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CASPER, Wyo. — Casper’s United States Postal Service employees are in a fighting mood as forces in Washington, D.C., move to drastically reshape the organization.
According to Rene Eberhardt, Casper letter carrier and president of the state letter carrier’s association, a “Fight Like Hell” rally will take place at Washington Park on Sunday, March 23 from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. to raise awareness of what privatization or a dramatic restructuring of the service means to Wyoming residents.
“Regardless of politics — I don’t care if you’re Republican or a Democrat — nobody has voted to eliminate and destroy the public’s Postal Service,” she said.
The USPS traces its roots back 250 years. In 1970, it was moved from a cabinet department to an independent agency under the executive branch. Critics of the agency have long pushed for privatization — an idea that President Donald Trump, his hand-picked Department of Government Efficiency and multi-billionaire industrialist Elon Musk support — or a merger with the Department of Commerce.
Rene and many who support the agency say the result would be disastrous, particularly for rural Americans.
“You’d see the larger markets that are more profitable being swooped up and taken to provide service, and other areas, even here in Wyoming, will be left in the dust,” she said.
Privatization in other countries has yielded mixed results. While Germany’s service was successfully privatized in the 1990s, the U.K.’s Royal Mail was privatized in 2013 and continues to lose millions annually. Prices tend to be higher for delivery in much of Europe as well. According to a 2020 Mother Jones story, sending a letter in Denmark costs more than $4. Other areas see significantly lower charges, but they are all higher than the average U.S. letter.
Millions of Americans rely on the USPS for delivery of important medications, Social Security checks and voting, Rene said.
The USPS is often used in the final step in contract delivery from private carriers such as FedEx and UPS, she said.
Rene said whatever profits the USPS makes are taken by the federal government and redistributed. “We don’t take taxpayer dollars but we are still controlled by Congress,” she said. “We can’t charge a full surcharge like UPS when fuel prices go up.”
The USPS employs some 600,000 people nationwide, around 45,000 of which are veterans, she said. “These are good-paying middle-class jobs that will be affected,” she added.
The public is welcome to join the rally March 23, and food will be available, she said.
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