The National Association of Letter Carriers organized nationwide rallies to protest plans to restructure or privatize the Postal Service.

Summary

Nationwide protests erupted as postal workers opposed plans to privatize the USPS and cut 10,000 jobs.

The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) organized rallies in over 200 cities, condemning the proposed merger with the Commerce Department and collaboration with Elon Musk’s DOGE.

Lawmakers like Senators Dick Durbin and Tina Smith joined demonstrations, calling the changes unconstitutional.

USPS employees fear losing jobs and essential public services, especially in rural areas. Trump and Musk defend privatization as efficient, but critics argue it endangers vital community functions.

  • kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world
    125·
    15 天前

    USPS was a fully self-sufficient dependable and inexpensive service for generations until stupid and unnecessary limitations were placed on their revenue streams and functionality. The end goal was always to replace them with a private entity that, by the nature of profit-driven businesses, will be more expensive, less efficient, will be a worse employer and have less oversight and transparency by the public. Also expect junk mail directly from your postal service from now on.

    • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
      11·
      14 天前

      they have been trying to privitize it since Reagen, and only until GWB forced usps to fund 75years of pensions funds in advance so the gop can plunder it letter, is when they started to get into money trouble.

      Also currently, one of family member is USPS worker and they have been stretched pretty thin, the turnover is pretty bad, they hire a bunch from somewhere else and they enver stick around long enough because its “wears down your body when your doing more than you should”

      • nexas_XIII@lemm.ee
        14·
        15 天前

        I believe what they’re saying is that if UPS or FedEx is now the postal service they’ll put junk mail for their services in your mailbox. What you consider junk mail is other businesses paying the post office to send mail (though you may not like it).

  • Fedizen@lemmy.world
    40·
    15 天前

    The conflict of interest potential here is insane, too. Suppose Wells Fargo buys the post office. Then they decide they want your grandpa’s house so they disappear his mortgage payments forcing him into default.

  • Gork@lemm.ee
    35·
    15 天前

    How long until the leopards eat the faces of the people that voted for this on Twitter if this goes into effect?

    • KnowledgeableNip@sh.itjust.works
      20·
      15 天前

      They won’t notice. Or they’ll be happy because they owned the libs. Or it’ll be Biden’s fault.

      Regardless there will be zero introspection or self-critique because they are incapable.

      • mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        20·
        14 天前

        They 100% will notice, because the rural areas (which tend to be the most deeply conservative) will be the most heavily impacted. The USPS is the only reason many rural houses can reliably and inexpensively get mail. Shipping rural mail via UPS or FedEx often costs $20-50, if they’ll deliver it at all; Many rural areas are redlined by the shipping companies, because the companies don’t want to send trucks an hour and a half out of the city just for a single package. From a cost standpoint, that’s a three hour round trip for very little benefit. They’ll literally refuse to deliver the package, and tell the customer that the address is outside of their service area.

        Shipping to those same addresses via USPS costs like a dollar.

        But yeah, they’ll just blame Biden and continue voting red.

        • KnowledgeableNip@sh.itjust.works
          9·
          15 天前

          Trump will come out and say that communist socialist fascist drag queens are blocking our beautiful mail with their Obama deep state radical leftist agenda and somehow his supporters will believe it even though it makes no sense.

        • Ledericas@lemm.eeEnglish
          1·
          14 天前

          rural areas are very unprofitable for any kind of delivery, even for cable its pretty expensive.

  • Hemingways_Shotgun@lemmy.caEnglish
    26·
    15 天前

    The powers-that-be don’t give a shit about your meaningless protests. March as much as you want. Hold as many signs as you want. That only works when the people making the decisions actually care about what you think of them and actually worry about whether or not you will vote for them in the next election.

    Neither of those things is true. They work for the billionaire class and they have no intention of having fair elections ever again. So they can safely say “fuck your protests”.

    For all of it’s bullshit, there is one thing you can say about the J6 rioters; no one ignored them.

    It’s well past time to learn that lesson. The fact that you all aren’t firebombing government buildings by this point is a disgrace from a population of so-called “don’t tread on me” proud Americans.

    • skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de
      20·
      15 天前

      This is exactly what Mango Mussolini and his ilk want. They will then declare martial law across the entire country and accelerate Fascism. The USA is slightly smaller than all of the EU in square miles or kilometers. The entire EU. Not just some tiny nation like Germany that is smaller than some US states. Couple that with how the US economy is rigged so people lose their health insurance, medications, and die if they aren’t working, it makes it extremely difficult for people to up and stop working to travel 3000 miles to destroy buildings.

