“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night (nor Donald Trump and the GOP) stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” — Unofficial motto (as amended) of the United States Postal Service.
So IMPOTUS has now shown his hand. Donald Trump is hell bent for leather to sabotage the USPS because he fears that vote-by-mail will benefit Democrats and put the kibosh on his re-election hopes. Trump has disparaged voting by mail by falsely claiming it is rife with fraud.
His flunky Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has moved to slow the mail by banning overtime, removing sorting machines and even mail boxes, and reassigning or displacing about two dozen senior USPS officials, including the two top executives responsible for overseeing day-to-day operations.
Democrats have expressed their outrage. House Democrats have demanded that funding for the USPS be included in any pandemic relief package. There will be a House oversight hearing with Postmaster General DeJoy and lawsuits are being filed. But such actions might be ineffective in dealing with an increasingly desperate Trump.
However, postal workers have the power in their hands to take direct action to save our democracy. There is a strong labor organization, the American Postal Workers Union, representing nearly 220,000 USPS employees and retirees.
Could the union organize a work-in with postal workers voluntarily working extra hours and sorting mail by hand if necessary to make it a priority to ensure that ballots reach voters and are returned to the local election boards in a timely manner. We are talking about direct action — including staffing postal facilities round the clock to handle the ballots and making extra delivery routes. And the rest of us could rally support for USPS workers.
It would be a peaceful form of civil disobedience, ignoring what can be construed as illegal or even unconstitutional orders to delay the mail and sabotage the election. Trump and DeJoy would be hard-pressed to intervene to block workers from expediting mail delivery.
Any direct action could end in the second half of November, leaving (hopefully) the lame duck Trump administration to explain why they are mucking up deliveries for the holiday season.
And why might such direct action resonate with postal workers. Around a quarter (23%) of USPS workers are black, 11% are Hispanic and 7% are Asian, according to the Pew Research Center. And in key cities in swing states such as Milwaukee, Philadelphia and Detroit, the percentage of USPS workers who are people or color is undoubtedly much higher.
In Washington, D.C., Delaware and Maryland, 60% or more of postal workers are black, according to Pew. In Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, California and Texas, about 30% of USPS employees are Hispanic. In 18 states and Washington, D.C., women make up half or more of USPS workers.
As of 2018, USPS also employed more than 100,000 military veterans.
Now Democrats cannot openly promise retroactive compensation for the overtime. But when the Biden-Harris administration and a Democratic Congress take over in January they could provide pandemic relief funding for the USPS. They could also repeal the law that imposes an onerous financial burden on the USPS by mandating that the USPS create a $72 billion fund to pay for the cost of its post-retirement health care costs, 75 years into the future. No other federal agency or private corporation has such a burdensome requirement.
