OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The body of a Marine who died in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan will be returned to Omaha on Friday.

 Services for 23-year-old Cpl. Daegan Page are scheduled for Sept. 17 at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Millard. 

Page was one of 13 U.S. service members killed Aug. 26 in the bombing at the Kabul airport, which also killed at least 169 Afghans. 

His family said in a statement Friday that seating at the church will be limited, but they are trying to find another building to accommodate the many people who want to attend. 

The family also thanked people for the outpouring of support they have received since Page was killed.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The body of a Marine who died in a suicide bombing in Afghanistan will be returned to Omaha on Friday. Services for 23-year-old Cpl. Daegan Page are scheduled for Sept. 17 at St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Millard. Page was one of 13 U.S. service members killed Aug. 26 in the bombing at the Kabul airport, which also killed at least 169 Afghans. His family said in a statement Friday that seating at the church will be limited, but they are trying to find another building to accommodate the many people who want to attend. The family also thanked people for the outpouring of support they have received since Page was killed.

Return, services set for Nebraska man killed in Afghanistan

NEW YORK (AP) — Millions of jobless Americans lost their unemployment benefits on Monday, leaving only a handful of economic support programs for those who are still being hit financially by the year-and-a-half-old coronavirus pandemic.

Two critical programs expired on Monday. One provided jobless aid to self-employed and gig workers and another provided benefits to those who have been unemployed more than six months. Further, the Biden administration’s $300 weekly supplemental unemployment benefit also ran out on Monday.

It’s estimated that roughly 8.9 million Americans will lose all or some of these benefits.

While the White House has encouraged states to keep paying the $300 weekly benefit by using money from the stimulus bills, no states have opted to do so. Many states even opted out of the federal program early after some businesses complained that they couldn’t find enough people to hire. The data have shown minimal economic benefits from cutting off aid early in those states.

Economists Peter McCrory and Daniel Silver of JPMorgan found “zero correlation″ between job growth and state decisions to drop the federal unemployment aid, at least so far. An economist at Columbia University, Kyle Coombs, found only minimal benefits.

The amount of money injected by the federal government into jobless benefits since the pandemic began is nothing short of astronomical. The roughly $650 billion, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, kept millions of Americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own in their apartments, paying for food and gasoline, and keeping up with their bills. The banking industry has largely attributed the few defaults on loans this past 18 months to the government relief efforts.

“The end of the pandemic unemployment benefits will be an abrupt jolt to millions of Americans who won’t find a job in time for this arbitrary end to assistance,” Andrew Stettner with the Century Foundation said in a report.

The ending of these programs comes as the U.S. economy has recovered from the pandemic, but with substantial gaps in the recovery. The Labor Department says there are still 5.7 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic. Yet the department also estimated, last month, that there were roughly 10 million job openings.

These benefits are also ending sooner than during the previous crisis, the Great Recession. In that downturn, jobless benefits in various forms were extended from the start of the recession in 2008-2009 all the way until 2013. When those benefits finally ended, just 1.3 million people were still receiving aid.

Americans still financially struggling in the pandemic will find a smaller patchwork of social support programs, both at the state level and through the federal government.

The White House approved last month a 25% increase in food stamp assistance, also known as SNAP benefits. That increase will continue indefinitely for those 42.7 million Americans who receive those payments.

While the federal eviction moratorium has expired, roughly a dozen states — all controlled by Democrats — have extended their moratoriums, including California, New York, Washington, Illinois and Minnesota. New York’s eviction moratorium was extended until Jan. 15.

The Biden administration also pushed the restart of federal student loan repayments until January. Those were supposed to have restarted this month.

Those unemployed less than six months will still be able to collect their benefits, but the amount will fall back to the level that each state pays. The average weekly check is roughly $387, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, but varies greatly state by state.

But none of these programs will have the flexibility or direct impact as unemployment benefits being paid directly to jobless Americans, wrote JPMorgan economists McCrory and Silver. They say the loss of benefits could lead to job losses that potentially could offset any of the job gains made as the economy recovers.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/8/1628346834944.png" alt="Pres. Biden has encouraged states to keep paying the $300 weekly benefit by using money from the stimulus bills, no states have opted to do so.-photo courtesy White House" />
 <figcaption>Pres. Biden has encouraged states to keep paying the $300 weekly benefit by using money from the stimulus bills, no states have opted to do so.-photo courtesy White House</figcaption>
 </figure>NEW YORK (AP) — Millions of jobless Americans lost their unemployment benefits on Monday, leaving only a handful of economic support programs for those who are still being hit financially by the year-and-a-half-old coronavirus pandemic.Two critical programs expired on Monday. One provided jobless aid to self-employed and gig workers and another provided benefits to those who have been unemployed more than six months. Further, the Biden administration’s $300 weekly supplemental unemployment benefit also ran out on Monday.It’s estimated that roughly 8.9 million Americans will lose all or some of these benefits.While the White House has encouraged states to keep paying the $300 weekly benefit by using money from the stimulus bills, no states have opted to do so. Many states even opted out of the federal program early after some businesses complained that they couldn’t find enough people to hire. The data have shown minimal economic benefits from cutting off aid early in those states.Economists Peter McCrory and Daniel Silver of JPMorgan found “zero correlation″ between job growth and state decisions to drop the federal unemployment aid, at least so far. An economist at Columbia University, Kyle Coombs, found only minimal benefits.The amount of money injected by the federal government into jobless benefits since the pandemic began is nothing short of astronomical. The roughly $650 billion, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, kept millions of Americans who lost their jobs through no fault of their own in their apartments, paying for food and gasoline, and keeping up with their bills. The banking industry has largely attributed the few defaults on loans this past 18 months to the government relief efforts.“The end of the pandemic unemployment benefits will be an abrupt jolt to millions of Americans who won’t find a job in time for this arbitrary end to assistance,” Andrew Stettner with the Century Foundation said in a report.The ending of these programs comes as the U.S. economy has recovered from the pandemic, but with substantial gaps in the recovery. The Labor Department says there are still 5.7 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic. Yet the department also estimated, last month, that there were roughly 10 million job openings.These benefits are also ending sooner than during the previous crisis, the Great Recession. In that downturn, jobless benefits in various forms were extended from the start of the recession in 2008-2009 all the way until 2013. When those benefits finally ended, just 1.3 million people were still receiving aid.Americans still financially struggling in the pandemic will find a smaller patchwork of social support programs, both at the state level and through the federal government.The White House approved last month a 25% increase in food stamp assistance, also known as SNAP benefits. That increase will continue indefinitely for those 42.7 million Americans who receive those payments.While the federal eviction moratorium has expired, roughly a dozen states — all controlled by Democrats — have extended their moratoriums, including California, New York, Washington, Illinois and Minnesota. New York’s eviction moratorium was extended until Jan. 15.The Biden administration also pushed the restart of federal student loan repayments until January. Those were supposed to have restarted this month.Those unemployed less than six months will still be able to collect their benefits, but the amount will fall back to the level that each state pays. The average weekly check is roughly $387, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, but varies greatly state by state.But none of these programs will have the flexibility or direct impact as unemployment benefits being paid directly to jobless Americans, wrote JPMorgan economists McCrory and Silver. They say the loss of benefits could lead to job losses that potentially could offset any of the job gains made as the economy recovers.____

Jobless Americans have few options as benefits expire

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service reminds people that 
September&nbsp;15, 2021, is the deadline for third quarter estimated tax 
payments. This generally applies to people who are self-employed and 
some investors, retirees and those who may not normally have taxes 
withheld from their paycheck by their employers.

