By COCO SMYTH
A postal worker and member of the National Postal Mailhandlers Union comments on protests to keep USPS as a public service.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — On Thursday, March 20, postal workers took to the streets all across the country, heeding a call by the American Postal Workers Union for nationwide action. This call was heard in Columbus, where postal workers met outside the Statehouse, the site of the state government, to protest. Between this location and a second one outside a postal facility, nearly 50 workers and community supporters gathered to express their discontent.
Shouts of “U.S. mail not for sale!” echoed through the streets, punctuating political discussions between attendees. Why did workers brave the cold outside of their work hours to talk and demonstrate for the Postal Service?
This action was a preparatory move against the nefarious plans of the Donald Trump regime and Elon Musk, the self-appointed billionaire tyrant presiding over the despicable and ridiculous Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE, sigh). In his work destroying the few remnants of government for the people, he made a comment that riled up postal workers everywhere. Musk declared, “I think logically we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized. I think we should privatize the Post Office and Amtrak for example. …. We should privatize everything we possibly can.”
USPS must be public
For postal workers, these are fighting words. The perpetual fear we all have is privatization. Through every crisis and transformation at USPS, postal workers have maintained their opposition to privatization.
For decades politicians, particularly Republicans, have pushed the idea of postal privatization. These politicians have criticized USPS as a monopoly, denounced it as an expensive money sink, and demanded it be more efficient. The central argument these critics make is that a privatized Postal Service would be far superior to the current public one. They hold on to the classic capitalist shibboleth that public institutions are expensive, inefficient, unaccountable, and backward. They believe in the mythology that private companies, since they must adhere to the dictates of the free hand of the market, make the most efficient, profitable, and rational decisions in order to maintain their own existence. Public institutions reverse all these virtues, they insist, since they stand outside the logic of the market.
These politicians purposefully elide the most central distinction between a public and private institution. The former is responsible to the people while the latter is responsible to shareholders. But this gets to the crux of the real motivations of the opponents of USPS. The key proponents of privatization seek to cannibalize USPS for their own benefit.
Though many average people are fooled by the free-market demagoguery of capitalist politicians, the most vociferous advocates of privatization believe they stand to gain personally from a private USPS. They see USPS as a lost money-making opportunity since it isn’t operated with profit as its master. Private competitors of USPS in package delivery such as Amazon, UPS, and FedEd believe they have much to gain by making inroads into the areas USPS currently serves. The broader logistics industry, a large and integral part of U.S. capitalism, also has vested interests in profit-seeking at the expense of USPS.
The rich seek to sacrifice everything at the altar of capital. But their interests are diametrically opposed to those of the vast majority who benefit from USPS as a public service. Since USPS is public, profit-making isn’t its sole priority. It makes unprofitable decisions and takes on expensive responsibilities that would never be accepted by capitalist shareholders. Prices for letter, flat, and package delivery remain well below the market rate established throughout the rest of the logistics system. Since the mail is an essential part of everyday life for every individual in this country, affordability is vital to USPS’s mission. Without the safeguard of accountability to the people, millions would be priced out of the essential services USPS offers.
Another core aspect of USPS is its servicing of the entire populace. Since mail is so central to the economy and everyday life of the people, it is vital that everyone be able to receive mail. The delivery system of the USPS is the only one that can reach every person, from rural Alaska to urban Atlanta. There is a reason that the private delivery competitors of USPS rely to an extraordinary extent on the postal system—it is in principle unprofitable. Delivery to large swathes of the country is costly—too costly to make it worth it in the private market. Without the assurance of delivery guaranteed by a public institution designed for the whole people, millions may not be able to receive essential deliveries. A price could be put on universal service, but it shouldn’t be! This service is a democratic right that is priceless, and should continue to be.
If anything, the core problems of USPS all arise from the way it is limited as a public institution. It is not directly funded by the federal government and is subjected to market logic despite not operating on that principle. The Postal Master General and the top-level management of USPS act and conceive of themselves as a private corporation. They also preside over the workers with the same logic, subjecting them to ridiculous and usually counter-productive attempts to ensure “productivity.”
We can solve most of the current problems facing USPS, but only if we take the exactly opposite approach to that advocated by the privatizers. The USPS should be made entirely public; it should be directly funded by the government and subjected to greater democratic control by the populace and the workers. And it ought to offer even more essential services, not less!
