The Mail is a Crucial Service and Needs to be Treated as Such

“Snow. Rain. Heat. Night. Fascism. Nothing stops the mail.” 

These were the words featured prominently in front of a black backdrop on an image circulated by the American Postal Workers Union. At the bottom of the image was a link directing viewers to a section on the APWU’s website entitled “save the post office,” containing multiple informational resources regarding the post office’s dire need for stimulus funding in order to continue operations as well as avenues that visitors could use to show their support. 

And who currently stands between them and the money they so desperately need? As it always seems to be the case when it comes to battles over preserving the integrity of our democratic institutions, that man is of course Donald Trump. 

The cash woes of the United States Postal Service are certainly nothing new, and with this financial discomfort comes the inevitable impact on service. The USPS closed out the 2011 fiscal year with a net loss of 5.1 billion dollars, prompting them to slow down the delivery of first-class mail for the first time in 40 years and lay out plans to close down more than half of its mail processing centers. These financial woes more than tripled by the following year, with the USPS facing a record loss of 15.9 billion dollars and making a public plea to congress to pass comprehensive legislation “to move the Postal Service further down the path towards financial health.”

In many ways it is easy to take for granted both the purpose and function of the USPS, especially as the march of technology supplanted letters with far more convenient alternatives. Sure, the USPS is still there if you need to send a check or a package, but casual means of communication were swiftly replaced with the instant gratification that only the internet can provide. And while one might be tempted to fall into the trap of believing that the gradual decay of the USPS is a natural symbol of the modern age, we have culturally found humor in the “obsolescence” of the USPS for decades now. “The Junk Mail,” an episode of the sitcom Seinfeld that aired on October 30, 1997, features a subplot where the character Kramer, played by Michael Richards, decides to stop the mail at the source due to the obscene amount of “junk mail” he had been receiving. Kramer proudly declares his intention to “cancel his mail” to Newman, a postal worker played by Wayne Knight. “What about your bills?” asks Newman. “The bank can pay them,” responds Kramer. “What about your cards and letters?” retorts Newman, making yet another attempt to preserve a customer. “E-mail, telephones, fax machines, FedEx, Telex, telegrams, holograms.” With each answer Kramer gives, Newman’s panicked sweating intensifies, until finally he breaks and admits the very thing Kramer knew walking in; “Alright, it’s true! Of course nobody needs mail! What, do you think you’re so clever figuring that one out?” 

It is a funny joke to be sure, but in retrospect Seinfeld did an excellent job of characterizing the fundamental problem with the USPS as an institution; it is desperate to be seen as a legitimate business in a culture that requires it less and less on a consistent basis. There is perhaps no greater image for the situation in which the USPS finds itself than a postal worker begging a recipient of junk mail to remain a customer of the USPS despite already having alternatives for all his mailing needs. But perhaps an even greater issue that must be touched upon is that the Postal Service is designed to function as a business in the first place. The entire reason the Postal Service even has to be concerned about its economic viability stems back to the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. This act both demolished the Postal Service’s predecessor, the United States Post Office Department, and created the USPS as a bizarre hybrid of a business in the sense that it had to be concerned primarily with profit generated purely through customer revenue while still answering directly to congressional oversight. The Postal Service is not directly funded by taxpayers and instead largely makes its money off the sale of stamps and premium services such as first-class or priority mail delivery. 

And it is precisely because we see the USPS as a business that is struggling to justify its own existence that its issues are similarly viewed as the consequences of a failing business model. And so, in a manner eerily similar to how the country as a whole turned to a businessman with no prior experience in politics, so too did the Postal Service gain a new postmaster general in the form of Louis DeJoy; a businessman from North Carolina and a major Trump donor and ally with no prior experience in the United States Postal Service. DeJoy was appointed in May of 2020 and soon afterward began an array of sweeping reforms within the USPS designed to repair its sustainability issues. Among these reforms are the banning of overtime work and extra trips to deliver mail left behind in the workroom, both of which will have and have had the direct consequence of slowing down mail delivery. To add insult to injury, there doesn’t seem to be much of a good financial reason for this decision in the first place, as data from the American Postal Workers Union shows that about 20% of mail delivered by USPS employees is done in overtime. The APWU’s president, Mark Dimondstein, correctly pointed out that slashing the USPS’s delivery quota by by one fifth would only have adverse impacts on their business model, referencing the exact same situation the USPS found itself in back in 2011 and 2012; “Every time we’ve slowed down the mail, we’ve lost revenue.” DeJoy himself has already admitted that his reforms have adversely impacted the USPS’s capacity to carry out its tasks, at least in the short term, writing in a memo on August 13th that his policies have brought “unintended consequences that impacted our overall service levels,” but maintained that these reforms were necessary for long-term sustainability. 

