Workers showed up en masse to protest Trump’s proposed privatization plans for the USPS, which employs over 600,000 people and serves over 300 million. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who was appointed during Trump’s first term and who Biden failed to remove, has already been working to cut around 10,000 jobs through “voluntary early retirement” working with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in a scheme similar to Trump’s attempted buyout of federal workers earlier this year. 

Trump wants to transfer the USPS to the Commerce Department, with plans to gut the service with the goal of privatizing it — which is part of his goal of shrinking the federal government. Wells Fargo published an “investment analysis” following the news salivating over the proposed plan, which would involve mass layoffs, the doubling of postal prices, the sale of half of all post offices, and the elimination of the current mandate for USPS to provide universal service at universal rates. The last point is particularly crucial, as the USPS “universal service obligation” (USO) mandates that they provide affordable and accessible service regardless of income, geographic location, or other factors. Most recently, Trump signed an executive order ending collective bargaining rights for over 700,000 workers, while his foot soldiers in Congress have proposed bills to dismantle dues deductions and paid time for stewards.

This represents another round of clear-cut attacks on the labor movement, which has experienced a tempered resurgence in recent years. The cuts are part of Trump’s plan to weaken unions so that he may carry out his far-right, anti-worker agenda uninterrupted. In Boston, USPS workers rallied around 200 people to oppose this move, turning out both young and old union members while an equally diverse set of speakers engaged the crowd. While the leadership of the main union representing USPS workers, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), promoted generalized slogans like “Fight Like Hell” and “No to Privatization,” several rank-and-file workers emphasized that workers restricted by anti-democratic collective bargaining rules could only engage in “collective begging” in the face of austerity and increasingly difficult working conditions. As one member of the Building a Fighting NALC (BFN) caucus put it: begging arbitrators, management, and government officials is not enough – we need to put power back into the hands of the workers.

700 Days Without a Contract

This statement is especially true in the context of the latest USPS contract fight, which went on for over 700 days before being resolved through binding arbitration on March 24th. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the brutal working conditions faced by letter carriers, many of them working 80+ hour weeks through mandatory overtime while publicly celebrated as “essential workers.” In the aftermath of the pandemic, workers still face extremely poor conditions: a two-tier pay scale, extreme under-staffing, cutting of benefits, and relentless harassment from management. Most letter carriers entering the workforce today don’t start off in career-track positions with union benefits, and it can take a full 13 years to reach the top level of pay. In addition, over 20 percent of USPS workers are classified as City Carrier Assistants (CCAs) or under other job titles, which designate lower-level employment compared to longtime letter carriers. 

Despite constant sacrifices made by letter carriers under these conditions, and promises made by NALC President Brian Renfroe of a 9 percent wage increase and 90 percent union coverage of USPS employees, the union leadership dragged their feet in negotiations behind closed doors for almost two years before securing a tentative agreement. The result was pitiful: a mere 1.3 percent pay raise, marginal increases in “uniform allowances,” a “diet” version of a cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) which doesn’t match decreasing purchasing power, and concessions to the two-tier system and mandatory overtime. In response, BFN launched a “vote no” campaign and won with 71 percent of union members voting against the tentative agreement. This represents a meaningful shift in the willingness of the rank-and-file to accept concessionary contracts negotiated without their say.

Unfortunately, the rejection of a tentative agreement between NALC and USPS meant that workers became subjected to “binding arbitration,” a process in which an agreement is mediated by a government representative before being forced onto workers without a final vote. The contract recently imposed on USPS workers is nearly identical to the rejected TA, with wage increases of 1.3-1.5 percent and no other meaningful changes. This sequence of events demonstrates how undemocratic the collective bargaining actually is for letter carriers, and why the right to strike is so crucial for unions in general. The power that workers have, whether in the post office or elsewhere, lies in shutting down operations and threatening the bosses with an abrupt end to the status quo. Without this, they become vulnerable not just to concessionary contracts negotiated by spineless leaders, but to attacks on their very livelihoods and to the preservation of a crucial public service.

Rank-and-File Pushback

It’s clear that union members are no longer willing to put up with threats from an increasingly aggressive administration. 

While the Sunday rallies were mobilized in opposition to recent proposals for privatization, rank-and-file members have been working behind the scenes for over a year to rejuvenate the NALC and bring back a fighting program reminiscent of the wildcat strike movement of the 1970s. The BFN reform caucus coalesced in Minneapolis early last year around the demand for open bargaining, which they won at the NALC Congress in August. Their program includes calls for a $30/hour starting wage, full COLA, ending mandatory overtime, an all-career workforce, and — crucially — the right to strike for USPS workers. 

Despite this victory and the continued organization of the contract campaign afterwards, union leadership resisted the resolution for open bargaining, and have worked to shut down attempts to discuss these demands throughout the union. While the Boston rally featured a number of BFN speakers and union supporters using militant language, such as calling for an independent workers’ party and for the working class to go on the offensive, the union leadership also invited Congressman Stephen Lynch, who threatened not to speak at the rally if the right to strike was brought up. In some parts of the country, union workers were barred from speaking on the contract fight at all, and instructed only to agitate around privatization. 

Build a United Front Against Trump

It’s become increasingly clear to letter carriers around the country that if they want to not only defend themselves from privatization cuts, but to restore a fighting labor movement and secure better working conditions for themselves and their coworkers, they need to go past their labor leadership and organize themselves from the bottom-up. 

Trump isn’t just targeting the USPS. He’s aiming his sights on the broader labor movement, immigrant activists, and those on the front lines of resisting his anti-worker agenda. The kidnappings of Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, two pro-Palestine activists at their respective universities, demonstrate this escalation as part of Trump’s attempt to weaken the vanguard and prevent future backlash against the enactment of this agenda.

Workers in both union and non-union sectors need to come together to unilaterally oppose these attacks, but also to build independent working class organizations against the administration. Bureaucratic labor leadership like in the AFL-CIO is already trying to channel outrage into the courts, while Democratic politicians waffle on defending pro-Palestinian activists. We should have no illusions in bourgeois politicians and capitalist court systems to save us from Trump or Musk since they have also championed positions and legislation aimed at weakening the working class and oppressed. If Trump succeeds in gutting labor and carrying out mass deportations, it will only be easier to wreak havoc on the working conditions of the working class. The only alternative is international solidarity with the most vulnerable workers and supporting already-organized ones into mobilizing for class struggle.

The opinions expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the positions held by Left Voice.