The U.S. tax system operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. This means 
taxpayers are to pay most of their tax during the year, as they earn or 
receive income. Therefore, individuals not subject to withholding may 
need to make quarterly estimated tax payments.

In most cases, taxpayers should make <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/estimated-taxes">quarterly estimated tax payments</a> for 2021 if both of the following apply:

Taxpayers with income not subject to withholding, including interest, dividends, capital gains, <a href="https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc452">alimony</a>, cryptocurrency and rental income, normally make estimated tax payments.

Special rules apply to some groups of taxpayers, such as farmers, fishermen, casualty and <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/disaster-assistance-and-emergency-relief-for-individuals-and-businesses">disaster victims</a>, those who recently became disabled, recent retirees and those who receive income unevenly during the year. <a href="https://www.irs.gov/publications/p505">Publication 505, Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax</a>, provides more information on estimated tax rules. The worksheet in <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1040-es">Form 1040-ES, Estimated Tax for Individuals</a>, or <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1120-w">Form 1120-W, Estimated Tax for Corporations</a>, has details on who must pay estimated tax.

If a taxpayer underpaid their taxes, they may have to pay a penalty. 
This applies whether they paid through withholding or through estimated 
tax payments. A penalty may also apply for late estimated tax payments 
even if someone is due a refund when they file their tax return.

To see if they owe a penalty, taxpayers should use <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-2210">Form 2210</a>. The IRS may waive the penalty if someone underpaid because of unusual circumstances and not willful neglect. Examples include:

To figure estimated tax, an individual must figure their expected 
adjusted gross income (AGI), taxable income, taxes, deductions and 
credits for the year. When figuring 2021 estimated tax, it may be 
helpful to use income, deductions and credits for 2020 as a starting 
point. Use the 2020 federal tax return as a guide. Taxpayers can use 
Form 1040-ES to figure their estimated tax. Nonresident aliens use <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1040-es-nr">Form 1040-ES (NR)</a> to figure estimated tax.

Taxpayers must make adjustments both for changes in their own 
situation and for recent changes in the tax law. For instance, tax 
provisions in the American Rescue Plan of 2021 may impact an individual 
taxpayer's situation. For more information, see <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p505.pdf">Publication 505 under What's New for 2021</a>.

For information about these and other changes in the law, visit 
IRS.gov. The instructions for Form 1040-ES include a worksheet to help 
taxpayers figure their estimated tax. Keep the worksheet for records.

The <a href="https://www.irs.gov/individuals/tax-withholding-estimator">Tax Withholding Estimator</a>
 on IRS.gov offers taxpayers a clear, step-by-step method to have the 
right amount of tax withheld from wages and pensions. It also has 
instructions to file a new <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-w-4">Form W-4</a> to give to their employer to adjust the amount withheld each payday.

The fourth and final 2021 estimated tax payment is due January&nbsp;17, 2022.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/9/1599869632873.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>IRS<h2>IRS YouTube Video:</h2><ul>
 <li><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PWcQGMdvP8">Estimated Tax Payments</a></li>
 </ul>IR-2021-177, September 7, 2021WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service reminds people that 
September&nbsp;15, 2021, is the deadline for third quarter estimated tax 
payments. This generally applies to people who are self-employed and 
some investors, retirees and those who may not normally have taxes 
withheld from their paycheck by their employers.The U.S. tax system operates on a pay-as-you-go basis. This means 
taxpayers are to pay most of their tax during the year, as they earn or 
receive income. Therefore, individuals not subject to withholding may 
need to make quarterly estimated tax payments.<h2>Who should pay quarterly?</h2>In most cases, taxpayers should make <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/estimated-taxes">quarterly estimated tax payments</a> for 2021 if both of the following apply:<ul>
 <li>Individuals expect to owe at least $1,000 in tax for 2021 after subtracting their withholding and tax credits.</li><li>They expect their withholding and tax credits to be less than the smaller of:
	90% of the tax to be shown on their 2021 tax return or100% of the tax shown on their 2020 tax return. Their 2020 tax return must cover all 12 months.</li><li>90% of the tax to be shown on their 2021 tax return or</li><li>100% of the tax shown on their 2020 tax return. Their 2020 tax return must cover all 12 months.</li>
 </ul>Taxpayers with income not subject to withholding, including interest, dividends, capital gains, <a href="https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc452">alimony</a>, cryptocurrency and rental income, normally make estimated tax payments.Special rules apply to some groups of taxpayers, such as farmers, fishermen, casualty and <a href="https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-employed/disaster-assistance-and-emergency-relief-for-individuals-and-businesses">disaster victims</a>, those who recently became disabled, recent retirees and those who receive income unevenly during the year. <a href="https://www.irs.gov/publications/p505">Publication 505, Tax Withholding and Estimated Tax</a>, provides more information on estimated tax rules. The worksheet in <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1040-es">Form 1040-ES, Estimated Tax for Individuals</a>, or <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1120-w">Form 1120-W, Estimated Tax for Corporations</a>, has details on who must pay estimated tax.<h2>Penalty for underpayment</h2>If a taxpayer underpaid their taxes, they may have to pay a penalty. 
This applies whether they paid through withholding or through estimated 
tax payments. A penalty may also apply for late estimated tax payments 
even if someone is due a refund when they file their tax return.To see if they owe a penalty, taxpayers should use <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-2210">Form 2210</a>. The IRS may waive the penalty if someone underpaid because of unusual circumstances and not willful neglect. Examples include:<ul>
 <li>casualty, disaster or another unusual situation,</li><li>an individual retired after reaching age 62 during a tax year when estimated tax payments applied and</li><li>an individual became disabled during a tax year when estimated tax payments applied.</li>
 </ul><h2>How to figure estimated tax</h2>To figure estimated tax, an individual must figure their expected 
adjusted gross income (AGI), taxable income, taxes, deductions and 
credits for the year. When figuring 2021 estimated tax, it may be 
helpful to use income, deductions and credits for 2020 as a starting 
point. Use the 2020 federal tax return as a guide. Taxpayers can use 
Form 1040-ES to figure their estimated tax. Nonresident aliens use <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-1040-es-nr">Form 1040-ES (NR)</a> to figure estimated tax.Taxpayers must make adjustments both for changes in their own 
situation and for recent changes in the tax law. For instance, tax 
provisions in the American Rescue Plan of 2021 may impact an individual 
taxpayer's situation. For more information, see <a href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p505.pdf">Publication 505 under What's New for 2021</a>.For information about these and other changes in the law, visit 
IRS.gov. The instructions for Form 1040-ES include a worksheet to help 
taxpayers figure their estimated tax. Keep the worksheet for records.The <a href="https://www.irs.gov/individuals/tax-withholding-estimator">Tax Withholding Estimator</a>
 on IRS.gov offers taxpayers a clear, step-by-step method to have the 
right amount of tax withheld from wages and pensions. It also has 
instructions to file a new <a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-w-4">Form W-4</a> to give to their employer to adjust the amount withheld each payday.<h2>Other IRS.gov resources</h2><ul>
 <li>The <a href="https://www.irs.gov/payments">Pay</a> tab on the front page of IRS.gov provides complete tax payment information, how and when to pay, payment options and more.</li><li><a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-2210">Form 2210, Underpayment of Estimated Tax by Individuals, Estates, and Trusts</a></li><li><a href="https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-2220">Form 2220, Underpayment of Estimated Tax by Corporations</a></li><li><a href="https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-unemployment-compensation-is-taxable-have-tax-withheld-now-and-avoid-a-tax-time-surprise">IRS: Unemployment compensation is taxable; have tax withheld now and avoid a tax-time surprise</a></li>
 </ul>The fourth and final 2021 estimated tax payment is due January&nbsp;17, 2022.

