Maine postal workers call for end to USPS sabotage, including pre-funding mandate

Maine postal workers and union leaders held a press conference on Thursday to issue a series of demands in response to the Trump administration’s policies that have hampered the work of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), highlighting the impact it has already had on local communities and what it could mean for the upcoming election.

Among the demands, the letter carriers called for the immediate and permanent end to the requirement that the USPS pre-fund its retirement system 75 years in advance, a mandate first introduced in a bill by Sen. Susan Collins in 2005 that they said led to the Postal Service’s current financial crisis.

“Pre-funding has to stop. The current situation is a direct financial consequence of what happened 16 years ago,” said Scott Adams, president of Scarborough-based Postal Workers union 458. “Were it not for that, the Postal Service would be fine.”

Scott Adams, president of Scarborough-based Postal Workers union 458, speaks at Thursday’s press conference.

The Trump administration has made deep cuts in the agency this summer in an apparent effort to reduce costs, manufacturing a national slowdown in mail delivery while Senate Republicans have stalled efforts to bail out the agency. According to Adams, this has done lasting damage to the agency’s relationship with the communities it serves.

“The public has been given the impression that the Postal Service can’t deliver on time. It’s a perception only — I believe we can,” Adams said today at the press conference organized by Maine AFL-CIO. “We need to re-instill that confidence in the American public that this can be done. And I believe this perception did come from the top down.”

In Maine, a delay in deliveries from a southern Maine processing center on August 10 meant that some towns didn’t receive any mail at all in the following days.

“You have people relying on their prescription medication, their bills,” said Cheryl Elrich, president of Letter Carriers Local 391 in Corinth. “They rely on that service.”

Communities across the country will also rely on the Postal Service this November to cast ballots by mail. President Donald Trump has publicly admitted to opposing funding for the USPS in order to undermine the vote-by-mail system.

Nevertheless, Adams urged voters to trust postal workers like himself to get the job done.

“I will be confidently voting by mail in this year’s election,” Adams said. “If [postal workers] are confident in the system, the general public should be confident in the system.”

Maine AFL-CIO spokesperson Sarah Bigney urged Mainers to contact the state’s congressional delegation to express their concerns about cuts to the USPS and demand a $25 million bail-out along with the elimination of the pre-funding requirement.

Adams agreed, crediting public outcry over the recent changes with pushing Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to announce that he would temporarily end some new policies until after the Nov. 3 election.

“They did it because the people of America, specifically rural America, want their mail,” Adams said. “People are speaking up. The general public is already speaking up, and we’d like them to continue to do so.”

Photo: Linda Owen via Creative Commons