DENVER — I remember the thrill I felt in the summer of 2004 when I finally got hired as a career employee by the U.S. Postal Service. After decades of low-end jobs in day care and hospitality it was a dream come true. I hoped that getting hired as a regular would lift me from the working poor into the middle class.
This is a first hand account of the positive changes a job at the post office can bring to America’s workers and the harm that the GOP is inflicting on not just the country, but also to those who serve our country every day in big ways and small.
And we were a team! There was a sense of camaraderie that I’ve never felt in any other workplace. There are not many female mechanics, but I was always treated with respect, because I could do the job and do it well. We liked that we were serving and helping people in an organization that had been around for over 200 years. We were a proud mix — a true cross-section and representation of the American people.
But now we can clearly see that all the positive things about the USPS are under attack by the GOP.
In 2006, the Postal Service was singled out by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), as the only government agency or business in history required to fund the health care costs post-retirement for every employee for the next 75 years, and do it all in an immediate 10-year window.
The once financially stable, profitable and proud Postal Service began to suffer — which means people began to suffer. Over the years up to today, jobs were cut or left unfilled, overtime was cut, hiring was frozen. Eventually, they began closing both plants and post offices.
And the latest weapon in the GOP assault on not just voters, but the workers and customers of the USPS.
The carriers are the beloved face of the Postal Service, as they should be, and an icon of our proud history. But as a mechanic working to keep them on their routes, in August I witnessed a scene I never could have imagined. My co-workers on another shift began dismantling at least three mail processing machines.
They didn't want to do this, they told me; they just had to follow orders.
While there is less mail being delivered this year, those machines process over a million pieces of mail a day at my post office alone and were always in use. When I asked them what they were doing, they told me that the area was going to be rearranged. I later found the machines behind the processing plant, dismantled, in a huge scrap metal dumpster — uncovered in the rain. Later, Postal Service leaders said they paused these changes, but I don't expect the machines to ever come back. That’s a hard thing for a mechanic, or any caring person, to see.
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I hope all the people will work to keep the Postal Service alive and be proud of the decent living it gives workers and the valuable work it does.
