The United States Postal Service (USPS) is a wonderful national treasure, enshrined in the Constitution, created by Congress, and supported by the American people. Without taxpayer funding, the USPS serves 167 million households and businesses each day, providing affordable, universal mail service to all – no matter who we are or where we live.
For 250 years - since before the founding of the country - our public Postal Service has belonged to “We, the People” and has carried out its mission of “binding the nation together.” But for decades, Wall Street/corporate monied interests, aiming to raid the $82 billion of postal annual revenues, have threatened the USPS and postal jobs. Now, the public Postal Service is under extreme assault by the current administration’s illegal hostile takeover of the independent agency. These actions are a huge step toward dismantling and selling off the USPS, in whole or in part, to private corporations, for private profit.
Universal and reliable postal services are essential to commerce, supporting thousands of businesses and millions of jobs across the economy. The 2020 COVID pandemic highlighted the public Postal Service’s vital role, delivering life-saving medications and other essentials including medical information, test kits and tens of millions of mail ballots. In the ongoing e-commerce boom, the public Postal Service is the low-cost anchor of the entire $1.2 trillion package industry and millions of packages are sent and received through the USPS. In addition, the Post Office is a source of good living-wage union jobs. It provides equal opportunities and the foundation for financial stability for workers from all walks of life and geography, including racial and ethnic minorities, women, and veterans.
Those political forces doing the bidding of the billionaires allege that curtailing postal services and eliminating jobs are necessary due to diminishing mail volume and “burdensome” union wages and benefits. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the height of the transition from a letter-dominated postal service to one far-more dominated by packages a Congressionally manufactured “crisis” starved the Postal Service of billions of dollars each year and thus the critical investment it needed to best meet the future.
Bi-partisan Congressional action in 2022 removed the burden, but the damage done by decades of under-investment during an unprecedented economic transition is still to be repaired. Turning the public ownership of the USPS to billionaires like Elon Musk will not improve staffing and service, nor add new and additional services such as postal banking. In those countries that have privatized postal services, service declined, post offices shuttered, jobs disappeared, and mailing costs are much higher than in the United States.
The public good must not be sacrificed for the sake of private investment and profit.
A strong public Postal Service is our democratic and constitutional right. Join us in the fight to improve, protect, and enhance vibrant public postal services now – and for many generations to come.
