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Monday, April 20th, 2020

Postal Workers Union Leader Warns the USPS Could Be Dead in Three Months

Author:     Hamilton Nolan
Source:     truthout
Publication Date:     18 April 2020
 Link: Postal Workers Union Leader Warns the USPS Could Be Dead in Three Months
Stephan:   The Founders were very clear about the need for a government established, operated, and funded Post Office. In the Constitution, they created a Navy, but not a standing Army, and a Postal system:  Section 8:Clause 7: "To establish Post Offices and post Roads..." The Republicans hate the post office as it is currently structured, and they hate the unions that the postal workers belong to. They have been trying for years to privatize the USPS, so it can be turned from a public service into a corporate profit machine. It is a disastrous idea, but under Trump they are very close to pulling it off, using the coronavirus pandemic as cover.

Postal trucks are parked at a United States Postal Service (USPS) post office location in Washington, D.C., on April 16, 2020.
Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty

Among the most prominent victims of the coronavirus financial crisis is the United States Postal Service, which could quite literally run out of money to operate if the federal government does not approve a rescue package for it soon. The Trump administration—which, like much of the GOP, has long advocated for cutbacks and privatization of the postal service—actively prevented the USPS from being bailed out in the CARES Act, even as Donald Trump has made a show of publicly thanking Fedex and UPS for their work. Not very subtle.

Fifty years ago last month, U.S. postal workers staged an unprecedented and historic eight-day strike, backing down the Nixon administration and winning the right to collective bargaining. A half century later, Mark Dimondstein, the leader of the 200,000-strong American Postal Workers Union, says that the Trump administration is using today’s crisis as an opportunity to destroy the postal service as a public entity […]

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2 Comments

  1. Rev. Dean on Monday, April 20, 2020 at 4:52 am

    The postal service is a long standing part of our government and should be kept that way. No way should it be privatized. All great nations in the world have a government postal service and our has been around since the beginning of the USA. We cannot let Trump privatize it !

  2. David Bean on Monday, April 20, 2020 at 11:00 pm

    You state, Stephan Schwartz, what is uppermost in my mind, namely that the post office is in the flippin Constitution, and we need to lobby for that? ? I do not see that in articles on this subject. What is a constitution among a people without honor, I ask. 22 million veterans and all senators an representatives swore to defend the thing.

    I am driven to distraction by the disjuct. What are our fellow production units… or Citizens…. thinking?