IRS: Deadline for third quarter estimated tax payments looming

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — An investigation is underway after a 6-year-old girl on vacation with her family died at an amusement park in the western Colorado town of Glenwood Springs.

Few details have been released, but Suzanne Emery with the <a href="https://www.glenwoodcaverns.com/seasonal-attractions/">Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park s</a>ays “an incident” occurred Sunday evening on the Haunted Mine Drop ride that caused the death. The Post Independent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.postindependent.com/news/fatality-reported-at-glenwood-caverns-adventure-park/" target="_blank">reports</a>&nbsp;the park will be closed Monday and Tuesday.

“Out of respect and concern for all parties involved, we will not have further comment until all details have been confirmed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all involved,” Emery said in a news release.

Garfield County Coroner Robert Glassmire said park employees initiated first aid until paramedics arrived and determined the girl had died. The girl’s name has not been released.

The Haunted Mine Drop, which opened in July 2017, is billed as the first drop ride to go underground, plunging riders 110 feet (33 meters) inside of Iron Mountain. Park visitors are required to sign a release of liability waiver before going on any rides or attractions.

The sheriff’s and coroner’s offices are investigating the death.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/9/1630969323925.png" alt="Photo courtesy Glenwood Cavern Adventure Park" />
 <figcaption>Photo courtesy Glenwood Cavern Adventure Park</figcaption>
 </figure>GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — An investigation is underway after a 6-year-old girl on vacation with her family died at an amusement park in the western Colorado town of Glenwood Springs.Few details have been released, but Suzanne Emery with the <a href="https://www.glenwoodcaverns.com/seasonal-attractions/">Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park s</a>ays “an incident” occurred Sunday evening on the Haunted Mine Drop ride that caused the death. The Post Independent&nbsp;<a href="https://www.postindependent.com/news/fatality-reported-at-glenwood-caverns-adventure-park/" target="_blank">reports</a>&nbsp;the park will be closed Monday and Tuesday.“Out of respect and concern for all parties involved, we will not have further comment until all details have been confirmed. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all involved,” Emery said in a news release.Garfield County Coroner Robert Glassmire said park employees initiated first aid until paramedics arrived and determined the girl had died. The girl’s name has not been released.The Haunted Mine Drop, which opened in July 2017, is billed as the first drop ride to go underground, plunging riders 110 feet (33 meters) inside of Iron Mountain. Park visitors are required to sign a release of liability waiver before going on any rides or attractions.The sheriff’s and coroner’s offices are investigating the death.

Girl, 6, dies on mine drop ride at Colorado amusement park

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Fire officials are investigating an overnight warehouse fire near downtown Omaha. 

Crews were called to the fire around 2:20 a.m. Sunday by an anonymous caller reporting smoke coming from the building. 

Fire officials said in a news release that investigators found evidence of squatters in the building. 

Officials say the fire was contained to an officer area and was under control within minutes. 

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Fire officials are investigating an overnight warehouse fire near downtown Omaha. Crews were called to the fire around 2:20 a.m. Sunday by an anonymous caller reporting smoke coming from the building. Fire officials said in a news release that investigators found evidence of squatters in the building. Officials say the fire was contained to an officer area and was under control within minutes. No injuries were reported in the fire.

Fire officials investigating overnight Omaha warehouse fire

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a Lincoln man has died in a head-on crash involving a semitrailer near Lincoln. 

The Lancaster County Sheriff's Office says the crash happened Sunday afternoon on Highway 2.

 Investigators say a pickup truck driven by 43-year-old Eli Miller was eastbound on the highway when it crossed the center line and collided with the westbound semi. Miller was declared dead at the scene. 

The 47-year-old driver of the semi was taken to a Lincoln hospital for treatment of minor injuries. 

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a Lincoln man has died in a head-on crash involving a semitrailer near Lincoln. The Lancaster County Sheriff's Office says the crash happened Sunday afternoon on Highway 2. Investigators say a pickup truck driven by 43-year-old Eli Miller was eastbound on the highway when it crossed the center line and collided with the westbound semi. Miller was declared dead at the scene. The 47-year-old driver of the semi was taken to a Lincoln hospital for treatment of minor injuries. The crash remains under investigation.

Lincoln man killed in head-on crash with semitrailer

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — Land that had served as the home of a Grand Island garden center will soon become the site of a FedEx Ground warehouse and distribution center. 

Television station KSNB reported the recent sale of the 33-acre campus for development of the FedEx Ground center, and work at the site has already begun. 

The land was annexed into city limits by the Grand Island City Council in 2019. FedEx said the distribution center is scheduled to open in the fall of 2022 and will be 215,000 square feet. 

