U.S. Postal Service workers protest outside Huntington Station post office against potential privatization

Letter carriers troubled over the prospect of the U.S. Postal Service's privatization by the Trump administration protested outside a Huntington Station post office on Sunday, chanting "U.S. mail, not for sale."

Hundreds lined up outside the post office on East Jericho Turnpike to share their discontent at the rally organized by the National Association of Letter Carriers union after President Donald Trump said he was considering transferring the independent postal service into the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The U.S. Postal Service has been an independent agency in the executive branch since 1971. Some labor unions and other experts see the prospect of the agency being folded into the U.S. Department of Commerce as a step toward USPS privatization. That could endanger postal workers' jobs, they say, and could mean a reduction in important deliveries such as ballots and medications, particularly in rural areas where the costs of services are greater.

Richard McLehose, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 6000, a labor union that represents at least 4,000 active and retired letter carriers on Long Island, said the USPS offers an essential service to the country.

"And once you pull that plug, and multibillionaires get their hands in on all this, you know, the whole country would be worse off," he said.

The decline of first-class mail and other factors have spurred financial problems for the U.S. Postal Service, a largely self-funded approximately $78 billion-a-year agency. The problems have included $87.5 billion in losses between 2017 and 2020. Louis DeJoy, the outgoing postmaster general, in a letter to Congress last week said that the service would slash 10,000 workers within a month and billions from its budget.

"We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money," Trump said during the swearing-in of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick last month.

In December, before taking office, Trump called privatization "an idea a lot of people have had for a long time."

"We’re looking at it," he added.

National Association of Letter Carriers officials and members at the Huntington Station rally agreed that improvements can be made, including a better investment of retirement funds. But they maintained that the answer is not privatization.

Mona Jean-Charles, whose route is in Medford, has been a letter carrier since 1997.

On Sunday afternoon, she held a sign and encouraged drivers on the street to honk in support of workers who have, in many cases, become community fixtures.

"We were out there during the pandemic when we didn’t know what we were dealing with," she said. "The post office never shut down."

"And what do the mail carriers get?" she said. "Nothing."

Politicians on both sides of the aisle came out in support of the workers on Sunday.

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) said he stands firmly against privatization.

"These postal carriers do a hell of a job uniting the country’s communications, whether it’s a rural area, suburban like here or urban," he said. "Americans rely on our postal service, and we should keep it federal."

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) said he wants the government to be more efficient, but doesn’t want to "destroy people’s lives in the process."

"We want to use common sense to try to make things more efficient," he said.

Jake Napolitano, 24, started working as a clerk at a post office in Medford last September. Napolitano  believes the work to be honorable and said that the post office "creates a stronger community."

But the talk of privatization threatens "my job" and "my future," he said.

"And it dissuades a new generation of workers coming to work for the federal government," he said.

With AP

By Tiffany Cusaac-Smith

tiffany.cusaac-smith@newsday.com@T_Cusaac

Tiffany Cusaac-Smith is a general assignment reporter for Newsday. She previously worked at USA TODAY and is an alum of Howard University.