Dismantled mail processing machines another step to USPS privatization

I work for the US Postal Service. Fund our public service, don't privatize it.

I work in a large mail processing building in Denver. It has 120 truck bays and is a labyrinth of various machines that sort the mail. The facility is always at work, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, processing millions of pieces of mail a day.

In addition to paper mail, containers of honeybees, baby chicks, tadpoles, and ladybugs pass through our building on their way to farmers, gardeners, and students. My sister ran a honey business in rural Colorado. The postal truck driver told her that he always let the bees sit up in the cab of the truck with him.

It’s physical work with a lot of lifting, pushing and standing. My coworkers are from many backgrounds and many parts of the world — people working hard for their families.

I’m always thinking of the people who receive the mail.

Birthday cards, Mother’s Day cards, and gifts to family are ways that people show their love. It is our job to transport people’s important materials, as well. This includes some Social Security checks, wedding invitations, rent payments, utility and mortgage bills and payments, census forms, medications, medical samples going to a lab, letters to families from young men in correctional facilities, tax documents.

Small businesses and large businesses, churches and farmers, schools and homeowners’ associations depend on the USPS.

The internet does a lot but it doesn’t replace the post office.

Keep the Postal Service for the public

The goal of the current administration seems to be to destroy public confidence in our Postal Service in order to privatize it. In 2018, the White House released its plans for postal privatization in a report titled “Delivering Government Solutions in the 21st Century.” But privatization will mean slower, more expensive service while someone makes a profit.

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There is a sadness and frustration among the long-time workers as we watch changes being implemented that will not work. The people who actually know the work are not consulted.

After Postmaster General Louis DeJoy took office in June, three or four of the sorting machines in my facility were removed. We were told the machines were outdated, but they were still used every day. Denver couldn’t handle the Christmas mail last year and we had to ship mail to other facilities to be sorted, so what will happen this year, with fewer machines?

Nominees for the U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors seem to almost always come from the business community, without representatives of the general public such as AARP, consumer groups and nonprofits, or family farms.

The USPS has a universal service obligation to deliver to every address in the country. The USPS is not a purely private business; it is a public service, like a library or fire department. If you try to run it otherwise, then the real needs of the general public get forgotten.

How long have you had to wait for service at your retail post office station? If customer experience were prioritized, long wait times would not happen. If Postmaster General DeJoy cared about postal customers, he would not have proposed closing post offices over the lunch hour.

A 2006 law required the USPS to fund the health care costs post-retirement for every employee for the next 75 years, by sending annual payments of at least $5.4 billion to a fund administered by the government. I suspect the law was actually intended to gradually make the USPS insolvent. Loss of revenue and increased costs during the COVID pandemic have caused the Postal Service's Board of Governors to request stimulus funding from Congress.

Postal Service worker: Dismantled mail processing machines is only our latest burden

Another part of the solution to the USPS’s financial problems is requiring advertisers pay their fair share. Advertising mail enjoys discounted and promotional rates and yet it is delivered nearly as quickly as first-class mail and takes just as much gas to transport.

Also, the Postal Savings System, which operated from 1911 to 1967 in designated post offices, could return, providing banking services in neighborhoods where there is limited access to banking, and provide new revenue.

Our country needs a mailing system with stability, not uncertainty and worry. People deserve a reliable, efficient, affordable, safe and secure Postal Service. We are at a crossroads. Like so many things in our society, it’s up to us — you and me — to make good things happen. We can demand that our lawmakers preserve and strengthen our Postal Service. If we insist on sound management and rational congressional stewardship, our Postal Service can have a bright future.

The way you can help the most right away is to contact your senators to insist they support stimulus funds for the Postal Service, with no conditions that would degrade service or harm workers. Then you can join the longer-term community effort to protect our Postal Service.

Steve Brown is a mail handler at the U.S. Postal Service Processing and Distribution Center in Denver.