The sabotage of the Postal Service
The proclamations by Musk are just the latest in the long-running attempts to erode the Postal Service in order to make privatization appear like the only option. There have been many odious attempts to undermine the Postal Service. One of the most inane cases was the “Postal Fairness Act,” which mandated that the USPS pre-fund retirement for its employees 75 years in advance. The federal government required USPS to set aside the money for employees’ retirement a whole lifetime ahead of time! It was not only absurd in concept, but absolutely unique in any institution. Thanks to that mandate, the “debts” of USPS ballooned for years. Thankfully that policy was finally retired in 2022, but it is just one element of the wider assault on USPS.
The Post Master General appointed during Trump’s first presidency, Louis DeJoy, has presided over the degradation of USPS. He announced an “ambitious” 10-year plan that he called “Delivering for America.” This plan was purported to “modernize” the postal system to bring it in line with the norms and forms of organization of the logistics networks of the private sector, implement wider automation, and centralize mail processing and distribution around massive mega-facilities.
Over his reign, DeJoy slowly but surely began to implement this 10-year plan. It has been a disaster. The consolidated facilities have been notoriously inefficient and dysfunctional. Customers have suffered increasing problems with receiving their mail in a timely manner or at all. Part of the series of reforms in fact downgraded the speed of mail delivery across the board. Many attempts at automation, including robot drivers, were an expensive failure as well.
It would be easy to think that this was just another ignorant plan by delusional top-level management in a large institution that failed despite its drafters’ intentions. Many postal workers believe otherwise. We have seen this catastrophic 10-year plan as a purposeful attempt to wreck the Postal Service in order to pave the way for privatization. If the institution is terminally dysfunctional, then radical change would be justified. “Delivering for America” continued through the Biden presidency, since he never attempted to displace the Trump appointee.
To everyone’s surprise, however, Louis DeJoy exited his position shortly after the beginning of Trump’s second term. Celebrations by postal workers were quite brief, however, as happiness was quickly replaced by foreboding. Speculation has run rampant about what his resignation meant. Many believe that he’s stepped aside so the Trump administration can move more aggressively than even DeJoy’s 10-year plan stipulated. This, paired with Trump’s stated aims to dissolve the Postal Board of Governors, the highest bureaucratic body of USPS, has precipitated the fears that have led postal workers to move into action.
A first step toward bigger struggles
This call by the APWU, heeded by thousands of postal workers, is an important step toward building the movement we need to defend the rights of postal workers and secure USPS as a public service. Due to the ban on strikes by postal workers, there have been huge barriers to postal workers’ fights for their rights, better contracts, and a socially just Postal Service. Lacking that basic weapon for workers’ struggle, until the right to strike is secured, other means of defense are absolutely necessary.
It’s essential that the rank and file get active in their union branches to discuss tactics and strategy and begin to build the type of workers’ organization capable of beating the despicable plans the rich have for USPS. If we want to beat back the attacks on USPS, our unions will have to transform themselves from bodies for the filing of grievances into organs of struggle and worker initiative.
We also desperately need to achieve unity across the various postal unions. USPS is organized in a craft-union system comprised of the National association of Letter Carriers (NALC), the National Postal Mailhandlers Union (NPMHU), the National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA), and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU.) This set-up has unfortunately allowed postal management to counterpose the interests of each union against each other to ensure that all postal workers get worse contracts. Tactics of divide-and-rule are a central tool that capitalists use to break workers’ struggles, and the independent lives of the postal unions lay the groundwork for campaigns of division. Our union leaderships must seek unity in the face of these attacks! It’s our responsibility as workers to build up our connections across crafts and unions to join in our collective defense. With the collective power of over 500,000 workers, and with the support of the people, we have the power we need to secure a just, democratic, and public Postal Service.
The majority of attendees at the Columbus rally were APWU members. Letter carriers and mail handlers were notably absent. In fact, I believe I was the only mail handler in attendance. I hope to see future nationwide demonstrations and actions like this one gain the full support of every postal union. Postal workers united and with the support of the community have the power to defeat any of the machinations of the rich.
The fight will undoubtedly be long and arduous, but postal workers and the people can and must come together to ensure that the United States Postal Service maintains itself as the cherished public service it is. Postal workers will stand up not only for our own interests, but for the interests of the people as a whole against any attacks by the rich and the powerful!
