On March 20th, United States Postal Service workers, retirees, and supporters gathered in dozens of cities nationwide to stop the Trump Administrationfrom privatizing USPS as part of the American Postal Workers Union’s Day of Action.
Fellow Alex Nguyen stopped by the demonstration in New York City. Despite the rain and cold, hundreds of demonstrators showed up in front of Manhattan’s James A. Farley Building, holding signs reading, “The Post Office Belongs to The People Not the Billionaires” and “Hands Off Our Mail.” The crowd also chanted in call-and-response, “Whose Post Office? The People’s Post Office” and “U.S. Mail. Not for Sale!” To the side, volunteers were handing out flyers to people passing by on the street.
The APWU, which represents over 200,000 USPS employees and retirees, announced these protests earlier this month. The union warned at the time that if privatization happened, the move would lead to “higher prices, reduced service, and the destruction of tens of thousands of union jobs.”
US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told congressional leaders in a March 13 letter that he signed an agreement to work with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in a cost-cutting initiative that includes plans to lay off 10,000 workers within 30 days through a “Voluntary Early Retirement program.”
The agreement drew criticism from many unions and lawmakers. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said that DeJoy’s plan would allow DOGE to “profit off Americans’ loss,” especially those who “rely on the Postal Service every day to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more.”
A few hours after a March 14 meeting with the APWU National Executive Board about DeJoy’s decision, APWU President Mark Dimondstein told me that the DeJoy-DOGE partnership didn’t surprise him since lawmakers and corporations have spent decades trying to gut the agency. “We don’t think they’re about efficiency at all,” he said, referring to DOGE. “We think they’re about how to rip off the public sector for the benefit of private profit.”
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