But here’s the problem; we don’t have time to wait for “long-term” sustainability. The United States is about to have one of the most important national elections in the midst of one of the worst pandemics it has ever faced, and regardless of whether or not the USPS is effective as a business model, the fact remains that we need its service now more than ever. 

DeJoy is a Trump ally, and Trump, for his part, has largely supported the reforms of the new postmaster general. In the past, Trump has referred to the USPS as both a joke and a failure, and now, when the Postal Service is asking for government aid so it does not run out of cash before November’s election, Trump is adamantly opposing any bill that allocates funding to the USPS. Why? Because he is clinging to two particularly egregious lies; that democrats are pushing for universal mail-in voting, and that the system of mailing in ballots itself is rife with fraud. Neither of these statements have any statistical truth in them, yet Trump has decided to make support for one of the nation’s most fundamental services a partisan issue, arguing “if we don’t make a deal that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting; they just can’t have it.” 

That is the president of the United States showing callous indifference not only to a critical system designed to facilitate democracy, but also to the health of all those who will rely on it come November, all because it might be politically inconvenient for him. The coronavirus pandemic has created an environment in which thousands of Americans are dying each week and social protocols that have once been standard now need to be rethought. In the age of social distancing, packing large groups of people in an enclosed space so they can exercise their constitutional right to vote isn’t just non-viable; it can be downright fatal. This November, there will be an unprecedented increase in the number of voters relying on mail-in voting systems, a practice that has been around since the Civil War and is now instrumental in protecting the lives of Americans. And while there is some optimism from representatives of the USPS that its workers will be able to handle the deluge as we get closer to election day, the evidence speaks to the contrary. The Postal Service has already begun removing letter collection boxes across the country, and although vigorous pushback has temporarily stalled the process until at least after election day, there is no guarantee that this freeze will be consistent across all regions. Additionally, letters sent by the USPS to 46 states and D.C. contain concerns that it cannot guarantee all ballots cast by mail for the November election will arrive in a timely manner, effectively serving as an unnervingly casual warning that a good portion of voters looking out for their own health and the health of the public could face disenfranchisement. 

And none of this seems to concern Trump or his allies in Congress, which has already broke for its August recess without any progress on bills for aiding the USPS. If anything, the current situation is incredibly telling of how the president views the role of the USPS, and truly that last word, “service,” seems to be entirely lost on him. Despite all the jokes and mockery the Postal Service has endured over the years, it still commands an unusually high public acceptance rate amongst government agencies, with 91% of respondents to a Pew Research Center survey showing favorability. That is because, on the whole, citizens understand that the purpose of the Postal Service is to serve as a critical resource to cater to our needs, especially now when it is more important than ever to fulfill our civic duties in a way that doesn’t put our health or the health of the nation at risk. We don’t treat other government agencies the same way we treat the USPS; we don’t demand the air-force, navy, or police departments to routinely turn in profits or risk being left to wither or die, because all three institutions receive direct funding from state and local governments. But Trump doesn’t seem to see it that way; to him the Postal Service is nothing more than a failed business model that can only serve to hurt his own reelection chances, and so if voters need to risk health and livelihood to express a constitutional right, then so be it. 

In a healthy democracy we should be bending over backwards in our efforts to protect a citizen’s right to vote in a safe and efficient manner. If the American democratic experiment is to continue into the foreseeable future, we cannot afford to have a blasé attitude towards warnings that Americans using a national service that has been around since the 70’s won’t have their votes counted, and we certainly should be allocating funding to that very same service that allows Americans to have a say in their governance without putting their lives on the line. And if the person sitting at the top of our national government wasn’t truly an autocrat then he would not be unnerved at the prospect of facilitating the collection of votes from as many U.S. citizens as possible. 

The business aspect of the United States Postal Service has deep, glaring, and entrenched issues. And yet, now more than ever, it is the service aspect that we must be fighting to protect.