FedEx spokeswoman Dana Hardek says the new facility will replace a smaller one in the Grand Island area and will employ a mix of full and part-time employees.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/9/1630956771822.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — Land that had served as the home of a Grand Island garden center will soon become the site of a FedEx Ground warehouse and distribution center. Television station KSNB reported the recent sale of the 33-acre campus for development of the FedEx Ground center, and work at the site has already begun. The land was annexed into city limits by the Grand Island City Council in 2019. FedEx said the distribution center is scheduled to open in the fall of 2022 and will be 215,000 square feet. FedEx spokeswoman Dana Hardek says the new facility will replace a smaller one in the Grand Island area and will employ a mix of full and part-time employees.

FedEx Ground distribution center planned at Grand Island

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mary Taboniar went 15 months without a paycheck, thanks to the COVID pandemic. A housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Honolulu, the single mother of two saw her income completely vanish as the virus devastated the hospitality industry.

For more than a year, Taboniar depended entirely on boosted unemployment benefits and a network of local foodbanks to feed her family. Even this summer as the vaccine rollout took hold and tourists began to travel again, her work was slow to return, peaking at 11 days in August — about half her pre-pandemic workload.

Taboniar is one of millions of Americans for whom Labor Day 2021 represents a perilous crossroads. Two primary anchors of the government’s COVID protection package are ending or have recently ended. Starting Monday, an estimated 8.9 million people will&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-jobless-claims-382a89695d83991a42f23e8da3fe7fa9">lose all unemployment&nbsp;</a>benefits. A federal eviction moratorium already has expired.

While other aspects of pandemic assistance including rental aid and the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/monthly-child-payments-poverty-bd4643ad09e6986ef4b526ebd5a3272b">expanded Child Tax Credit</a>&nbsp;are still widely available, untold millions of Americans will face Labor Day with a suddenly shrunken social safety net.

“This will be a double whammy of hardship,” said Jamie Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the SEIU, a union that represents custodians in office buildings and food service workers in airports. “We’re not anywhere near done. People still need help. ... For millions of people nothing has changed from a year and a half ago.”

For Taboniar, 43, that means her unemployment benefits will completely disappear — even as her work hours vanish again. A fresh virus surge prompted&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-honolulu-6753de40faf5e667bb070ac4a8ed64c1">Hawaii’s governor to recommend&nbsp;</a>that vacationers delay their plans.

“It’s really scaring me,” she said. “How can I pay rent if I don’t have unemployment and my job isn’t back?”

She’s planning to apply for the newly expanded SNAP assistance program, better known as food stamps, but doubts that will be enough to make up the difference. “I’m just grasping for anything,” she said.

President Joe Biden’s administration believes the U.S. economy is strong enough not to be rattled by evictions or the drop in unemployment benefits. Officials maintain that other elements of the safety net, like the Child Tax Credit and the SNAP program (which Biden permanently boosted earlier this summer) are enough to smooth things over. On Friday, a White House spokesperson said there were no plans to reevaluate the end of the unemployment benefits.

“Twenty-two-trillion-dollar economies work in no small part on momentum and we have strong momentum going in the right direction on behalf of the American workforce,” said Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said he believed the country’s labor force was ready for the shift.

“Overall the economy is moving forward and recovering,” Walsh said in an interview. “I think the American economy and the American worker are in a better position going into Labor Day 2021 than they were on Labor Day 2020.”

Walsh and others point to encouraging job numbers; as of Friday the unemployment rate was&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-jobless-claims-382a89695d83991a42f23e8da3fe7fa9">down to a fairly healthy 5.2%</a>. But Andrew Stettler, a senior fellow with the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, says the end of the expanded unemployment benefits is still coming too early.

Rather than setting an arbitrary deadline, Stettler says the administration should have tied the end of the the protections to specific economic recovery metrics. He suggests three consecutive months with nationwide unemployment below 5% as a reasonable benchmark to trigger the end of the unemployment benefits.

“This does seem to be the wrong policy decision based on where we are,” Stettler said.

The end to these protections while the economic crisis persists could have a devastating impact on lower-middle class families that were barely holding on through the pandemic. Potentially millions of people “will have a more difficult time regaining the foothold in the middle class that they lost,” Stettler said.

Biden and the Democrats who control Congress are at a crossroads, allowing the aid to expire as they focus instead on his more sweeping “build back better” package of infrastructure and other spending. The $3.5 trillion proposal would rebuild many of the safety net programs, but it faces hurdles in the closely divided Congress.

In the meantime, families will have to make do.

“These are two very important things that are expiring. There’s no doubt that there will be families impacted by their expiration and that they will have additional hardship,” Sharon Parrott, the president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said in an interview.

The COVID-19 response has been sweeping in its size and scope, some $5 trillion in federal expenditures since the virus outbreak in 2020, an unprecedented undertaking.

Congressional Republicans had supported some of the initial COVID-19 outlays, but voted lockstep against Biden’s $1.9 trillion recovery package earlier this year as unnecessary. Many argued against extending another round of unemployment aid, and Republicans vow to oppose Biden’s $3.5 trillion package lawmakers are expected to consider later this month.

There are still multiple avenues of support available, although in some cases the actual delivery of that support has been problematic.

States with higher levels of unemployment can use the $350 billion worth of aid they received from the relief package to expand their own jobless payments, as noted by an Aug. 19 letter by Walsh and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Federal rental assistance funds remain available, though the money has been slow to get out the door, leaving the White House and lawmakers pushing state and local officials to disperse funds more quickly to both landlords and tenants.

The investment bank Morgan Stanley estimated Thursday that the economy will grow at an annual pace of 2.9% in the third quarter, down sharply from its prior forecast of 6.5%. That decline largely reflects a pullback in federal aid spending and supply chain bottlenecks.

And the economy still faces hurdles. Union officials says sectors like hotel housekeepers and office janitorial staffs have been the slowest to recover.

“Our industry is the tip of the spear when it comes to COVID,” said D. Taylor, president of UNITE HERE, a union that represents hotel housekeepers — a field that is “primarily staffed by women and people of color.”

Many of those housekeepers never returned to full employment even as Americans resumed traveling and hotel occupancy rates swelled over the summer.

Taylor said several major hotel chains have moved to permanently cut down on labor costs by reducing levels of service under the guise of COVID. Taboniar’s hotel in Hawaii for example has shifted to cleaning rooms every five days unless the guest specifically requests otherwise in advance. Even as the hotel was at more than 90% occupancy in August, she was only employed for half her usual pre-pandemic number of days.

The delta variant of the coronavirus also poses a challenge, threatening future school closures and the delay of plans to return workers to their offices.

Walsh called the delta variant “an asterisk on everything.”

The sudden lapse of a crucial element of the pandemic safety net has fueled calls for a re-evaluation of the entire unemployment benefits system. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chairman of the Finance Committee, said in an interview it’s crucial that Congress modernizes the unemployment insurance system as part of the package.

“It’s heartbreaking to know it didn’t have to be this way,” Wyden said.

