Workers continue under the old terms until a new deal is reached.

The union and USPS have not reached a tentative agreement. A mandatory 60-day mediation period began May 27, according to the National Association of Letter Carriers.

Key issues in negotiations include wages, employee retention, forced overtime and job safety, Hunter said.

"If we go on strike, it's considered against the law, so we can be arrested and fined," Hunter said. "The last one was a wildcat strike back in 1970 and that's where we actually got our first collective bargaining rights."

Congress weighed in. USPS did not respond.

In March, U.S. Representative Bill Huizenga, a Republican representing Michigan's 4th District, met with Postal Service officials over concerns about workplace conditions and delivery delays.

More than 2,000 Southwest Michigan constituents responded to a survey from Huizenga's office. They reported severe mail delays that affected medications, bills and important documents.

Huizenga's office set an April 8 deadline for the Postal Service to provide data supporting its claims and submit a revised plan. The deadline passed.

"Sadly, the Postal Service has largely dismissed these concerns, blaming first the weather and later 'staffing issues' for many of the problems," Huizenga spokesperson Brian Patrick said in an email.

The U.S. Postal Service declined a request for an interview or comment for this story.

What comes next

The NALC will hold its national Collective-Bargaining Conference June 1-3 in Washington, D.C. If mediation fails to produce an agreement, unresolved issues will go to interest arbitration with a binding decision.

For residents of Schoolcraft and surrounding communities, the question remains whether the consolidation that was supposed to improve service will ever deliver on its promise.