U.S. mail will not be sold.
- U.S. mail will not be sold.
Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow can keep the
Postal Service from its work, but politics sure can.
The beleaguered agency, which receives no taxpayer funding,
projects a $13 billion revenue shortfall this year,
and it says it faces possible bankruptcy,
if it doesn’t receive an infusion of government aid.
- We are very essential, and we are part of America's heartbeat.
And I think, a lot of times, we're overlooked.
What we’re watching is part of a decades-long
play for privatization,
which may have found an ally in this man.
The Postal Service is a joke.
What’s not funny is how the financial troubles of
the country’s most popular agency are really the
result of a government-manufactured crisis
with very serious national consequences.
There are the things that the Postal Service could do
that, we're realizing now, would be not only really useful,
but could even help save our democracy.
This is about more than the cost of letters and packages.
It’s about the price of eliminating an agency that helped build the U.S.,
one that’s a lifeline for rural residents
and is tied to the fate of more than a half million essential employees.
Their intention is to recommend privatization of the Postal Service,
and what that means is selling off the Postal Service to the highest bidder.
Hey fam, I’m Imaeyen.
Today I’m working from home and examining how the COVID-19 pandemic
exposed the U.S. Postal Service’s underlying health condition
and what that means for us.
Hint: think prescription drugs and voter accessibility.
We live in uncertain times. However, there’s one thing you can be certain of:
the men and women of the United States Postal Service.
The story of the Postal Service is really the story of the U.S.
The Constitution empowers Congress to create postal roads and offices,
and the agency handling 48% of the world’s mail volume
has empowered generations of employees,
like Tanzania Chopin, to solidify their place in the middle class.
I've always grew up, the post office was a good job.
You get on with the post office. It's good pay, good health benefits.
You can retire, good retirement when you get to that point.
The letter carrier calls herself a “postal baby.”
Her mother is a retired postal worker who began her career
at the agency when Tanzania was just an infant.
I grew up in the Postal Service.
I was like, “Oh, one day I'm gonna work in that building.”
I’m like, “Oh, Imma go behind those doors.”
Tanzania loves the Postal Service and so does the
majority of the U.S., regardless of political affiliation.
About 75% of the nation says the
Postal Service does an excellent job.
When we break it down by party,
we see Republicans and Democrats
echo that enthusiasm.
- Whose post office?
- The people’s post office!
So how did this popular agency, which has more than 630,000 employees
and is the focal point of a $1.6 trillion mailing industry,
become the centerpiece of a political fight?
Well, it’s not because a man who used
an old post office to house a hotel ...
- This is a great iconic building.
... is now president
and beefing with a man whose company has a deal with the Postal Service.
Let me show you something.
What's happening right now to them is that they are
being starved to death. They're not going bankrupt.
That’s author and former postal worker Phil Rubio,
and he knows a lot about the Postal Service
because he spent 20 years working there and has written two books about it.
So the shallow roots are the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.
It became a terrible solution to what was really a non-problem.
They broke something that was already fixed.
So the same year the Postal Service unveiled a stamp commemorating
the first person of color to win an Oscar,
a lame-duck Congress financially hobbled
the agency by requiring it to fully fund retirement for employees,
including those who haven’t even been born yet.
Phil says the agency, which has been self-supporting since 1982,
immediately felt the effects of the bipartisan legislation.
It was running in the black every year.
That's what it was running right up until 2006.
So what this does, is it creates a narrative that they are mismanaged,
that they are financially no longer viable, and it becomes
a self-fulfilling prophecy for forces that
want the Postal Service to be privatized.
You heard Phil say that was the shallow root of the crisis.
He says the deep roots go back to the 1970 wildcat postal strike.
Technically it was illegal for postal employees to strike,
and the union didn’t approve it, but workers did it
anyway in order to fight for better wages.
Things got real, real fast, when more than 200,000 postal employees
walked off the job. It was the largest walkout ever of federal employees.
I have just now directed the activation of the men of the various
military organizations to begin in New York City
the restoration of essential mail services.
The resolution increased pay, made the Postal Service an independent
government agency instead of part of the cabinet
and it also paved the way for those supporting privatization.
What makes the Postal Service vulnerable now is that it's self-supporting.
It is reponsible for doing the same thing it did before
to deliver mail at reasonable and equitable rates,
to be self-supporting.
The post office does what others don’t do.
It has to service every address in the nation,
even the most rural.
Even FedEx and UPS use it for last-mile service.
Every day, all across America, we deliver for you and we always will.
This is really important because a change in the Postal Service means
a change in voter accessibility to those voting by mail
– something competitors can’t do –
and it impacts those receiving prescription medications at home.
Another thing having an adverse impact on Postal Service revenue
is the steady decline of
first-class mail volume,
which began at the dawn of this century.
As the majority of its revenue,
first-class mail is what helped cement the Postal Service’s monopoly.
Its cash flow decreased, but the agency’s costs essentially have remained the same.
If the Postal Service were in the
private sector, it would rank 44th
in the Fortune 500.
But the same bureaucracy that provided
bailouts for other companies on that list
– to save the banking, airline and auto industries –
isn't eager to save the Postal Service.
The Trump administration denied the USPS a lifeline in April.
Meanwhile, online retailers, including Amazon,
are spending more than $2 million on ads to support a Postal Service bailout.
Trump also tapped a Republican fundraiser with no postal experience
to be the new postmaster general. It gives him new influence
over the agency. And then there’s this:
The post office, if they raise the price of a package by approximately four times,
it’ll be a whole new ballgame.
Phil says that wouldn’t fix the problem,
because it would cause all competitors to increase rates,
and those would be passed on to consumers.
We serve everybody, all communities, from the upper class, of course,
what is considered to be “the hood.”
It's a service that we give.
We give the same five-star service to everybody.
This battle over the Postal Service is about whether you see it as part
the nation’s basic communication infrastructure
– part of the public good –
like other countries view their versions of it. Or, if you believe the agency
should be a for-profit business that would limit its accessibility
and alter workers’ terms of employment.
You could see a growing conservative trend that sees problems with postal workers,
mostly unions. Now earning somehow too much
and also the Postal Service competing too much with FedEx and UPS.
So there's a drive to handcuff the Postal Service.
Phil told me he can’t envision the nation without the Postal Service
and thinks it’s very unlikely.
But Tanzania and her colleagues are already considering this.
To them, this financial crunch feels very different than those from the past.
It's kind of scary because what, we know about, what,
I've always known that the post office was like a guarantee,
for-sure, 30-year job. It's kind of shaky right now.
These are jobs that helped build the middle class,
including offering African Americans entry when they were being
denied employment opportunities elsewhere.
Today, people of color comprise
40% of postal employees.
Employees like Tanzania Chopin.
I'll probably put in maybe another 15 years or so,
hopefully, if the Postal Service is still around at that time.
Hey fam. Thanks so much for watching.
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struggle with the Postal Service.
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Thank you so much for watching
and stay safe.