Hundreds of USPS workers left their postal-blue uniforms at home on Sunday, when they rallied on Boston Common for a fair contract and vowed to “fight like hell” against a march toward the privatization of a 250-year-old public good.
Many clad in the red t-shirts of their union, the postal workers and their supporters stood for hours against a steady and chilly March breeze while speaker after speaker reminded them that every benefit they have ever received from the government they work for was brought about through union solidarity, protest, and by making their voices heard.
“We’re going to make them hear us,” James Capone, president of Branch 764 of the National Association of Letter Carriers, told the crowd.
Postal workers first earned the right to collectively bargain in 1970, Capone said, and since the early 80s the postal service has managed to exist without the benefit of additional federal dollars or support.
“We’ve run on stamps,” Capone said.
Despite that, he said, the agency has continued to deliver mail across the country, affordably, even through incredibly trying circumstances.
“Anytime there was a disaster, whether it be Katrina, Helene, the wildfires in Maui and Los Angeles, a global pandemic, we’re out there delivering. We were delivering a service that’s essential, that is affordable, to everybody,” Capone said.
Now, the federal government is now moving to cut service and staff. There is a simple reason, he said.
“They want to cut our service to give it to private corporations who will raise prices,” Capone said.
According to rally organizers, the postal employees are faced with an administration that would see the USPS Board of Governors and Postal Regulatory Commission eliminated, “stripping the Postal Service of independent oversight” and “leaving no independent regulatory authority on pricing and service.”
There are plans in place, they say, to cut service to rural addresses, “including 51.5 million addresses where private carriers often do not deliver,” and increase shipping costs “affecting small businesses and major private shippers” alike.
The Trump Administration also, they say, aims to “carve up the USPS” and sell its functions off to private interests, “jeopardizing 7.9 million jobs tied to the postal industry.”
“Every day, our 200,000 letter carriers deliver 376 million pieces of mail to nearly 169 million delivery points, supporting a $1.92 trillion mailing industry. This universal service is vital, particularly in rural areas where USPS ensures the delivery of medications, ballots and essential packages. The proposed executive order threatens 640,000 postal jobs, including over 73,000 veterans. And it would be illegal and unconstitutional,” Capone said.
Just last week, Post Master General Louis DeJoy, a first-term Trump Administration appointee, said that he is open to working with Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency to eliminate 10,000 postal service jobs.
“This is an effort aligned with our efforts, as while we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done,” DeJoy wrote of DOGE in a letter to Congress.
Capone said that postal workers are demanding a fair contract — they’ve gone more than 700 days without one — that includes better wages, but that they are also fighting for the survival of the centuries-old service itself. Capone asked the audience to remember the grandparents that need medication and can’t easily leave their homes, and the military members overseas who want correspondence from home.
That service, he said, is worth being proud of and worth doing.
“We’re going to fight like hell, and we’re going to win this fight,” he said. “We need to be loud.”
The rally-goers were joined by U.S. Rep. Stephen Lynch, who listed a dozen family members who are or were postal employees, including his mother.
Lynch said the blame for cuts to USPS can be squarely placed against the “lawlessness and disregard” of the current presidential administration, but also with congressional Republicans who refuse to “stand up and prevent that lawlessness.” When Lynch mentioned Musk, describing him as “Trump’s henchman,” it drew widespread and loud boos from the crowd.
“Trump and Musk have fired more veterans, more federal workers, then any presidential administration in the history of the country,” Lynch said.
Rallying against cuts by Trump and an “unelected goon squad run by a billionaire – the richest guy in the world” isn’t just about labor issues, Lynch said, but Democracy itself.
“This is not just about postal jobs, it’s about the future of our country,” he said. “This is a dangerous time in this country. There is something strange going on in this country. Something dark and sinister.”
A member of the audience shouted, with mock surprise, “you don’t say!”
