CINCINNATI — Postal workers made their rallying cries heard throughout the streets of downtown Cincinnati Sunday afternoon.
Union workers from the Cincinnati National Association of Letter Carriers and other United States Postal Service workers came out with signs, t-shirts, and banners with a short but direct message, "Fight Like Hell."
"We're trying to take care of the American people with delivering of the mail," said Burt Hughes, a retired postal worker.
Speakers at Sunday's rally included Ted Thompson, the Cincinnati National Association of Letter Carriers branch president, Brian Griffin, Executive Secretary-Treasurer for the Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council, local and state elected officials, and other unions and workers.
Hear more from Saturday's rally in the video below:
Each with a message of unity and strength, urging their workers to connect with their elected officials to try to keep major changes from taking shape.
The protest was in response to recent reports that President Donald Trump and his administration have considered an executive order to move the USPS under the Commerce Department and dissolve the USPS's board of directors. Such an executive order has yet to be announced or confirmed.
Regardless, the fear of the USPS becoming private is front of mind for local postal workers and the reason they gathered in protest.
"These proposals would raise shipping rates, driving inflation even higher for businesses and consumers. These proposals would destabilize commerce, affecting small businesses, anywhere from Etsy or eBay, to your major shippers," said Thomspon regarding the concerns in the flyer.
The local union leader said major overhauls would put thousands of jobs at risk, as well as the consumers who use USPS services every day.
"We are not backing down. We are not staying silent. We are not letting anyone dismantle what we’ve built together: Our postal service and our jobs," said Brian Griffin of the Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Council.
On March 17th, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy sent a letter to Congress addressing work between the USPS and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
DeJoy explained that DOGE's work will investigate ways to improve costs in areas such as what he described as the "mismanagement of retirement funds" and review the 31,000 retail center leases.
The postmaster general refuted that this is a step towards privatizing the USPS, writing:
My efforts to address these financial burdens to the organization are aligned with my promise to Congress to achieve break-even financial status through these critically needed reforms along with the self-help initiatives of DFA. I can assure you they are not, as some have suggested, intended surreptitiously to make the organization more suited to privatization, nor do they constitute a "bailout" of any kind. These reforms, which have always been directly reflected in the DFA Plan which is free for anyone to read, would correct egregious, nearly incomprehensible mistakes made by your predecessors in decades past.
As WCPO 9 reported earlier in the year, USPS announced that 10,000 jobs will be cut in part through a voluntary early retirement program.
Over the past week, protesters from various postal worker unions have been making their voices heard. WCPO 9 spoke with American Postal Workers Union members who gathered in Cincinnati's West End on March 20th.
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