One of the changes he proposes is to have jobless benefits more linked to economic conditions, so they won’t expire in times of need. “We got to take the unemployment system into the 21st century,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Mary Taboniar went 15 months without a paycheck, thanks to the COVID pandemic. A housekeeper at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort in Honolulu, the single mother of two saw her income completely vanish as the virus devastated the hospitality industry.For more than a year, Taboniar depended entirely on boosted unemployment benefits and a network of local foodbanks to feed her family. Even this summer as the vaccine rollout took hold and tourists began to travel again, her work was slow to return, peaking at 11 days in August — about half her pre-pandemic workload.Taboniar is one of millions of Americans for whom Labor Day 2021 represents a perilous crossroads. Two primary anchors of the government’s COVID protection package are ending or have recently ended. Starting Monday, an estimated 8.9 million people will&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-jobless-claims-382a89695d83991a42f23e8da3fe7fa9">lose all unemployment&nbsp;</a>benefits. A federal eviction moratorium already has expired.While other aspects of pandemic assistance including rental aid and the&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/monthly-child-payments-poverty-bd4643ad09e6986ef4b526ebd5a3272b">expanded Child Tax Credit</a>&nbsp;are still widely available, untold millions of Americans will face Labor Day with a suddenly shrunken social safety net.“This will be a double whammy of hardship,” said Jamie Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the SEIU, a union that represents custodians in office buildings and food service workers in airports. “We’re not anywhere near done. People still need help. ... For millions of people nothing has changed from a year and a half ago.”For Taboniar, 43, that means her unemployment benefits will completely disappear — even as her work hours vanish again. A fresh virus surge prompted&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-honolulu-6753de40faf5e667bb070ac4a8ed64c1">Hawaii’s governor to recommend&nbsp;</a>that vacationers delay their plans.“It’s really scaring me,” she said. “How can I pay rent if I don’t have unemployment and my job isn’t back?”She’s planning to apply for the newly expanded SNAP assistance program, better known as food stamps, but doubts that will be enough to make up the difference. “I’m just grasping for anything,” she said.President Joe Biden’s administration believes the U.S. economy is strong enough not to be rattled by evictions or the drop in unemployment benefits. Officials maintain that other elements of the safety net, like the Child Tax Credit and the SNAP program (which Biden permanently boosted earlier this summer) are enough to smooth things over. On Friday, a White House spokesperson said there were no plans to reevaluate the end of the unemployment benefits.“Twenty-two-trillion-dollar economies work in no small part on momentum and we have strong momentum going in the right direction on behalf of the American workforce,” said Jared Bernstein, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said he believed the country’s labor force was ready for the shift.“Overall the economy is moving forward and recovering,” Walsh said in an interview. “I think the American economy and the American worker are in a better position going into Labor Day 2021 than they were on Labor Day 2020.”Walsh and others point to encouraging job numbers; as of Friday the unemployment rate was&nbsp;<a href="https://apnews.com/article/business-health-pandemics-coronavirus-pandemic-jobless-claims-382a89695d83991a42f23e8da3fe7fa9">down to a fairly healthy 5.2%</a>. But Andrew Stettler, a senior fellow with the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, says the end of the expanded unemployment benefits is still coming too early.Rather than setting an arbitrary deadline, Stettler says the administration should have tied the end of the the protections to specific economic recovery metrics. He suggests three consecutive months with nationwide unemployment below 5% as a reasonable benchmark to trigger the end of the unemployment benefits.“This does seem to be the wrong policy decision based on where we are,” Stettler said.The end to these protections while the economic crisis persists could have a devastating impact on lower-middle class families that were barely holding on through the pandemic. Potentially millions of people “will have a more difficult time regaining the foothold in the middle class that they lost,” Stettler said.Biden and the Democrats who control Congress are at a crossroads, allowing the aid to expire as they focus instead on his more sweeping “build back better” package of infrastructure and other spending. The $3.5 trillion proposal would rebuild many of the safety net programs, but it faces hurdles in the closely divided Congress.In the meantime, families will have to make do.“These are two very important things that are expiring. There’s no doubt that there will be families impacted by their expiration and that they will have additional hardship,” Sharon Parrott, the president of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, said in an interview.The COVID-19 response has been sweeping in its size and scope, some $5 trillion in federal expenditures since the virus outbreak in 2020, an unprecedented undertaking.Congressional Republicans had supported some of the initial COVID-19 outlays, but voted lockstep against Biden’s $1.9 trillion recovery package earlier this year as unnecessary. Many argued against extending another round of unemployment aid, and Republicans vow to oppose Biden’s $3.5 trillion package lawmakers are expected to consider later this month.There are still multiple avenues of support available, although in some cases the actual delivery of that support has been problematic.States with higher levels of unemployment can use the $350 billion worth of aid they received from the relief package to expand their own jobless payments, as noted by an Aug. 19 letter by Walsh and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.Federal rental assistance funds remain available, though the money has been slow to get out the door, leaving the White House and lawmakers pushing state and local officials to disperse funds more quickly to both landlords and tenants.The investment bank Morgan Stanley estimated Thursday that the economy will grow at an annual pace of 2.9% in the third quarter, down sharply from its prior forecast of 6.5%. That decline largely reflects a pullback in federal aid spending and supply chain bottlenecks.And the economy still faces hurdles. Union officials says sectors like hotel housekeepers and office janitorial staffs have been the slowest to recover.“Our industry is the tip of the spear when it comes to COVID,” said D. Taylor, president of UNITE HERE, a union that represents hotel housekeepers — a field that is “primarily staffed by women and people of color.”Many of those housekeepers never returned to full employment even as Americans resumed traveling and hotel occupancy rates swelled over the summer.Taylor said several major hotel chains have moved to permanently cut down on labor costs by reducing levels of service under the guise of COVID. Taboniar’s hotel in Hawaii for example has shifted to cleaning rooms every five days unless the guest specifically requests otherwise in advance. Even as the hotel was at more than 90% occupancy in August, she was only employed for half her usual pre-pandemic number of days.The delta variant of the coronavirus also poses a challenge, threatening future school closures and the delay of plans to return workers to their offices.Walsh called the delta variant “an asterisk on everything.”The sudden lapse of a crucial element of the pandemic safety net has fueled calls for a re-evaluation of the entire unemployment benefits system. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the chairman of the Finance Committee, said in an interview it’s crucial that Congress modernizes the unemployment insurance system as part of the package.“It’s heartbreaking to know it didn’t have to be this way,” Wyden said.One of the changes he proposes is to have jobless benefits more linked to economic conditions, so they won’t expire in times of need. “We got to take the unemployment system into the 21st century,” he said.

 Pandemic safety nets ending impacting millions

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say they are investigating the homicide of a 28-year-old man in an apartment in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

The Lincoln Police Department said in a news release that officers responding to a report of a shooting at about 7:19 a.m. Sunday found the man suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. 

