Postal Service

October 1: Nationwide Rallies To Save The Postal Service

September 18, 2024 Miriam Brockman, Labor Notes. Resist! Postal Service, Unions, USPS, Worker Rights and Jobs

The Postal Workers (APWU) will hold a national day of action on October 1, with rallies all across the country for better staffing and better service, a better contract that ends the two-tier wage system, and the right to speak to the board that governs the postal service. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy’s plan to “modernize” the Postal Service consists of condensing it. In the name of saving money, he is pushing to consolidate mail processing plants into fewer, bigger, more automated ones—which means cutting hundreds of jobs each time and slowing down the mail, especially for rural customers. The state of Wyoming will have no mail plants left at all, so if you mail a letter across town in Cheyenne, it will have to travel all the way to Denver and back.

You’re A Mean One, Mr. DeJoy

December 29, 2023 Vishal Shankar, Revolving Door Project. Resist! Amazon, Louis DeJoy, Postal Service, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – unless you’re a postal worker. Thanks to chronic understaffing and Amazon’s increasing use of the agency’s last-mile delivery service, the mail is piling up at post offices across the country and overwhelming already-overworked USPS employees. And that’s just the stocking stuffer: these Christmastime delays will become the year-round norm, from Janesville to Nashville to Whoville, if real-life Grinch Louis DeJoy gets his way*. As The Guardian’s Michael Sainato reported last week, the Postmaster General is currently implementing a “10-year austerity plan” that would slash working hours at hundreds of post offices and shutter vital postal sorting facilities.

Post Office Staff Have Just Voted For More Strike Action

November 20, 2022 Steve Topple, The Canary. Resist! Postal Service, Strikes, United Kingdom (UK), Worker Rights and Jobs

The CWU and its Post Office workers have been in an ongoing dispute with bosses for most of 2022. It’s over dire pay offers from the company. The dispute centres around workers rejecting a pay freeze for 2021/22. They also dismissed a pay offer of 5% with effect from 1 April 2022, plus a £500 one-off lump sum. The first strike was in May, followed by more actions over the summer. The last strike was at the end of September.

Unimpressed With Post Office Banking Trial, Backers Eye New Initiative

March 2, 2022 Caitlin Reilly, Roll Call. Create! Banking, Finance and the Economy, Postal Banking, Postal Service

As lawmakers work on finishing fiscal 2022 appropriations, they’ll have to decide whether to keep a House spending provision that would allow some post offices to offer more financial services. Coming in the wake of a largely ignored U.S. Postal Service test of a check-cashing service, a new initiative could test whether the Postal Service can attract millions of Americans who now lack banking services, serve areas largely vacated by banks and make money by doing so. Those tests depend on the Senate going along with the $6 million for a pilot project in the House’s fiscal 2022 Financial Services appropriations bill. Lawmakers are trying to finish the appropriations work before the current continuing resolution expires on March 11.

Are Postal Service Cuts Motivated By Voter Suppression, Privatization Or Both?

August 25, 2020 Sarah Anderson and Scott Klinger, Inequality. Educate! 2020 Elections, Neoliberalism, Postal Service, Privatization

Throughout its 245-year history, the Postal Service has persevered through rain, snow, heat, the gloom of night, and even a global pandemic to serve the American people. But now this vital public service is under attack from within. In the course of two short months, a new Postmaster General has dramatically slowed the mail by banning overtime pay, dismantling mail sorting machines, removing mailboxes, and other service cuts. Given the overwhelming public support for the Postal Service, the U.S. government is unlikely to be able to get away with selling it off through public stock offerings as some other nations have done. Private corporations are unlikely to be interested in buying USPS lock, stock, and barrel anyway. The private carriers UPS and FedEx would be most interested in acquiring more of the public agency’s lucrative and growing package business. They don’t need legislative or executive action. They just need USPS to drive away their own customers by slowing deliveries and jacking up rates.

The Struggle Against Neoliberalism Intensifies: Saving Our Postal Service And Workers

April 27, 2020 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, Clearing the FOG. Podcast COVID-19, Food and Agriculture, Meatless May, Postal Service, Recession, Workers

The wave of worker, student, and renter strikes is growing into a campaign for a general strike that begins on May 1 and continues at the first of each month from there. The government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and economic collapse, a purely neoliberal money grab, has revealed that the only way we are going to survive and maintain social programs is by fighting for them. We speak with Mark Dimondstein, the president of the American Postal Workers Union, about Congress' failure to provide necessary funding for the US Postal Service as revenue has fallen by 50%. The USPS faces the real possibility of going bankrupt and the administration is openly saying it will let it fail in order to privatize it. We also speak with Joe Henry, political director of the League of United Latin American Citizens in Iowa, about the Meatless May campaign for meatpackers and against factory farming.

Unions Back US Postal Service’s $75 Billion Pandemic Appeal

April 20, 2020 Mark Gruenberg, Intrepid Report. Organize! Bailout, Labor Unions, Postal Service, Recession

Washington — Faced with a crash in mail volume and revenue due to closures to battle the coronavirus pandemic—right when the country needs the Postal Service the most to help get vital food, medicine, and other life-saving goods to everyone—Postmaster General Megan Brennan asked Congress for a combination of $75 billion in cash and credit to keep going through the financial disaster. Her April 9 video briefing request, to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which handles postal legislation, drew immediate support from the nation’s two big postal unions, the Letter Carriers (NALC) and the Postal Workers (APWU). And even GOP President Donald Trump’s Postal Board of Governors backed it. “It is vitally important to the American people that the next stimulus package provides funding to the Postal Service sufficient to maintain a revenue stream that allows them to continue operations through this pandemic crisis,” NALC President Fredric Rolando e-mailed on April 10.

