U.S. Senator Charles Schumer discusses his plans to combat possibly destructive new policies to be put in place by new U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. (Photo by Catherine Sasso)

NORWICH – On Tuesday, U.S. Senator Charles Schumer stood outside the Norwich Post Office to announce his plan to safeguard the post office and its employees after hearing the plans of new USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy.

"So many people depend on the mail during COVID more than ever. They put in a new head of the postal office named Mr. DeJoy. He is intent on dismantling the post office. What he has done is three very bad things," said Schumer.

Schumer discussed how DeJoy's policies are putting the post office employees last, and causing risk of major time set backs by cutting back on workers and overtime at the post office. According to Schumer, the service is also dismantling machines that sort and distribute mail. He also criticized DeJoy for not treating ballots as first class mail.

The post office has been in financial trouble for many years, and those issues have been worsened by the pandemic. According to DeJoy, the post office is expected to lose $23 billion by the end of next year. President Donald Trump and post office officials claim one of the issues is the service is taken advantage of by large delivery retailers, like Amazon, who cost taxpayers dearly and are adding to the pace of the system's instability. They said some changes were made to make the post office more efficient, so it would do better in the long term.