He succumbed to his injuries despite medical intervention. 

Investigators are interviewing a witness and will be at the scene throughout the day collecting evidence. 

Police say further information will be released Tuesday.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say they are investigating the homicide of a 28-year-old man in an apartment in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Lincoln Police Department said in a news release that officers responding to a report of a shooting at about 7:19 a.m. Sunday found the man suffering from apparent gunshot wounds. He succumbed to his injuries despite medical intervention. Investigators are interviewing a witness and will be at the scene throughout the day collecting evidence. Police say further information will be released Tuesday.

Lincoln police investigating shooting that killed man in apartment

WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is collaborating on a <a href="https://www.getctc.org/en">new internet site</a> to help more Americans apply for and receive the expanded child tax credit, a monthly payment of as much as $300 per child that was part of the coronavirus relief package.

<a href="https://www.getctc.org/en" target="_blank">GetCTC.org</a>&nbsp;was developed by Code for America in collaboration with the White House and Treasury Department, according to a statement Wednesday. The goal is to provide a straight-forward, online form that can be accessible via mobile phones for people who are not legally obligated to file taxes to apply for the tax credit because they don’t earn enough money.

“Our research really shows the simpler you make the process, the more likely people are going to actually successfully make it through,” David Newville, senior program director for tax benefits at Code for America, said in an interview.

Based on a demonstration provided to The Associated Press, it’s possible for a parent to complete the form over the course of just 20 or 25 slides. Code for America has in the past worked with more than 100 partner organizations to help people prepare tax returns. The government previously estimated that at least 88% of children were already able to receive the tax credit when payments began in July.

President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 aid included an expansion of the child tax credit, extending it to families without any tax obligations. Parents of a child under the age of 6 can receive $3,600 annually, some of which can be paid out monthly at $300. Each child from the age of 6 to 17 qualifies for $3,000 annually, or $250 per month.

The expanded child tax credit is set to lapse after a year, though Biden has proposed extending it through 2025 and would like it to be made permanent.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2021/9/1630512415006.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>WASHINGTON (AP) — The government is collaborating on a <a href="https://www.getctc.org/en">new internet site</a> to help more Americans apply for and receive the expanded child tax credit, a monthly payment of as much as $300 per child that was part of the coronavirus relief package.<a href="https://www.getctc.org/en" target="_blank">GetCTC.org</a>&nbsp;was developed by Code for America in collaboration with the White House and Treasury Department, according to a statement Wednesday. The goal is to provide a straight-forward, online form that can be accessible via mobile phones for people who are not legally obligated to file taxes to apply for the tax credit because they don’t earn enough money.“Our research really shows the simpler you make the process, the more likely people are going to actually successfully make it through,” David Newville, senior program director for tax benefits at Code for America, said in an interview.Based on a demonstration provided to The Associated Press, it’s possible for a parent to complete the form over the course of just 20 or 25 slides. Code for America has in the past worked with more than 100 partner organizations to help people prepare tax returns. The government previously estimated that at least 88% of children were already able to receive the tax credit when payments began in July.President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion in COVID-19 aid included an expansion of the child tax credit, extending it to families without any tax obligations. Parents of a child under the age of 6 can receive $3,600 annually, some of which can be paid out monthly at $300. Each child from the age of 6 to 17 qualifies for $3,000 annually, or $250 per month.The expanded child tax credit is set to lapse after a year, though Biden has proposed extending it through 2025 and would like it to be made permanent.

New online site helps you get child tax credit

Nancy Campos’ back ached as she loaded more than 100 Amazon packages onto her truck. The 59-year-old grandmother, a mail carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, had worked 13 days in a row without a lunch break, and now she was delivering on the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to keep up with a never-ending flow of boxes.

At the end of her shift that January day, Campos filled out her time sheet. Then she took a picture of it — for proof.

“I knew what was going to happen,” said Campos, who delivers mail in Midland, Texas, “because it happens every pay period.”

Two weeks later, when she checked her paystub in the payroll system, she said she was missing six hours of overtime pay. That added up to about $201 in lost wages — a week’s worth of groceries.

Postal workers across the country share her frustration.

The Postal Service regularly cheats mail carriers out of their pay, according to a Center for Public Integrity investigation. Managers at hundreds of post offices around the country have illegally underpaid hourly workers for years, arbitrators and federal investigators have found.

Private arbitration records tell part of the story. From 2010 to 2019, at least 250 managers in 60 post offices were caught changing mail carriers’ time cards to show them working fewer hours, resulting in unpaid wages, according to a batch of arbitration award summaries obtained by Public Integrity for cases filed by one of the three major postal unions.

Supervisors found to be cheating were rarely disciplined — often receiving only a warning or more training. In four cities, arbitration documents show, post office managers continued to alter time cards after promising union leaders they would stop.

Since 2005, meanwhile, the Postal Service has been cited by the federal government 1,150 times for underpaying letter carriers and other employees, including one case that involved 164 violations, according to Labor Department data obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. The agency determined that those workers lost about $659,000 in pay. But it allowed the Postal Service to pay back less than half after negotiations with the agency — a common practice at the Labor Department. About 19% of the cases did not indicate whether the Postal Service paid back employees.

These findings point to widespread wage theft at the iconic quasi-governmental institution. Yet they offer only a partial view of the problem. Not captured are any arbitration cases filed by other postal unions or wage theft grievances settled before reaching arbitration.

Cases keep cropping up as the Postal Service struggles to pay off $188 billion in debt and unfunded liabilities, accrued largely because federal law requires it to prepay retiree healthcare and pension benefits. The agency has cut nearly 142,000 jobs since 2007, and in March 2020, it needed a $10 billion emergency loan from Congress to help pay its bills.

Mail carriers say their supervisors face intense pressure to keep overtime costs down. At the same time, pandemic-fueled spikes in online ordering are overwhelming mail carriers with packages. And they can’t count on getting paid for all their work.

A spokesperson for the Postal Service, David Partenheimer, said the agency does not condone supervisors making unsupported timecard adjustments and takes such allegations seriously.

“This position is messaged to the postal workforce directly from postal leaders, including the Vice President, Delivery Operations, who periodically reissues policies regarding appropriate timecard administration for supervisors,” Partenheimer wrote in an email to Public Integrity. He declined to comment on specific cases.

Campos said the agency still owes her thousands of dollars for two other wage theft grievances they settled before she discovered the missing overtime pay in January. She said her boss promised to pay her back for working the holiday but never did.

“I just had it. Enough is enough,” said Campos, who shared copies of her timesheets and pay stubs with Public Integrity. “We are depending on that money. When you get shorted, it’s the most horrible feeling.”

