El Paso's processing and distribution center is responsible for handling southern New Mexico's mail.

And with all of this extra mail, one employee at the plant said not much has been done to hire more people to process the thousands of pounds of mail coming through there.

"We can handle it if we have the people, we can't handle it if they have no intentions in hiring extra help," said Frank Chavez, postal worker.

Extra help is exactly what is outlined in a recent agreement between the U.S. Postal Service and both New Mexico Senators Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman. The idea, according to the agreement, is to create an extra operation shift with more employees. The senators said the employees would be permanent.

"The employees we will be bringing onto the new shift will be full-time career employees taken from the, you know, evening shifts and then to fill those gaps we will be hiring temporary employees who will work two 90-day terms," said Sam Bolen, U.S. Postal Service spokesman.

It is hiring these temporary employees that Chavez believes is the problem.

"It is not doing any good if they don't hire any permanent employees because they are just playing round robin because one operation gets hurt one week and then the other one gets hurt," Chavez said.

Chavez also believes these temporary employees will eventually be let go and the mail delays will start again.

"First time they fixed it temporarily, than we came back to delays and it happened again it came back to delays, so probably this will be the same story, maybe two-three weeks from now we will start seeing the mail pile up again," he said.

Yet the U.S. Postal Service sees it differently.

"Our mail volume fluctuates probably by 10 percent and our employment fluctuates by 10 percent, too, so it's just called good management," Bolen said.

Good management is not how Domenici and Bingaman see this. Both released statements to KFOX.

"Hiring temporary employees is not the impression or understanding that I got. No where in the agreement does it say anything about these employees being temporary. I will make an inquiry into this immediately," Domenici said.

"I'm very unhappy to learn that the 15 new U.S. Postal Service employees hired to staff the El Paso mail processing facility will be temporary. Mail delivery problems in Las Cruces are in need of a permanent solution and not a quick fix. I will continue to work with the U.S. Postal Service to ensure this problem is addressed," Bingaman said.