About 100 Berks County postal workers and concerned citizens gathered outside the Wyomissing post office on Sunday to rally against a potential takeover of the U.S. Postal Service.
President Donald Trump announced in February that he may put the agency under the control of the Commerce Department and dissolve the current leadership of the 250-year-old mail provider.
The Postal Service has operated as an independent entity since 1970 and is overseen by a board of governors nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
The protest Sunday was organized by members of the local branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers union. They say they fear the potential move by the Trump administration could be the first step toward privatization.
Richard McDonough, vice president of the local union branch and a letter carrier in Reading for more than 30 years, said privatizing the agency would dramatically impact the way Americans receive deliveries.
“We oppose any plans to eliminate the USPS leadership, abolish regulatory oversight and carve up postal operations, thereby threatening the universal mandate to deliver everywhere and for the same price,” he said.
Current law requires the agency to deliver to all addresses, even rural ones that may be too costly for a private business to serve profitably. McDonough noted that many online purchases handled by private companies such as FedEx and UPS depend upon the Postal Service to deliver to homes in remote communities.
McDonough said privatization would jeopardize nearly 8 million jobs that depend on the postal network, rural and urban delivery services and affordable shipping costs.
Trump has said that absorbing the independent mail agency into his administration would stop losses at the agency, which has struggled to balance its books with the decline of traditional mail.
The bulk of the Postal Service’s annual $78.5 billion budget comes from customer fees, according to the Congressional Research Service. Congress provides an annual appropriation — about $50 million in 2023 — to subsidize mail services.
Amid challenges that include the decline in profitable first class mail and the cost of retiree benefits, the agency accumulated $87 billion in losses from 2007 to 2020, according to the Associated Press.
But McDonough pointed out that the mission of the Postal Service is to provide a mandated service, not to make a profit. He said that every single day more than 200,000 letter carriers are making sure 376 million pieces of mail get delivered to nearly 169 million destinations.
“We are not concerned about making money, we are concerned about providing a good service to the American people,” he said. “That means that if we are under threat then people are in jeopardy of not getting their essential packages, medications and mail.
“And this is the biggest threat we have ever faced.”
Source: Berkshire mont
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