Every morning, Campos and thousands of other mail carriers across the United States swipe their badges at a local post office to clock in for work. They sort mail for their routes, check undelivered items and load up their trucks. They swipe their badge a few more times when they begin and end their delivery route and other tasks, and once again when they’re done for the day.

All of this is supposed to happen within an eight-hour shift for most carriers. That’s because the Postal Service doesn’t want to pay overtime, which is 50% extra per hour under federal law. The inspector general has repeatedly admonished the post office for spending billions of dollars in overtime each year and has urged managers to cut back.

But mail carriers say it’s impossible to get back in time. After all, the Postal Service is notoriously short-staffed at a time when carriers are delivering a record number of packages. In 2019 alone, they delivered 1.5 billion items for Amazon — nearly a third of the online retailer’s packages.

That means carriers log a lot of extra hours. And it’s not uncommon for managers to go into the system and delete some of them. Sometimes their changes show carriers ending their shifts earlier or taking an unpaid lunch break, according to Public Integrity’s review of private arbitration decisions maintained by the National Association of Letter Carriers, a labor union with nearly 290,000 members — about 45% of the agency’s total workforce.

In most of these cases, managers did not submit the required paperwork to explain the changes or notify the affected employee. Other times, supervisors just told carriers to clock out after eight hours and keep working without pay.

That happened regularly to Maverick Tran and some of his colleagues in San Jose, California, according to a 2019 decision by an independent arbitrator.

Tran told the arbitrator — who acts like a judge in this type of legal dispute — that two supervisors often told him to manually clock out at 6 p.m. if he was running late while delivering the mail.

“I still haven’t unloaded my truck or empty out anything, but I would be off the clock,” he said during a closed-door hearing at the main San Jose post office.

A co-worker said managers would regularly clock him out themselves before he returned to the station. Another carrier said they instructed him to punch out before the end of his shift to avoid “unauthorized overtime.”

One of those co-workers, Rafael Zambrano-Lay, said he was so scared about returning to his post office past 6 p.m. that he would skip meals, forego rest breaks and run while carrying mail to customers’ homes.

Zambrano-Lay did not respond to a request for comment and Tran declined to discuss the case.

Their union representative told the arbitrator that nearly every supervisor in San Jose’s 12 post offices had improperly manipulated employee hours each week for at least three years. In an eight-month period in 2017, the union found that these unauthorized changes shorted mail carriers out of 77 regular hours and 1,864 overtime hours, collectively costing them anywhere from $52,000 to $90,000 in lost wages.

In the arbitration hearing, a Postal Service representative did not explain why managers changed carriers’ time cards. He said the behavior was not widespread.

Nancy Hutt, the arbitrator, disagreed. After reviewing time cards for 240 mail carriers in San Jose, Hutt said she grew alarmed. The data “reflects a widespread practice by management of willfully and repetitively deleting and altering time records of Letter Carriers,” she wrote in her decision.

Other arbitrators expressed similar shock when reviewing such allegations.

“Heinous,” an arbitrator in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote in 2018 when presented with evidence that a manager deleted carriers’ work hours. “It’s an act, in my view, on the same level as theft.”

In Boston, arbitrator Katherine Morgan called the pattern of wage theft “systemic” and “egregious.” In a 2019 decision, she described the time card changes as serious federal offenses “which cannot be treated lightly, and which could lead to fines and even imprisonment.”

In all, arbitrators found that postal managers in at least nine states illegally altered mail carriers’ time cards in recent years, cheating more than 900 mail carriers out of pay. They ordered the Postal Service to stop falsifying time cards and pay back employees they cheated.

“It’s hard to believe,” said Jennifer Williams, a former mail carrier in the Atlanta area. “This is a government job. Nobody should go to work and wonder if they’re going to get paid.”

Williams, 36, said co-workers warned her to keep track of her hours when she was hired as a mail carrier in February 2020. She said she didn’t get her first paycheck and had to file a grievance with the union to get paid. When her second paycheck arrived, Williams said, she was missing five hours of overtime. Another supervisor told Williams that her boss had deleted the hours, according to a lawsuit she filed against the Postal Service in federal court.

When she brought up the missing overtime to her boss on the phone, she said her boss berated her. A few days later, Williams said the mail truck she was driving broke down and she was fired for not finishing her route. She sued in September 2020, claiming she was illegally fired for complaining about wage theft.

“I was really upset because I was depending on working at the post office to keep myself afloat,” said Williams, who said she had to take a low-paid job at a filter factory after she was fired.

Partenheimer, the Postal Service spokesperson, declined to comment on the lawsuit. But in court records, lawyers for the agency denied that a supervisor deleted Williams’ overtime hours or that she was fired for complaining about missing pay. Both parties settled the case in June, with the Postal Service agreeing to pay Williams $2,356 in damages and $3,143 in attorney’s fees.

Williams said she misses working for the post office. She once viewed the agency the same way thousands of other Black Americans have before her: as a stable job with good benefits and decent pay.

The Postal Service has long been one of the largest employers of African Americans in the United States. During the civil rights era, it was a place where Black workers could advance their careers without as many barriers as the private sector, said Frederick Gooding, an African American studies professor at Texas Christian University.

“The (Postal Service) was in many ways a beacon of hope and opportunity,” said Gooding, author of the book “American Dream Deferred: Black Federal Workers in Washington, D.C., 1941-1981.”

To this day, Black workers are overrepresented in the Postal Service. Though 12% of the overall U.S. workforce, they make up 19% of the agency’s mail carriers, 38% of its clerks and 31% of its mail handlers. Asians also represent a larger-than-average share of the postal workforce.

Wage theft within the agency might disproportionately harm these workers, but that’s unclear. Arbitration documents and Labor Department records don’t track each employee’s race or ethnicity. Yet the repeated paycheck theft tests the notion that the Postal Service is a desirable place to work.

“I would never have expected this from the post office,” said Campos, the Texas mail carrier. “This used to be an honorable job.”

Campos, who has worked as a carrier for three years, says she filed three grievances against her supervisors for unpaid work. They have since settled the complaints, she said, and management agreed to pay her a yet-to-be determined amount, including the extra hours she worked when delivering an “overburdened route” — a long one that regularly takes more time to finish than it’s supposed to.

Several of her co-workers are also waiting to be paid for similar reasons, she said, but she suspects that no one will be punished for ripping them off.

The arbitrator in the San Jose case told the Postal Service to pay employees what they’re owed. Tran, Zambrano-Lay and other carriers sued the agency in federal court a few months later. They want cash damages in addition to back pay. As of February, the Postal Service had paid back employees in that case a total of $570,000, attorneys for both sides reported to the court.

About two dozen employees gathered for a tense meeting at a San Antonio post office in February 2019. The station manager, Ruben Vela, was agitated. He told them that union outsiders were arriving to cause trouble.

