Mark Gruenberg at People’s World reports from Orlando, Florida that the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) and the National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA) have launched complementary campaigns against the Republican President Donald Trump regime’s threat to privatize the United States Postal Service (USPS). The NRLCA, the smaller of the two, went first, with a mass march of its 500 Convention Delegates, plus supporters, through downtown Orlando, Florida on August 18th. Speakers at the ensuing evening rally, including NRLCA President Don Maston and APWU President Mark Dimondstein, blasted the Trump Administration’s potential preliminary moves towards privatization: Firing the entire Board of Governors of the USPS and parking the Postal Service within the corporate-oriented Commerce Department. Those moves are preludes to Trump’s real goal, selling profitable parts of the USPS to Wall Street and abandoning the rest of the U.S., especially “unprofitable” rural routes. Those routes serve 51 million people. Both Unions stress the USPS not only provides universal service, but also “good, Union, living-wage jobs with fair hiring practices and equal pay for equal work for Workers from all walks of life,” as the APWU put it. “Let’s not sugarcoat it: The threats we face are real and unlike anything I’ve seen in my career,” Maston said in his keynote address to NRLCA delegates before the group set off on its march. “But we’ve shown strength this year -House Resolution (70) now has a bi-partisan majority of co-sponsors because of the pressure you helped build.”

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Photo Courtesy Of The APWU Via People’s World