      Much better to rally every American citizen to just collectively get on the same page and play a long-game. This will take some time as MAGA comes to realize how wrong they were on their gambit to hire a felon with no business acumen, and they need to be welcomed back into the fold. They’ve been fed a stream of information poison for decades, so it isn’t surprising how they were led astray, really.

      Getting 300+million people scattered across the vast lands all on the same page makes it much simpler. Once a critical mass is hit, just stop doing anything. Employers can’t hire scabs if nobody is working. The entire US economy crashes to a halt. Those billionaire losers can whine and complain on deaf ears as their profits evaporate. Once they realize the President really never had any power, and shouldn’t, those pearl-clutching oligarchs that care about their profits will start understanding who they should have been respecting and listening to this whole time.

      Many are already stocking up on supplies, medications, food, due to supply chain disruptions to come from “tariffs,” arbitrary bans on classes of people, and other wacko illegal crap being pulled. The country will be organically ready to stop playing their games in under a few months.

      America has literally no rulebook for this scenario. Big change will have to happen to fix it unless the US states grow a collective spine. Arbitrary violence likely will not effectively accomplish that goal.

      As for the “Don’t Tread On Me” larpers, they’re just loud larpers - they are a tiny subset of the US population. Maybe they’ll grow a spine, maybe not, either way they’ll be welcome if they want to wake up and actually defend that 2A they purportedly respect.

      • BlackSheep@lemmy.caEnglish
        6·
        15 天前

        So… do nothing? Get on the same page and play along? Big change will have to happen to fix it? Arbitrary violence? The people are supposed to be the government. They are supposed to have the right to protest when the government is not acting in their best interests. If peacefully protesting creates violence, I suggest that violence comes from the government—not the people.

  • buzz86us@lemmy.world
    12·
    15 天前

    Just make the post office a banking institution… This would be amazing for people who live in rural areas. We also need to revoke Monsanto’s patents so that farmers can distribute seed without worry of being sued.

    • ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.netEnglish
      4·
      15 天前

      It’d be quite nice if the USPS integrated GNU Taler as its banking system, were that to ever happen.

  • blakenong@lemmings.worldEnglish
    11·
    15 天前

    Oh my, the systematic deportation and detainment of immigrants legally in this country and everyone turns a blind eye, but fuck with my junk mail delivery service and I’m gonna cut a bitch.

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.melroy.org
      52·
      15 天前

      USPS is required to deliver to every address in the country. If this goes through, it will be like the ISPs, and people in areas where mail delivery doesn’t turn a profit will get screwed. There are people out there using USPS for critical things like delivery of medical equipment or supplies.

      • Sirus@lemm.eeEnglish
        7·
        15 天前

        Welp. I gave my last fuck I had to give in 2024. Too bad so sad that all those fucking hicks will have to pull up their bootstraps and get to work.

        • Throbbing_Banjo@midwest.social
          26·
          15 天前

          What “point” do you think you made?

          Every shitty thing this administration does is a shitty thing, they all deserve to be called out and protested against, and neither awareness, anger, or protesting are mutually exclusive to one issue.

          You’re just pissing into the wind.

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.ml
      23·
      15 天前

      There have been protests for those too. Media coverage of protests has been severely limited making you think fewer people have been fighting back than they have. Here’s one in Dallas

      Here’s another in St. Louis

      There have even been people protesting ICE during their raids and doing things like loudly telling people around ICE is there and about their constitutional rights. It’s been effective enough that ICE has been complaining about how they are below targets

      The USPS unions organized these protests against the entire USPS being dismantled. Sounds kind of like a thing unions should do. Privitizing it is way worse than just affecting “junk mail”

      In various parts of the country USPS is the only place that will deliver mail to people because it’s unprofitable to do so. Zero mail service nearby affects a lot. For instance, need medications delivered, you may lose that option

    • BlindFrog@lemmy.world
      7·
      15 天前

      On the one hand, no one here is downplaying this administration’s illegal treatment of immigrants.

      On the other, anything that helps my neighbors realize they are not fucking safe either from this administration’s dumpsterfire is a small win.

    • takenaps@lemmy.world
      7·
      15 天前

      There are protests going on about that stuff too. We can be upset about more than one thing at a time…