When union steward Steven Ramirez showed up, Vela got in his face and berated him in front of everyone at the meeting, a witness said.

Ramirez had discovered that Vela and at least one other supervisor regularly deleted 25 employees’ work hours over a period of two years, according to an arbitration decision from later that year. In some cases, the arbitrator found, the other supervisor forged an employee’s initials approving the changes.

Employees who were at the 2019 meeting later said that Vela described the time card changes as a “simple mistake.”

Public Integrity was unable to reach Vela for comment.

Kirk Fraser, one of the mail carriers at the meeting, said he was devastated, according to the arbitration document. He called the practice an “immoral and egregious” breach of trust.

“Clearly, falsifying dozens of (USPS) forms does not equate to a simple mistake, but rather something that was done deliberately,” he told the arbitrator, according to the decision. He and some of his co-workers said they didn’t understand why Vela wasn’t fired.

Instead, the Postal Service said in arbitration that Vela was temporarily restricted from accessing the time card system until he could retake training on the proper way to handle time card changes. The agency told the arbitrator that they had paid back the employees.

Union representatives Richard Gould and Adam Reyna were incensed with the light rebuke. They asked the arbitrator to order the Postal Service to ban Vela from supervising letter carriers.

“This kind of thievery would have resulted in the immediate removal if perpetrated by a letter carrier, but inexplicably the Postal Service appears to have taken the position that (its) supervisors should be somehow held to a lower standard than the craft employees they manage,” the union representatives stated.

The Postal Service representative argued that any further punishment would impact the supervisor’s career and rob him of “due process.” The arbitrator decided not to mandate harsher discipline, agreeing with that argument.

A similar scene has played out in several closed-door hearings across the country. The Postal Service will acknowledge the unlawful time card changes and agree to pay back workers. A union advocate then asks an arbitrator to sanction the supervisors involved. The arbitrators say they can’t under the contract, ordering supervisors to take training instead.

That doesn’t always make a difference. A union representative begged an arbitrator in Chicago to take action after supervisors were found deleting employee work hours at all 11 offices in the city. Internal mediators had already ordered those supervisors to stop multiple times, but they wouldn’t.

“Cease and desist orders have not been effective in convincing Chicago Management to enforce the prohibition against stealing time,” the union advocate argued, according to the December 2020 decision. The arbitrator said she didn’t have the authority to mandate monetary penalties, and instead required post office leaders to meet with supervisors and tell them to stop. She also told the Postal Service to let the union do periodic time card reviews.

Fredric Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, declined to comment on individual cases and said the union addresses time card fraud through the grievance-arbitration system and in the courts.

“Meanwhile, we are constantly monitoring these situations to make sure USPS complies with arbitration decisions and grievance settlements,” he said in a statement to Public Integrity.

In a September 2019 newsletter, Rolando lamented that one of the biggest problems facing the Postal Service is “a toxic workplace culture that tolerates abuse and wage/time theft.”

One rural mail carrier in North Carolina compared the Postal Service to a “bank robber.”

“It just seems like the post office is above the law,” said the employee, who asked that he not be identified out of fear of retaliation from his supervisors. “They pretty much do anything they want.”

The Postal Service knows it has a problem

Postal Service leaders are well aware that many supervisors have been caught cheating employees. The agency’s inspector general — its independent watchdog — has audited time records at dozens of post offices over the years.

In a 2009 letter to Rep. Paul Hodes, the inspector general’s office confirmed complaints that supervisors at three New Hampshire post offices were changing time cards, underpaying employees by nearly $30,000. A year later, the office found more than 160 suspicious changes during a year-long audit of three post offices in Ohio, North Carolina and New Hampshire. At least 75 of the changes were not properly documented. Auditors said the Postal Service did not have adequate systems in place to make sure supervisors aren’t shorting employees.

“As a result, we could not determine with certainty the reasons supervisors altered time and attendance records,” the lead auditor wrote.

The agency watchdog recommended that the Postal Service train all supervisors periodically, create another layer of approval for each time card change and do its own periodic audits.

Dean Granholm, then the Postal Service’s head of delivery and operations, agreed to follow the recommendations.

But the wage theft didn’t stop. In 2018, the inspector general alerted postal leaders that more than 100 supervisors in the Boston area had changed time records, deleting hundreds of work hours from 814 postal employees over a period of two years. The auditors reviewed a sampling of 199 changes and found that the majority of them were improperly documented.

Granholm no longer works for the agency and did not respond to a request for comment.

Finally the inspector general looked at the problem on a national level. During a six-month period in 2019, auditors discovered that managers had deleted more than 46,000 work hours from employees across the country. Investigators then examined records at seven post offices in Illinois, Florida and the Washington, D.C., region, finding that 86% of time card changes shorted employees’ pay without proper documentation.

The inspector general made similar recommendations to those from previous audits: talk to supervisors about the time card rules and establish a process to periodically review such changes. The Postal Service agreed to do it.

Mail carriers who spoke to Public Integrity say they believe supervisors keep docking their hours because managers’ annual pay raises depend on keeping overtime spending down. Union stewards and lawyers made the same claims in legal records. The Postal Service would not say whether it does in fact link pay raises to overtime spending.

Mail carriers say the wage theft will continue unless the Postal Service punishes managers doing it.

In the meantime, some carriers take pictures of their time sheets or write down their hours in a notebook. One of the unions developed a mobile app to help with that.

Campos refuses to quit her job, despite it all.

“I’ve invested so much. I don’t want to leave,” she said. “I am 59 years old. Who do you think is going to hire me?”

This story was provided to The Associated Press by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit news organization based in Washington, D.C.

Report: USPS has shorted some workers’ pay for years

News Release Nebraska State Patrol

The Nebraska State Patrol is investigating a multi-vehicle crash that resulted in two fatalities and several injuries on Saturday on Interstate 80 in Lincoln.

<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2019/6/1559737258290.png" alt="" />
 <figcaption></figcaption>
 </figure>News Release Nebraska State PatrolThe Nebraska State Patrol is investigating a multi-vehicle crash that resulted in two fatalities and several injuries on Saturday on Interstate 80 in Lincoln.At approximately 9:25 a.m. Saturday, units from the Nebraska State Patrol, Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office, Lincoln Police Department, and Lincoln Fire and Rescue were dispatched to the scene of a multi-vehicle crash on westbound Interstate 80 near the 27th&nbsp;Street interchange in Lincoln. Several bystanders also rushed to the scene to assist those involved in the crash.The crash involved eight vehicles, resulting in two fatalities as well as several other injuries. Five additional patients were transported to Bryan Health West Campus with non-life-threatening injuries. Both fatalities were from the same vehicle.All vehicles involved were westbound at the time of the crash. The crash remains under investigation.Further details will be released pending notification of next of kin. I-80 has now reopened in the area.