Letter carriers from the Bloomington-Normal area and their supporters rallied at the Bloomington Post Office on Sunday in protest of the Trump administration’s ideas for the future of the U.S. Postal Service [USPS].
About 30 people donned red shirts and signs as they demonstrated along Empire Street.
Trump’s latest idea is merging USPS with the Commerce Department, a move criticized for its threat to the independence and leadership of USPS. Other plans he’s floated in the past — including privatization — are reportedly still on the table.
That doesn't sit well with Michael Caref of the National Association of Letter Carriers [NALC]. Caref said private companies would provide either more expensive service or none at all to many Americans.
“I’m from Chicago. There are neighborhoods in Chicago where Amazon will not deliver because it’s too dangerous,” Caref said. “But we’ve [USPS] got a universal service mandate. So Amazon drops that stuff on the postal docks and we deliver it, because we deliver to everyone, every day, everywhere.”
Caref said the same would be true for rural areas where each delivery takes more time and resources.
Ryan West is a postal carrier and union steward in Bloomington. He said USPS provides crucial services to all Americans without price hikes, like delivering medication. Trump has a history of hostility to one service in particular: mail-in voting.
“I don’t personally think it’s a bad thing to have mail-in voting,” West said. “If you think about it, a lot of veterans wouldn’t be able to vote then [without mail-in voting], especially when they’re serving our country.”
West added that USPS and its universal delivery mandate already make many services Americans use possible, like fast deliveries from Amazon.
According to West, there also are ways the postal service could be supporting communities even more, like a return of offering banking services.
West argues under many of Trump’s proposals, the average American would experience lower delivery standards and higher prices, especially in rural areas — damage that could become irreversible.
“If it is starting to get broken up, I don’t think it’s a good idea, because then I don’t think it could ever be put back together,” West said.
There are signals USPS could face financial trouble in the near future, as it’s hit its borrowing limit with the Treasury Department. It remains to be seen what, if any, concrete plans the administration will advance.
