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On Sunday the US Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee held a successful online meeting, titled “Stop Trump’s moves to privatize USPS! Oppose the illegitimate NALC contract!” In the wide-ranging discussion, participants shared reports and contributions on the threats to privatize USPS, as well as the broader attacks on the living standards and democratic rights of the working class in the United States by Trump and such attacks on workers internationally.
Postal workers were furious after an arbitrator last week imposed a contract on city letter carriers nearly identical to one which they had rejected by 70 percent earlier this year. The imposed terms include below-inflation wage “increases” and do nothing to protect workers from the coming evisceration of postal jobs led by fascist centibillionaire Elon Musk and his misnamed Department of Government Efficiency.
In his opening report, World Socialist Web Site writer Tom Hall discussed the pending plans for privatization of the Post Office, pointing to a recent Washington Post article headlined: “DOGE wants businesses to run government services ‘as much as possible.’”
The article reported that:
private firms are preparing for a piecemeal government effort to outsource mail and package handling and long-haul trucking routes, while off-loading leases for unprofitable post offices, according to six industry executives.
The Post noted that before his abrupt resignation earlier this week, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy asked DOGE minions to “review leases of nearly 31,000 retail post office locations.”
Hall responded:
This is part of the biggest looting operation in the history of the United States. The Trump government is a government of the criminal underworld, which includes Wall Street and the oligarchy.
Hall connected the attacks on federal programs with the arrests of immigrants and students, pointing in particular to the attempts to deport Cornell graduate student Momodou Taal for participating in anti-genocide protests at Cornell.
Hall warned:
The response of the bureaucrats to this unprecedented attack has been highly significant, although not surprising. Along with the Democrats, it has been a complete non-response.
Hall said that the trade unions are calling on workers to call and write to members of Congress and continued:
The unions refuse even to raise the issue of a strike, a general strike, which is objectively raised by the scale and character of these attacks. The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) and the other postal unions have responded to DOGE and the threatened privatization by offering to help find places to cut expenses at USPS.
Hall warned:
The working class today must not make the mistake of waiting for the bureaucracy or thinking that it can pressure the bureaucracy into organizing a fight. The worst mistake you can make is to wait until the next union elections.
Sunday’s meeting also featured a report from Tony Robson, a member of the Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee (PWRFC) in Britain. Robson said:
Postal workers in Britain and around the world share a stake in your fight against the privatization of the USPS. This struggle is part of an international fight against the same financial oligarchy that has limited public services worldwide to extract more profit for the wealthy few.
He said that the privatization of the UK postal service in 2013
has devastated the system. It has only benefited billionaire investors like BlackRock, who have looted the service to the tune of £2 billion pounds while slashing 20,000 jobs. The result has been endless speed-ups, crushing workloads and stagnating wages. Entry-level pay for postal workers now is just above the minimum wage.
Tony recalled that there was massive opposition among workers to the privatization of the Royal Mail. However, that opposition was “localized” by the bureaucracy, while limiting workers “to sending in postcards to Members of Parliament and enforcing anti-worker legislation which bans political strikes. Postal workers actually voted 96 percent against privatization, but the Union ensured that this was a consultation ballot only.”
Ruth, a postal worker and member of the rank-and-file committee, said:
Right now our union is doing nothing for us. It hasn’t done anything for us. In January they knew about DOGE coming in. They had already made an agreement without any of the members’ knowledge. ...
We have a contract by mediation which no one could vote for. And it’s basically the same as the first one. So I believe the union is selling us out. ... and the union’s not making us aware of anything.
She concluded:
They sold us out in January. They have done nothing. They gave us 1.3 percent raise. That is what our union fought for.
Everyone needs to stand up. This last call was right. It is going to take a collective movement of our working class to get past this because you can’t wait for two years to re-elect another union head. That is too late. We are talking about right now.
During the discussion some postal workers raised the possibility of reforming the unions, pointing to organizations such as Concerned Letter Carriers (CLC).
Will Lehman, a socialist autoworker, spoke on the question of “reforming” the unions, observing:
There exists a similar organization in the UAW called UAWD, Unite All Workers for Democracy, and they championed Shawn Fain, who is now the current president of the UAW.
These reform organizations only lead workers back into the dead end of the union bureaucracies that are represented by these organizations that promote reform.
Over the weekend, news emerged that the UAWD is on the brink of being dissolved due to factional infighting. While explaining it from the standpoint of a clash of personalities, the real source of this crisis is their continued support for a “reform” candidate who is collaborating with the fascist Trump.
After backing Biden/Harris in the 2024 elections, Fain has joined Teamsters President Sean O’Brien in praising Trump’s “America First” tariffs. Will Lehman ran against Fain on a platform of abolishing the bureaucracy and transferring power back to rank-and-file workers on the shop floor.
Lehman stressed that the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC)
is not a reform-oriented organization. It is about workers having independent power from the trade union bureaucracies, from both capitalist political parties, and promoting a network where workers can get together and learn the most valuable lessons of the past. The vast majority of workers who want to fight don’t see a way to fight.
During the call, postal workers discussed multiple times the possibility of striking. Adam, a postal worker, noted the role of the NALC in policing the workforce to guard against “any potential strike.”
He said:
I know they’ve sent out emails to union officials about that, that it won’t be tolerated. [NALC President] Renfroe has even made comments that anybody that does that would not only likely be disciplined, but any such discipline would be almost impossible for NALC to defend. Saying it like that is a threat that they are not going to effectively represent any such worker.
Another postal worker said:
I also want to address striking and legality. Yes, it is illegal. Yes, it is a violation of our contract, and personally I think that it should be used as a very, very last resort but not be excluded. Because I do think it would make an impact.
She added:
Trump does not care about any legality at all. He is steamrolling every law, and no one in our government at all is really doing anything to stop him.
They do not care about the deficit. They care about the revenue that’s being generated, and they care about the important documents they will have access to. They care about all of the information they can gain from having access to literally every single resident in the entire country. They care about the ability to put more money into their pockets while leaving the employees homeless and starving.
She recalled the US government censorship of TikTok and how the response of many American social media users was to switch to the Chinese social media app called RedNote. She observed that American and Chinese workers
are learning the truth about America as well as vice versa. Because both of us and all of the other countries have been fed propaganda about each other and how things are working in each other’s places.
She explained that many preconceptions about Americans being fat, lazy and wealthy were shattered, with many Chinese workers sympathizing with the day-to-day struggles of working class Americans. She said that Chinese users were explaining:
In China’s history, we have gone through this, and we were able to stop it because the people revolted. People died, they lost their lives, but we got so sick of it that we fought back and it ended.
We are being silenced. They are trying to separate us intentionally from not only other countries but from each other because they do not want us to organize. Because they know if we do, it will be damaging for them.
So then the next step is figuring out how to organize, how to reach the largest amount of people to get the most participation possible so that we can do something together. Because all of these social media websites, they all censor us. If you try to talk about anything like this, you’ll get your visibility limited, or it’ll get removed.
So, sharing things like in these Zoom meetings, the WSWS website, and trying to get more people involved so they can join and they can participate and then they can also share the word is a good step.
Hall concluded the meeting by quoting from an October 2023 statement from the US Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee which stated:
The Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee was founded by postal workers around the country to fight against worsening working conditions, as well as the betrayals of the union bureaucrats, who are helping to enforce them. But any successful fight requires first of all that workers have to have access to critical information.
We have to know first of all what we are up against, who our friends are, and who our enemies are and develop a strategy which is based on a realistic understanding of the situation, not in illusions or wishful thinking.