WASHINGTON—A longtime right-wing goal, the threat of privatization of the Postal Service, and the retirement of controversial Trumpite Postmaster General Louis DeJoy dominated the discussion by three postal union presidents of the USPS and its future.
The March 25 panel, with Letter Carriers (NALC) President Brian Renfroe, Postal Workers (APWU) President Mark Dimondstein, and Rural Letter Carriers President Don Maston, not only discussed DeJoy’s departure—and who might succeed him—but who would follow DeJoy’s controversial postal “modernization” plan.
That in turn ties into the right-wing drive to privatize the Postal Service, sell its profitable routes and excess buildings and land to Wall Street, and saddle the remainder with the Commerce Department. The 1970 law making the USPS independent would be repealed.
Dimondstein says the Trump privatization threat covers not just the Postal Service and Amtrak, both independent public corporations and both heavily unionized, but the entire government.
“I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, this attack on the USPS is part of the ongoing coup by oligarchs against the vital public services APWU members and other public servants provide to the country,” Dimondstein said in a prepared statement about DeJoy, part of which he repeated at the panel discussion. “Privatized postal services will lead to higher postage prices, and a lower quality of service to the public.”
Privatization would wipe out USPS’s independence, threaten universal service, especially to rural areas, sharply drive up package and first-class postage rates and throw the nation’s 640,000 USPS employees into massive uncertainty.
Though the panelists did not say so, privatization could close off a route to well-paying middle-class jobs for workers of color, women, or both. Trump and the right also want to split up, spin-off and privatize another public corporation, Amtrak. Both workforces are heavily minority and unionized.
Trump pushed privatizing the USPS during his 2017-21 presidency. When Trump forced DeJoy in as head of the USPS in the spring of 2020, Trump’s Treasury Secretary, banker Steve Mnuchin, reportedly made privatization a key goal. So did right-wing Heritage Foundation staffers in the White House.
That sent postal union members into the streets years ago, and they’ve hit the streets again. APWU has taken the lead in both campaigns, under the theme it created to fend off a prior threat: “The US Mail is not for sale!”
NALC, the Rural Letter Carriers, and the Mail Handlers/Laborers have all joined in, with the Letter Carriers also running their own set of anti-privatization demonstrations in late March.
Who succeeds DeJoy will be up to the USPS board, which has hired an outside corporate search firm to locate candidates. APWU’s Dimondstein was the most outspoken, both at the D.C. panel session and in a statement that morning about the privatization threat, which he laid at Trump’s feet—and which Dimondstein says threatens the entire federal government, not just the independent USPS.
“We have a White House administration openly talking about privatizing the Postal Service, selling it off, and breaking it up,” Dimondstein declared at the panel session. “But whatever conflicts we had, he did not talk about privatization.
“DeJoy personally respected the unions. We were able to work out changes with him, giving non-career folks a career” at the USPS.
A big topic early on
Privatization—and closures that go with it–“was a big topic early” in DeJoy’s five-year reign, NALC’s Renfroe said. DeJoy got a big pushback. “The message we sent was ‘If you try to close post offices, you’re dead in the water,” politically. “Our universal service network is valuable to our country.”
In a statement he repeated at the discussion, Dimondstein pledged APWU would “continue to lead the fight to ensure that the USPS stays in the hands of its rightful owners, the people.”
“Privatization is motivated by profits” to Wall Street, Renfroe stated. “They want the profitable pieces. This is not a political issue. They (voters) did not vote to destroy the Postal Service” when a plurality returned Trump to the Oval Office.
“The threat is very real and the American people need to make sure we stay vigilant” against it, said Maston.
While the three union leaders universally condemned postal privatization, they offered differing views on DeJoy’s legacy, and particularly his controversial “Delivering for America” plan.
Delivering for America features cost-cutting by closing post offices and sorting centers, forcing Letter Carriers to drive hundreds of miles roundtrip to pick up their mail before delivery, banning overtime—which leaves undelivered first-class mail on post office and sorting center floors—and emphasizing parcel delivery over first-class mail.
It also features longer delivery times for first-class mail and lower standards for “on-time” delivery, state by state and region by region. And under DeJoy, the USPS even flunked those, with disastrous delivery times in metro Baltimore, metro Detroit, and the entire state of Georgia—as low as 36%–according to figures provided to Sen. Jon Ossoff, D-Ga.
Renfroe agreed with DeJoy that the USPS must adapt to new postal patterns: The rise in packages and the decline of first-class mail volume, especially after the coronavirus pandemic hit five years ago. Even before, DeJoy—the former CEO of XPO Logistics, a private and non-union package delivery firm—pushed the switch, yanking out letter-sorting machines in favor of package sorters.
But he didn’t address another conflict with the USPS, over the NALC’s contract. The two sides are now in interest arbitration, where each presents its package to a neutral arbitrator who must pick one or the other. That followed the overwhelming rejection of the USPS’s offer of 1.3% yearly raises plus cost-of-living increases. Renfroe’s bargainers recommended it—and got clobbered by NALC members.
Matson of the Rural Letter Carriers brought up another problem with privatization: Abandonment of rural routes as unprofitable. Rank-and-file Letter Carriers, interviewed at a rally NALC called several weeks earlier, said the same thing. One, from Ogden, Utah, told People’s World that if privatization occurred, the mail would get delivered in Salt Lake City and Ogden—and nowhere else.
“The next Postmaster General will have an impact on rural communities…and needs to be in harmony for all of us, especially rural constituents who” rely on the USPS for deliveries of food, medicines and checks, Matson said. His union brought 100 carriers from around the nation to D.C. the same day to lobby lawmakers on preserving universal service, to all communities in all states, D.C., and territories.
The importance of such deliveries was brought to the D.C. crowd by Tamika Brown, a Rural Letter Carrier from Louisiana. She too headed for the Capitol to lobby lawmakers, after the press conference. And in rural New Mexico and the bottom of the Grand Canyon, Letter Carriers must ride mules to deliver the mail, one Postal Worker from Maryland said at an earlier rally.
“One customer texted me this morning that their car broke down and they were depending on delivery of their contact lenses,” Brown said. “I texted my supervisor, and they found a substitute.”
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