Head Of The Postal Workers Union Says The Postal Service Could Be Dead In Three Months

April 17, 2020 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. Organize! Congress, Labor Movement, Postal Service, Recession

Among the most prominent victims of the coronavirus financial crisis is the United States Postal Service, which could quite literally run out of money to operate if the federal government does not approve a rescue package for it soon. The Trump administration—which, like much of the GOP, has long advocated for cutbacks and privatization of the postal service—actively prevented the USPS from being bailed out in the CARES Act, even as Donald Trump has made a show of publicly thanking Fedex and UPS for their work. Not very subtle. Fifty years ago last month, U.S. postal workers staged an unprecedented and historic eight-day strike, backing down the Nixon administration and winning the right to collective bargaining. A half century later, Mark Dimondstein, the leader of the 200,000-strong American Postal Workers Union, says that Republicans are using today’s crisis as an opportunity to destroy the postal service as a public entity once and for all.

The Postal Service Is A Public Treasure That Should Not Be Privatized

December 20, 2018 Sarah Holder, Citylab.com Educate! Class Struggle, Postal Service, Privatization, USPS

The United States Postal Service has been fighting for its life since it was born. President Richard Nixon created this vast mail-managing entity in 1970 by turning its old Cabinet-level predecessor, the U.S. Post Office Department, into a government-owned corporation, caving to union demands after hundreds of thousands of postal workers went on strike for better wages and collective bargaining rights. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan tried to change the USPS’s public status and sell it off for cash. He failed, but in 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which mandated that Postal Service retirement health care* be pre-funded, and arguably contributed to a long-term financing crisis that continues today.

I’m A Postal Worker. If You Get Mail In A Small Town Or Suburb, Listen Up!

December 19, 2018 Kathy Toler, Intrepidreport.com Educate! Postal Service, Trump Administration

I’ve been a postal clerk for 23 years, serving my customers in a public post office in Gresham, Oregon. As you might imagine, with the holidays fast approaching, it’s a busy time of year for us. Every day, I help my customers mail letters, cards, and packages across town and across the county. Even when we’re busy, it’s a joy to share a small part in spreading holiday cheer. Because the Postal Service charges uniform rates across the country, I don’t need to ask you if a package is being sent to a home or a business, or whether the recipient lives in a big city or a distant rural area.

‘The U.S. Mail Is Not For Sale’: Postal Workers Speak Out

October 20, 2018 Steve Wishnia, Laborpress.org Resist! Class Struggle, Postal Service, Postal Workers, Workers

NEW YORK, N.Y.—Jonathan Smith, head of the New York Metro Area Postal Union, entered the Hunts Point Station post office in the Bronx on the afternoon of Oct. 16, accompanied by a dozen-odd retired postal workers, a 4-year-old girl carrying a “The U.S. Mail Is Not for Sale” sign, and union communications director Chuck Zlatkin, who was carrying a small cardboard box of petitions with more than 5,300 signatures demanding that the U.S. Postal Service begin offering basic banking services. Their aim was to deliver the petitions to Bronx Postmaster Scott Farrar. But Farrar had declined an invitation to come, and after about 10 minutes, the staff on duty refused to accept the box. Smith and Zlatkin instead handed it over to Rep. Jose Serrano (D-Bronx), who said he’d deliver it to Postal Service officials.

Victory: U.S. Postal Service Halting Retail Sales At Staples Stores

January 7, 2017 Joe Davidson, www.washingtonpost.com Resist! Postal Service, Staples, Unions

By Joe Davidson for The Washington Post - But now, that program has been sentenced to death and it is postal labor leaders who are rejoicing. They cheer the demise of a program that had been the target of a vigorous campaign by postal unions that don’t want the post office privatized. USPS will discontinue retail services at Staples stores by the first week in March, according to the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), which led the fight. The union cast the decision as “a big win for the public as well as the 200,000 members of APWU and the union’s allies.”

The US Postal Service’s Secret Cover Program

December 1, 2015 John Kiriakou, www.readersupportednews.org Educate! Postal Service, Surveillance

By John Kiriakou for Reader Supported News - The U.S. Postal Service is spying on us. And they’re not doing a very good job at it. I’m not talking about peeking into letters or looking at how many mutual fund statements you receive. I’m talking about the systematic collection of information on every single piece of mail you send or receive, including the names and addresses of the sender and recipient, without a warrant or oversight and without any explanation to the person being targeted. Indeed, the USPS Inspector General has even issued a report saying that the Postal Service “failed to properly safeguard documents...

Warning: Another Attack On Our Postal Service

October 6, 2015 Dave Johnson, www.nationofchange.org Educate! Postal Service

By Dave Johnson for Nation of Change - Should we run our country for the benefit of We the People, or so that a few people can profit off of We the People? This is a question that is rising to the surface in a battle between those who want the United States Postal Service (USPS) maintained and expanded, and those who want it privatized. There are some conservative ideologues who just can’t stand that the USPS demonstrates government doing its job of helping make our lives better. As with Social Security, they attack it relentlessly and endlessly. The latest push to privatize the USPS came from the Elaine Kamarck at Brookings, in “Delaying the Inevitable: Political Stalemate and the U.S. Postal Service.”

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