On June 15, Louis DeJoy of Greensboro, N.C., began his new job as Postmaster General of the United States.
We are postal worker union activists who also hail from Greensboro (and are now American Postal Workers Union president and solidarity representative, respectively). For decades we have defended the interests of the public Postal Service and postal workers, and we bring a much different perspective than that of multi-millionaire businessman DeJoy. We are concerned that DeJoy, a mega-donor to Republican Party causes and to President Trump, has been tapped to carry out the administration’s agenda.
Trump has shown implacable hostility to the public Post Office. He has called it “a joke” and railed against its low package prices. In late March, Trump and his Treasury Secretary (Steven Mnuchin of Goldman Sachs) blocked the bipartisan Congressional effort to provide funds to the Post Office in the initial 2.2 trillion COVID-19 relief legislative package, despite the Postal Service being so impacted by the COVID economic crisis that it could run out of money either later this year or early next year.
Trump’s nefarious plans for the public Postal Service are reflected in a June 2018 White House Office of Management and Budget recommendation to “restructure the United States Postal System to return it to a sustainable business model or prepare it for future conversion from a Government agency into a privately held corporation.” While the proposal gives lip service to the first option, all the initiatives are concentrated on the privatization path. Indeed, the OMB never mentions anything positive about the current, public U.S. Post Office.
Using the OMB recommendations as a guideline, in December 2018 the President’s Task Force on the United States Postal System called for piecemeal privatization, drastically increasing prices, closing retail outlets, curtailing service and doing away with the collective bargaining rights of the 570,000 unionized postal workers.
Much of mainstream media presents Trump’s hostility to the Postal Service as a feud with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who also owns the Washington Post. This is misleading. The Trump administration has a clear agenda—a dagger aimed at the heart of the USPS. The USPS is the largest and most efficient postal service in the world. It is the low-cost anchor of a massive $1.6 trillion mailing and package industry, relied upon by small businesses everywhere, and is critical to ecommerce. It also holds a special place in rural communities and is cherished by the U.S. people who are its owners. With 91% favorability ratings among Republicans and Democrats (Pew Research), why would a President who wants to get re-elected so clearly oppose the needs and desires of the voters? What drives his agenda?
The answer lies in capitalist power—the marriage between politics and economics—as an op-ed in the May 5 Wall Street Journal, “Phase Out, Don’t Bail Out, the Post Office,” makes brazenly clear. Gary MacDougal, investor, entrepreneur and corporate executive, writes he is afraid that, in an upcoming COVID-19 relief package, Congress might “bail out” the Post Office along the lines promoted by the current USPS Board of Governors. As he feared, the House of Representatives passed $25 billion in COVID-related relief for the Postal Service as part of the “HEROES Act.” The Senate is now taking up the issue of new stimulus legislation, including the question of whether it will include postal relief.
MacDougal served for 34 years on the board of United Parcel Service of America (UPS), a company with over $75 billion in sales and more than 495,000 employees. He has served as chair of the Finance Committee and chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee. UPS is a main competitor of the public Postal Service. Indeed, the Postal Service’s public mission, and uniform, reasonable rates, is a major hindrance to UPS’s corporate profit maximization.
No wonder MacDougal lies in his op-ed, feigning concern about saving taxpayer dollars. The fact is, that since the early 1970’s, the public Post Office has not run on tax dollars. It has operated as a self-sufficient entity that is financed by the purchase of postage stamps and other postal services provided at uniform prices across the United States.
In his op-ed, MacDougal pushes for the complete liquidation of the public Postal Service. He writes, “The bottom line: 13 straight years of losses, almost $9 billion in fiscal 2019.” But those years of losses have all come since 2006, when Congress passed a law that required the USPS to fund future retiree health benefits an incredible 75 years into the future, an onerous financial burden not imposed on any other government agency or private corporation.
Mr. United Parcel Service eventually lets the cat out of the bag: “The combination of UPS, FedEx, DHL, Amazon and countless local delivery companies would pick up the slack left by the wind-down of the post office. Smaller delivery companies may…handle last-mile delivery in remote areas. If that isn’t enough, Amazon and others could charge more for deliveries to extremely remote locations.” (Our emphasis.)
