It’s been a big week for the United States Postal Service (USPS).
The venerated institution marked its 250th anniversary—providing two and a half centuries of continuous service—with the release of two new stamps (one of which features Benjamin Franklin, the first postmaster general) that “capture the essence of USPS.”
And David Steiner, a former board member of USPS competitor FedEx, began his first full week on the job as the country’s new, 76th postmaster general, succeeding Greensboroian Louis DeJoy.
But all is not well for USPS, which, though popular—it has a 72 percent approval rating according to the Pew Research Center—has been losing money, a total of about $100 billion, every year since 2007 with service roughly halved since that time, mainly at the expense of rural communities.
It’s no secret that the Trump administration would like to privatize USPS, or at least some of its operations. And so, in another big move for the postal service this week, the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) launched a television ad campaign in markets in eight states, including Raleigh, to “alert the public about proposed plans to privatize the public postal service,” according to an APWU press release. The ad will also air nationally on CNN, MSNBC and FOX.
“Wall Street stands to make huge profits if all or parts of the USPS are sold off, but those who live on Main Street would have less service and higher costs,” says APWU President Mark Dimondstein. “Those who live in rural areas would be especially hard hit. It also would be devastating to many small businesses, the trillion-dollar ecommerce industry and threaten the ability to vote by mail.”
The ad, titled “Memo”, expounds on a document that Wells Fargo Equity Research in February sent to investors outlining how privatizing the USPS would raise prices “30 to 140 percent across its product lines” and force many local Post Offices to close in order to sell off the real estate so that their “value can be harvested.” Prices to send letters and packages would skyrocket, and the USPS’s “Universal Service Obligation”—which ensures 169 million addresses receive mail six or seven times a week—would come to an end.
While President Trump, who has called the U.S. Postal Service “a joke,” suggested privatizing it in his first term, he’s since additionally floated transferring it to the U.S. Department of Commerce.
In March, Elon Musk, operating in his capacity as head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), reiterated that privatization was the preferred course of action, and DeJoy allowed DOGE to step in to find ways for it to save money (DeJoy resigned later that month).
USPS employs 640,000 people across the country, about half of whom are letter carriers.
“In snow, rain, heat and gloom of night, carriers reach the American public where they live and work, sometimes seven days a week,” the USPS states in its 250th anniversary release. “They are friends, neighbors and in some cases, heroes. Making their appointed rounds regularly, Postal Service employees are members of our communities—a human presence with a unique, observant familiarity with the neighborhoods they serve.”
Dimondstein, the APWU president, calls USPS “a national treasure.”
“It belongs to the people,” he said. “The people need to understand what’s at stake and send the message; ‘The U.S. Mail is not for sale.’”
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