Trump's plan to privatize USPS draws Charlotte protest

FEDERAL NEWS NETWORK

President Donald Trump has proposed privatizing the United States Postal Service or restructuring the independent federal agency as part of the Commerce Department.

Charlotte postal workers are protesting a Trump administration plan to sell or restructure the United States Postal Service.

Members of the American Postal Workers Union will gather March 20 in front of 150 postal facilities across the country to sound the alarm about a proposed plan to unlawfully take over the independent public United States Postal Service and transfer it to the U.S. Department of Commerce or possibly break it up or sell it off completely.

Charlotte’s Day of Action starts at 11 a.m. at the Park Road Shopping Center station.

“Our local message is a unified message of the fact that the Postal Service is a vital public service and that the U.S. Mail should not be sold off to the highest bidder, which is the current plan under the current administration,” said Miriam Bell, president of APWU Local 375, which includes Charlotte. “The plan was publicized, if it comes to fruition, would basically sell off the Postal Service and potentially place what’s left of it underneath” to the Commerce Department.

Trump advisor and billionaire Elon Musk – leader of the Department of Government Efficiency – earlier this month suggested privatizing USPS, which was launched in 1776 and is enshrined in the Constitution. Only Congress has the authority to change its structure.

“This is the people’s postal service, emphasis on ‘service,’” APWU President Mark Dimondstein said in a statement.  “If this administration succeeds in taking over the USPS, it will lead to higher prices and reduced service, especially in rural areas.”

Dismantling the service would have a disproportionate effect on Black employees. In 2020, 21% of its workforce was Black according to the service, compared to 13% of the U.S. population
USPS has historically been a place of economic advancement as well as employment in Black communities, especially over the last half of the 20th century.

Philip Rubio, a history professor at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro, wrote in his 2010 book “There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality,” that USPS was not only “vital to Black community development, but Black postal worker activism changed the Post Office and its unions,” Rubio wrote. “This is a dynamic history, one that involves narratives of migration, militancy, community, and negotiation — and all at a workplace that African Americans saw as being inclusively, not exclusively, theirs.”

Selling off USPS, which isn’t taxpayer supported, would be costly for postal customers, critics of the proposal contend. Wells Fargo Advisors told Wall Street investors earlier this month privatization “would be positive for FedEx & UPS. In order to stand alone and earn a reasonable return we estimate USPS would need to raise price by 30-140%.” 

Wells Fargo’s guidance also discussed “harvesting,” or closing neighborhood post offices.

USPS “belongs to the people on Main Street, it shouldn’t be handed over to Wall Street,” Dimondstein said. “The U.S. mail is not for sale.”

In February, President Donald Trump said he was considering a federal takeover of USPS, an independent agency that is self-funded through the sale of stamps or charges for packages and services.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who lived in Greensboro when Trump appointed him in 2020, defended his decision to allow a DOGE examination “to assist us in identifying and achieving further efficiencies,” for the agency’s long-term financial health.

DeJoy, who outlined proposed Postal Service reforms in a 10-year Delivering for America plan, wrote lawmakers in a March 17 letter that “DOGE is the only other game in town that seems oriented toward helping us to achieve our efficiency and cost goals.”

“I can assure you they are not, as some have suggested, intended surreptitiously to make the organization more suited to privatization, nor do they constitute a ‘bailout’ of any kind,” DeJoy wrote.
DOGE, he added, will have restricted access to USPS information – “only the data and information required to pursue these initiatives will be provided to the DOGE team members.”

USPS ended the first quarter of fiscal 2025 with a net profit – a rarity for the agency, which has posted annual losses for more than a decade and anticipates a $6.9 billion net loss in 2025.
DeJoy, who has drawn criticism from lawmakers and USPS workers for overhauls that include the end of overtime and elimination of local processing stations, told lawmakers USPS is positioned for better financial results in the future.

“It is now my expectation, that absent a pandemic, another period of 20 percent inflation or legislative or regulatory interference, that we soon will achieve operating income, break-even status, or modest operating income status, just as we did last quarter, on a continuing basis,” he wrote. “We achieved this because of the transformative infrastructure changes we are making, the transportation and work hour savings we are achieving, the rapid growth of our package delivery business and corresponding enhancement to our revenues, and, yes, long overdue pricing adjustments.”

Bell said postal workers and their union insist that a for-profit business plan will disadvantage postal customers, especially those in rural areas who would likely be exposed to rate increases and fewer delivery days.

“We want to work together to bring another 250 years of strong public postal service that we deliver to every address in the country – that’s over 169 million addresses and 318 million pieces of mail every day, no matter who we are, where we live, there’s no demographics that are excluded,” she said. “There is no political partisanship. It is all done to an address. We don’t care what you look like, what your religious affiliations are we just deliver your mail. We process it and deliver it.”

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