Take up the fight to save the post office! Join the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee by filling out the form below.
The US Postal Service (USPS) Board of Governors is preparing to name David Steiner, a current member of FedEx’s Board of Directors, as the next Postmaster General (PMG), according to a report in the Washington Post. The selection is reportedly being made at the behest of Donald Trump.
The move signals a massive escalation of attacks on the post office, especially its privatization, which both Trump and Elon Musk, head of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” (DOGE) support. But privatization would be the culmination of decades of bipartisan attacks, beginning with its demotion from a cabinet level department to an independent, self-funding agency under President Richard Nixon.
The situation urgently requires organized resistance by postal workers and their allies in the working class. As the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee explained in a statement in March: “This requires new organizations, rank-and-file committees, to mobilize ourselves independently of Trump’s collaborators in the Democrats and the union tops. We must safeguard our own initiative and begin organizing now rather than waiting for ‘permission’ from the top which will never come.”
Conflicts of interest
Steiner’s predecessor, Louis DeJoy, was appointed in 2020 under the previous Trump administration. Under his direction, USPS has carried out a massive restructuring effort, the misnamed “Delivering for America” program, which has closed down countless routes and local post offices and consolidated distribution centers, leading to massive delays in the delivery of the mail. Its real aim was not to improve services, but to slash costs to prepare USPS to be sold off to private owners.
At the time of his appointment, it was widely pointed out that DeJoy possessed a flagrant conflict of interest because he owned a company with contracts for USPS. The appointment of Steiner brings the phrase to a new level. It would enable him to steer contracts and assets towards FedEx, which recently lost its air cargo contract with USPS to UPS last year.
One likely form which the privatization of USPS might take would be to hive off its more lucrative package delivery business; Steiner’s presence would give FedEx the inside track to acquiring this and other assets for a song.
According to the Post, the Board of Governors “sought postmaster candidates who had led a major private-sector company and had experience in the logistics industry,” a clear sign that privatization will be the new PMG’s top priority.
Ominously, one of two other candidates the board looked at was William Zollars, former chief executive of Yellow Freight (YRC). Yellow declared bankruptcy in 2023, wiping out 20,000 jobs overnight. While Zollars was the first candidate eliminated, that he was considered suggests that his experience in destroying jobs was seen as a plus.
USPS part of Trump’s bid for dictatorship
In spite of being a Trump loyalist, DeJoy resigned earlier this year, reportedly for not being sufficiently in line with the White House. Trump has attacked the nominal independence of USPS by threatening to illegally fire the entire board of governors, which is appointed by the president for seven-year terms. Trump has threatened to transfer the post office to the Commerce Department. This is part of his broader plans to establish a presidential dictatorship.
While the firings were never carried out, the manner in which Steiner is about to be appointed testifies to growing personal control over USPS by Trump. He has directed the process, including by personally interviewing candidates, the Post reported. Trump also is set to fill four vacancies on the nine-member board, giving him the chance to stack USPS’ top leadership with personal cronies.
A separate Washington Post article reported that Trump is already enlisting the USPS’ internal police force, the US Postal Inspection Service, to help locate and deport immigrants by tracking their whereabouts through the mail. This is only the beginning: these measures will be deployed against political opponents of the Trump regime, if they are not already.
A third Washington Post article Wednesday reports that DOGE is aiming to create a centralized database pooling together “Social Security, taxes, medical diagnoses and other private information.” This would give the White House unprecedented abilities to surveil and harass opponents, and even deport or abduct them, as occurred with Gaza protester and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil.
Broader jobs bloodbath
The assault on USPS, which has already claimed tens of thousands of positions under Delivering for America, is part of a broader offensive against the working class. According to a tracker by the New York Times, Trump and Musk have already slashed over 134,000 federal jobs, with at least 149,000 more on the chopping block. These cuts will expand over the course of the next few weeks as departments begin to implement White House-mandated “reductions in force.”
Job losses are beginning to extend into the private sector, especially as a result of Trump’s trade war policies. Last week, UPS announced it would slash 20,000 more jobs by the middle of the year, citing tariffs as a major cause for concern. Similar to the post office, UPS is already deep in a restructuring program aimed at automating tens of thousands of warehouse jobs.
Postal services in other countries are also under concerted attack, with Royal Mail in Britain being taken over by oligarch Daniel Kretinsky. In Canada, government officials are mulling whether to end Canada Post’s monopoly on mail delivery, setting the stage for mass layoffs. Postal workers across the world are organizing a fight back through the construction of rank-and-file committees against corporate-controlled governments and the sellout union bureaucrats.
As a consequence of tariff measures against China, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles have reported a staggering 44 percent drop in volume. This is only the beginning, as the breakup of world supply chains triggers mass layoffs across the US and the world.
Union bureaucrats back Trump
The universal character of these attacks require a globally unified response by the working class against austerity and dictatorship. This can only be accomplished, however, by a struggle against the nationalist, pro-corporate bureaucrats who are deliberately sabotaging all resistance and even lining up behind Trump and his counterparts in every country. In the US, unions such as the Teamsters, the United Auto Workers and both dockworker unions have signaled support for tariffs, which will not only destroy jobs but pave the way for war.
In a statement published Tuesday, National Association of Letter Carriers president Brian Renfroe denounced the imminent appointment of Steiner, calling it “an aggressive step toward handing America’s mail system over to corporate interests” that “threatens 7.9 million jobs tied to the postal industry and service to over 300 million Americans.”
This is hot air. The last time Renfroe made such statements, in response to statements by Musk calling for USPS to be privatized, he and NALC were helping rush through arbitration to impose a sellout contract which city letter carriers had already rejected. The arbitration result was announced only days after a series of weekend rallies called by NALC.
The contract set the pattern which is now being followed by the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association (NRLCA), which has already collaborated with USPS in massive wage theft against its own members through a new compensation system.
This follows the open support of NALC and NRLCA, and toothless opposition by the American Postal Workers Union, for Delivering for America. These contracts will not only lead to real wage cuts and job losses. If the bureaucracy gets away with this, these will be the last contracts with USPS as a public entity.
The nomination of David Steiner is a declaration of war on postal workers and on the public’s right to a reliable, affordable mail service.
To fight this, postal workers cannot rely on the union bureaucracies or Congress. A rebellion from below is essential. The USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee (RFC), formed independently of the union apparatus, has called for workers to “act now to fight back. The first step is for us to adopt the principle that this [current] process has no legitimacy.”
It continued:
Extraordinary times require extraordinary measures. The only way to save the post office—and American democracy—is through the mass mobilization of the working class. The working class is the most powerful force on earth. If only we know how to use that power we can defeat the attacks by Trump and his handful of oligarchs and right-wingers.
Credit: Source link
