With election over, postal workers union wants to stop budget cuts
After voting by mail took center stage in the 2020 presidential election, United States Postal Service employees on Tuesday called on the postmaster general to resist implementing more budget cuts within the agency.
Speaking outside the Post Office in Uptown, Keith Richardson, president of the Chicago chapter of the American Postal Workers Union, quipped that postal workers “delivered on Nov. 3” but urged Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to resist making cuts that would hamper timely mail delivery.
“The cuts that he tried to implement before Nov. 3, don’t institute them now,” Richardson said. “We want America’s mail to keep being delivered [for] every customer, every day.”
In the lead-up to the election, the postal service reduced service hours, removed collection boxes and sorting machines, and consolidated some mail processing facilities, resulting in slower deliveries.
Before 2020 ballots were counted, the postal service — led by DeJoy, a donor to President Donald Trump — agreed to reverse the changes to settle a lawsuit brought against the agency in Montana.
Throughout the election, Trump repeatedly and baselessly called into question the integrity of mail-in voting.
“Postal workers are very professional, and they should not be undermined by some political process,” Linda Turney, national business agent for the American Postal Workers Union, said Tuesday. “We are loved by the United States. We are loved by our communities.”
Richardson also called on members of the public to contact their senators and urge them to support the HEROES Act, which would provide $25 billion in emergency funding for the post office.