Around a hundred local residents and postal workers showed up at a Redding post office and processing center amid growing fears of service cuts to the agency older than the United States.
Postal workers and the American Postal Workers Union highlighted a report from Wells Fargo released last month, analyzing the effects and paths to privatizing the USPS. The report said the easiest path would be to spin off parcel delivery from the mail. To turn a profit, a privatized delivery service would need to raise prices by estimated 30-140% to compete with companies like FedEx and UPS.
Sara Wilson, president of the local postal workers union in Redding, said rural communities would be hurt the most if the U.S. Postal Service were privatized.
“Anderson, Shasta Lake City, Bella Vista, they don’t make a profit, so they would close these offices,” she said.
Instead, people would need to trek to Redding to visit the post office.
“We’re a service to all,” Anderson said, “no matter where you are.”
USPS is the only delivery service obligated to provide universal service at an affordable price.
Wilson highlighted some common concerns that a decline in service could bring, including a delay in delivering medication and election mail.
She also said planned changes in June would delay mail service in rural communities near Redding. Deliveries that used to leave at the end of the day would instead leave offices the following morning.
“It’s so they can actually change the hours of those offices and shrink time for customers to come in,” Wilson said. “And people need to realize this is your service. This is your post office. This is a people’s post office.”
In Redding, Wilson said mail processing has been consolidated. Outgoing mail is first sent to Sacramento for processing before heading to its final destination.
Republican Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said he plans to cut 10,000 jobs from the agency in the next month. He also said the postal service would work with Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, which has been firing federal workers across many areas.
Wilson said they’re trying to ensure the public knows how these changes would affect the services they rely on. This rally was part of a coordinated day of action by the American Postal Workers Union to do just that.
