USPS workers sound alarm over Trump efforts to dismantle service: 'The hounds are at the door

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: The Guardian

Thu 24 Apr 2025 07.00 EDT
Last modified on Thu 24 Apr 2025 07.02 EDT


US postal workers – and many who depend on them – may have sighed in relief when the Trump-appointed postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, resigned last month. Now, postal workers and others fear the worst is to come. Many feared DeJoy, a prolific Trump donor and trucking logistics executive who pushed a 10-year consolidation plan at the agency, would be the man who would finally dismantle the United States Postal Service (USPS). Now the service is facing off with an empowered Trump and Elon Musk, his billionaire backer and chainsaw-wielding leader of his government job-cutting “department of government efficiency” (Doge).

At stake, supporters argue, is the very existence of a service woven into US society, which can be traced back to 1775. “These are real threats. The hounds are at the door,” said Don Maston, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, the union representing more than 130,000 mail carriers in rural America. Workers and labor unions at the USPS are sounding the alarm and calling for public awareness of the threats of dismantling and privatizing the agency by the Trump administration.

In March, the USPS reached an agreement with Doge to cut billions of dollars from its budget and finalize a voluntary retirement buyout program announced under the Biden administration to cut 10,000 employees. The Washington Post has reported industry executives are preparing for government efforts to outsource mail and package handling and long-haul trucking routes, and offload leases for unprofitable post offices.

“There are other organizations on the chopping block right now, and it is just an amount of time before they get to us. So we just need to get the message out and get ahead of them to say ‘hands off the post office’,” said Tameka Brown, a rural letter carrier in Louisiana and president of the Louisiana Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. “We are the lifeline for a lot of American people, so to feel that your job is being threatened, it’s heart-wrenching.”

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/apr/24/usps-workers-sound-alarm-over-trump-efforts-to-dismantle-service-the-hounds-are-at-the-door

[BoRaGard]

1. What hasn't the G.O.P. screwed over?

losers

[creon]

2. Yes

The USPS is in trouble.

[Bengus81]

3. And who would replace them at 73 cents per letter to Hawaii?

Who would buy their 230,000 vehicles? Who would deliver to every address--including MAGAville out in the sticks? It would be a fucking disaster to say the least.

The mid-terms need to hurry up...........

[PATRICK]

4. Not ready yet?

The "super centers" are not completed. tens of billions of dollars in postal revenue made to package for some idiot corporation. The ones completed do not work well at all. If they did work they still need a network infrastructure. Letters are delayed and doomed. The investor game will last only until the meltdown and the headaches and the abused work force cave in the illusions. History shows there is no going back, no lasting profit to be made. Even the other delivery corps need our infrastructure. The taxpayer, rate payer will be on the hook to support these special snowflakes in their illusory gains.

And it will not work for a long time of destruction and cost and loss of network for everyone, further hampering the economy and any recovery(because how will all those ads and business mail be delivered to everyone?).

Again, when a giant river of mail is suddenly funneled to a new center several inescapable and timeworn factors will tie it in knots, as has been amply demonstrated in all the early supercenters. The backlogs will fill all the parking spaces in the regions with stalled trucks. Rushed inefficiency will mess up and harm all delayed mail. The locals will scream at their congress critters in complete futility.

The "gifted" corporations might have the sense to capitalize early on the PR then do what all crooks since time began have done. This will be tremendously worse than other countries and probably be accompanied with union destruction. No ill paid workers can sustain the USPS operation. They will suffer then quit. Bosses will become more and more stressed, ignorant and overworked. Of course, ALL Americans- except Russian agents- will be harmed.

[hlthe2b]

5. Rural residents will be totally F..ked. FIrst the efforts to bring wifi to these communities halted and now

their closest rural post offices closed, and home delivery is uncertain or has been dismantled.

Not only will they not get their routine mail and pharmaceuticals, but our national emergency plans were developed calling on USPS to deliver any urgently needed medications--in anticipation of bioterrorism attacks. So, now those intensely developed and intricate plans are basically thrown by the wayside. Yet one more evidence of how susceptible we are to domestic or foreign terrorism. Sitting ducks is not merely a carnival game... sigh

[Wild blueberry]

6. Our rural post office is our lifeline

Keep and strengthen our United States Postal Service!
Thank you.

[not fooled]

7. The postal workers in my rural area

voted overwhelmingly for red don, aka their own destruction. This came from a Native American USPS letter carrier who gets it and told me that she can't mention she's a Democrat among her co-workers because they all voted for Trump. She told me this a couple months ago. The chickens are coming home to roost now.

Oh, and before the election every time I saw one of them during deliveries or if I went to the post office, I would succinctly inform them them that if Trump got back into office he would privatize the postal service, destroy their union, and wreck their retirements. They looked startled, as though I was speaking Greek. I'm sure they thought I was crazy.

What a bunch of dumbf*cks.

[SupportSanity]

8. Charge more - do less.

Getting rid of more sorting machines?

Soon it will be cheaper to hire a courier to deliver a letter.

[live love laugh]

9. Despite the fact that not one tax dollar goes to the post office.

If government efficiency is the goal then why are they trying to destroy it?