This was not MacDougal’s and the Wall Street Journal’s first effort to impose their privatization stamp on the public Postal Service. In an October 2011 op-ed “Junking the Junk Mail Office,” MacDougal had already exposed his true motivation, “Entrepreneurs will see the demise of the USPS as an opportunity, and new companies will emerge. Indeed, this transition can be one of the badly needed bright spots in a troubled American economy.” (Our emphasis.) It is no surprise that his current editorial appears in the midst of an even deeper economic crisis than in 2011.Taking seriously his executive loyalty to United Parcel Service, in his recent 2020 Op-Ed MacDougal concludes: “The responsible course is to set the Postal Service on a careful path to liquidation.”
The Way Forward
The COVID Pandemic has created a fork in the road for the future of the public Post Office: Either the people will defend and strengthen their public Postal Service, or Trump and finance capital will use the crisis to cause its demise.
Like MacDougal, the autocratic Trump regime is all about “following the money.” In 2019, the public Postal Service generated over $70 billion of revenue used to serve the people on a break-even basis. Postal privatization, better termed “profitization,” will turn over this vast treasure to Wall Street investors and a few private corporations. In turn, companies could raise prices, eliminate a democratic right of the people to universal postal services no matter who we are or where we live, and destroy living-wage union jobs in the midst of the COVID-induced economic crisis.
The same pandemic that is revealing Trump’s shameless effort to divide and conquer the people, is underscoring once again the “essential” public good carried out by the women and men of the public Post Office in binding our people together, in uniting us, especially in these most difficult times. It is noteworthy that, along with the previously cited 91% favorability rating, a recent YouGov poll conducted on behalf of the American Postal Workers Union, indicated that over two-thirds of the population favor Congressionally appropriated postal relief to restore lost COVID related revenue.
The Postal Service is owned by all the people of the United States, not capitalist entrepreneurs. The collective “we” rely on the Postal Service for vital supplies, medicines, ecommerce packages, pension checks, financial transactions, voter information, ballots and a vast exchange of personal correspondence as well as the sharing of ideas and information. Privatization of public postal services would end the democratic right of the people to these universal services, no matter who we are or where we live, at uniform and reasonable rates.
Hence, our starting point is to rally the people to defend what belongs to them. This is already taking on a variety of forms. Petitions to save the public postal service have garnered two million signatures. Tens of thousands of emails, letters and calls have gone to Congressional representatives advocating postal financial relief in the next stimulus package. In times of social distancing, car caravans in various locales have sent the same message. Both the American Postal Workers Union and the National Association of Letter Carriers have produced positive social media and TV ads. And actor-activist Danny Glover, the public face of “A Grand Alliance to Save Our Public Postal Service,” has produced a public service radio announcement now airing.
Crises, even tragic ones, bring opportunity. We have the opportunity to not only defend but strengthen the public Postal Service and the common good. We have the opportunity to ensure that people have access to the ballot box through vote-by-mail and a vibrant Postal Service. We have the opportunity to expand the financial services offered at the Post Office and counter the predatory pay-day lending and cash checking industry that preys on the working poor.
Moreover, the public Post Office has historically been connected to decent union jobs for Black Americans and other communities of color as well as military veterans. We have the opportunity at a time of massive unemployment to defend over half a million postal union jobs that build rather than tear down working class communities This is an important front in the fight for the practical realization that Black Lives will matter in the United States today and tomorrow.
Even if the new Postmaster General were to become a people’s champion of the Postal Service (and DeJoy’s initial steps have been to undermine the postal service) the trajectory of U.S. monopoly capitalism makes it necessary for the postal union movement, the general labor movement and social justice movements together to take to their phones and to the streets as the Movement for Black Lives is now doing. Progressive and necessary change is only won with the power of the people.
Finally, in the course of mobilizing the successful defense of the public Postal Service, we advance the opportunity to win health care for all as a human right, and other fundamental social benefits that will move us in the direction of a society where we are truly our sisters’ and brothers’ keepers.
This blog originally appeared at In These Times on July 17, 2020. Reprinted with permission.
About the Author: Mark Dimondstein is National President of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU), AFL-CIO, and a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council and the former president of the APWU Greensboro Area Local.
About the Author: Richard Koritz is former Greensboro Branch President of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), AFL-CIO, a Solidarity Representative of the APWU and sits on the board of the International Civil Rights Center and Museum (the Woolworth Sit-In museum) in Greensboro, N.C.
