With signs reading “Hell No To Attacks On Us!” and “Fight Like Hell!” several dozen postal workers and their supporters rallied on Sunday on Green Street near the United States Post Office to protest federal proposals to cut back and privatize the U.S. Postal Service.
This followed a similar rally on Thursday last week at the same Post Office. Thursday’s and Sunday’s protests were both part of a nationwide series of rallies to call attention to the situation.
Drivers passing by tooted their horns in support. A motorcyclist revved his engine.
Some of the ideas that draw the postal workers’ worry and ire:
- Plans to cut the Postal Service workforce by 10,000 people by the first half of April, out of 635,000, according to CBS News and others, as part of presidential advisor Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency initiative.
- A proposal to convert the Postal Service from a government entity to a private entity. President Donald Trump has discussed this idea. He is unhappy that the Postal Service lost $9.5 billion the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, the New York Post and Washington Post reported.
- Plans to consolidate operations, which would reduce pickup and delivery service in rural areas and slow mail delivery, to save money.
“We’re here rallying against the proposed dismantling of the Postal Service,” said postal worker Frank Vega. He is president of the Fayetteville Branch 1128 of the National Association of Letter Carriers union.
“We’re fighting for not only us, we’re fighting for the city, the community, the school system, the down, the commission,” said Tony McKinnon of Fayetteville, the president of the North Carolina Council of the American Postal Workers Union.
The postal workers’ pay and benefits boost the economies of their communities, McKinnon said, and the taxes they pay support their communities, too.
The U.S. Constitution gives Congress the power to set up post offices and post roads to deliver mail. The Postal Service is not a business, Vega said.
“We’re not here for a profit. We’re here for a service,” he said. “Everybody in America should be treated the same way when it comes to service. The changes that they want to implement, want it to be profitable, where only the people that pay the most get the most.”
The Postal Service is like other government functions, McKinnon said.
“We’re a service for all the people for the same cost,” he said. “So if we’re not profitable, do you want to do away with the military, do you want to do away with the police department? Those are all institutions that protect and serve, but they don’t make no profit.”
Senior reporter Paul Woolverton can be reached at pwoolverton@cityviewnc.com.
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