SPRINGFIELD — President Donald Trump’s potential desire to move the United States Postal Service under the Commerce Department is causing vexation amongst postal workers across the nation, including here in Springfield.
Around 40 workers gathered outside the 1883 Main St. Post Office on March 20 to protest the possible privatization of one the longest-running services in the United States. The rally was one of over 200 across the nation that called for the preservation of the Post Office as an independent agency of the federal government.
“We’re here because we want to let [the federal government] know they’re not supposed to be tampering with the Post Office,” said Dennis Langrin, a protester and maintenance worker at the Main Street Post Office for three decades. “We’re not in favor of privatization.”
Members of the American Postal Workers Union Local 497, residing in Springfield, argue that a plan to sell the USPS to corporations for private would result in higher costs, reduced delivery days and the end of universal delivery to every house across the country.
In a fact sheet provided to Reminder Publishing, APWU says that the Postal Service has been part of the fundamental infrastructure of the U.S. for the last 250 years, and any tampering with that infrastructure would not only end reliable mail delivery but also destroy 600,000 union jobs across the country.
“They’re destroying one of America’s biggest icons,” said Charles Morin, the executive vice president of APWU Local 497. “It’s pretty sad what they’re trying to do … it’s un-American really.”
The USPS delivers 318 million pieces of mail each day to 169 million addresses, according to the union. If the agency were to be privatized under the Commerce Department, postal workers argue that delivery would only happen in areas that turn the biggest profits, like cities.
If that happens, certain populations, like those living in rural areas, would likely never see their mail delivered.
“It’s going to be very hard for the people who live in rural areas to have their medications, their social security checks and other forms of payment,” Langrin said, talking about the effect privatization would have on the consumer. “The further they are from big cities, the more difficult it is for these people to get service.”
Recently, Trump argued that moving the USPS under the umbrella of the Commerce Department would help with its operations. According to the USPS website, the agency experienced two straight years of controllable loss and predicted that they would lose $6.9 billion in 2025.
“We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money,” Trump said in February. “We’re thinking about doing that, and it’ll be a form of a merger, but it’ll remain the Postal Service, and I think it’ll operate a lot better than it has been over the years.”
Postal workers across the country are fighting back against this desire by the Trump administration. To Morin, the argument about privatizing the agency is not about driving down costs: it is actually about creating cheap labor and selling the astronomical amount of real estate the Post Office has across the country, for profit.
“They say it’s all in an effort to drive down costs, but it’s not,” Morin told Reminder Publishing. “I think it’s to drive up costs.”
Last week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said the USPS will soon cut 10,000 jobs as part of cost-cutting measures and will accomplish that by working with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
DeJoy, who was appointed to postmaster general in 2020 by Trump, announced in February that he was leaving his position halfway into his 10-year “Delivering for America” plan, which aimed to modernize the agency and make it more profitable.
Morin said DeJoy’s desire to spend exorbitant amounts of money on things like building brand new plants, leasing equipment, and modifying the way the USPS delivers mail, led to a deficit that has now ballooned to $9.5 billion, as of fiscal year 2024.
“They came in and misrepresented what they were doing,” Morin said of the 10-year plan. “Now that we’re $9.5 billion in a hole from him spending, he’s leaving.”
Prior to Trump’s second term in office, a major effort was made at the federal level to strengthen and stabilize the Post Office.
In 2022, then-President Joe Biden signed into law the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022, which enacted several changes to address the USPS’s financial challenges, improve mail delivery and support retirees.
The act, which was championed by U.S. Rep. Richard Neal (D-Springfield) and the Springfield union, welcomed future postal retirees into Medicare and repealed a burdensome requirement forcing the Postal Service to prefund retirees’ health care 75 years in advance, saving $27 billion over the next decade.
Neal, who stopped by the protest on March 20, emphasized the necessity of the Post Office as an essential public service and described how it has always been a “security blanket” for the average American.
“You have the confidence of the citizenry,” Neal said to the workers standing at the protest. “When [people] see you, they’re reminded of the security blanket you provide.”
