New York City Council member Erik Bottcher speaks to the crowd outside the James A. Farley Building in Manhattan during the American Postal Workers Union protest on March 20. Nguyen/Mother Jones
On Thursday, United States Postal Service workers, retirees, and supporters gathered in dozens of cities nationwide to protest the Trump administration’s efforts to privatize the USPS as part of the American Postal Workers Union’s Day of Action.
The March 20 demonstration in New York City was a cold, rainy day, but hundreds of demonstrators showed up in front of Manhattan’s James A. Farley Building, holding signs reading, “The Post Office Belongs to The People Not the Billionaires” and “Hands Off Our Mail.” The crowd also chanted in call-and-response, “Whose Post Office? The People’s Post Office” and “U.S. Mail. Not for Sale!” To the side, volunteers were handing out flyers to people passing by on the street.
The APWU, which represents over 200,000 USPS employees and retirees, announced these protests earlier this month. The union warned at the time that if privatization happened, the move would lead to “higher prices, reduced service, and the destruction of tens of thousands of union jobs.”
US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy told congressional leaders in a March 13 letter that he signed an agreement to work with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency in a cost-cutting initiative that includes plans to lay off 10,000 workers within 30 days through a “Voluntary Early Retirement program.”
The agreement drew criticism from many unions and lawmakers. Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), a ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said that DeJoy’s plan would allow DOGE to “profit off Americans’ loss,” especially those who “rely on the Postal Service every day to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more.”
A few hours after a March 14 meeting with the APWU National Executive Board aboutDeJoy’s decision, APWU President Mark Dimondstein told me that the DeJoy-DOGE partnership didn’t surprise him since lawmakers and corporations have spent decades trying to gut the agency. “We don’t think they’re about efficiency at all,” he said, referring to DOGE. “We think they’re about how to rip off the public sector for the benefit of private profit.”
Dimondstein was also concerned about privacy for workers and people, pointing to DOGE’s threat to government-held data: “If need be, we’re ready to roll into all sorts of action, whether it’s enforcing our rights under our union contract or going into court to defend the privacy of postal workers.”
Earlier this year, Dimondstein told me that the US needs to reframe its approach: Instead of attempting to privatize the Post Office, what if it was expanded?
There’s new opportunity for financial services—tens of millions of low-income people are either unbanked or underbanked. In many parts of the world, people do basic banking and financial services through a public postal service.
In New York City, there were several speakers, including union leaders, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), and retirees. “I got 37 years in the Post Office, but this fight is not about me,” Jonathan Smith, the president of the New York Metro Area Postal Workers Union told the crowd. “It’s about my children and my children’s children having the opportunity that was given to me. There’s no greater feeling than a living wage job where you can buy your own house or car. That’s what the Post Office represents.”
Bill Bachmann, a retired USPS maintenance worker, pointed to the calls for better pay, benefits, and working conditions—there were signs that read, “Protect Good Living Wage Jobs” and “Hands Off Our Medicare”—as indicative of the moment many workers are living in. “It’s a war on working-class and poor people to transfer wealth to very wealthy people,” Bachmann told me at the demonstration. “It’s legal looting, and as I say, it’s all tied together.” Because of this, for Bachmann, “collective action” is needed that goes beyond simply writing to one’s congressperson.
Although other unions representing postal workers are also hosting protests across the nation, employees and retirees were not the only people at the rally—I talked with Cindi, a New York resident not affiliated with USPS who showed up in solidarity. “The Postal Service is American. It’s a public good. It’s not here to make a profit and we all depend on it,” she said. “There’s nothing like getting a letter in the mail—a real letter from somebody that you love.”
