Zachary Groz photo
Post workers and friends march on Elm
Carrying red, white, and blue signs reading “U.S. MAIL NOT FOR SALE” and chanting “Whose Post Office? The People’s Post Office,” roughly 15 U.S. postal workers marched down Elm Street to protest a recently announced Trump- and Musk-led effort to slash the service’s workforce and budget.
That rally took place Thursday afternoon outside the USPS Yale Station office at the corner of Elm and High streets.
The local postal workers and their allies showed up to speak out against a plan detailed in a letter that Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a Trump I appointee who has headed the independent agency since summer 2020, wrote to Congress on March 13.
The letter announced that USPS has entered into an agreement with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to work on “identifying and achieving further efficiencies.”
Under the agreement, per DeJoy’s letter, USPS will be cutting 10,000 staff this month through early retirement buy-outs, skirting a no-layoff clause in the postal workers’ contract, and DOGE will be “reviewing” the agency’s retirement funds, worker’s comp program, unfunded mandates from Congress, and the parallel regulatory commission that sets the post office’s rates.
On Thursday, postal workers in more than 150 cities around the country took to the streets in a day of action to protest what they’re calling a full-on assault by the Trump administration to privatize and “destroy the Postal Service” under the auspices of cost-savings.
In New Haven, the protesters marched and chanted on Elm Street, as cars whizzed by honking their horns to encourage the rally on.
They circulated fliers with quick facts on the Post Office, which, the fliers read, is “enshrined in the U.S. Constitution” and “delivers to every address in the country” in contrast to for-profit delivery companies, who “will only go where they can make a profit.”
“Their ultimate goal is not necessarily to make things efficient but to turn it into a moneymaker,” said Marc Cesare, the president of Local 237 of the American Postal Workers Union. “Turning it into a moneymaker could mean closing down little post offices.”
Rich Neagle, the New Haven steward of the union, added that fighting to keep the Post Office intact as a “public service” uninterested in maximizing profit margins shouldn’t be “a partisan issue.” With major staffing and budget cuts, he said, will come longer delays, more lost mail, and higher costs for less consistent and available service. “So many people rely on the Post Office to get their prescriptions,” said Neagle. “Rural America will get hit the worst.”
The political ramifications of the proposed cuts were also on the minds of some attendees at the rally. “I worry about it for mail-in voting, which was a big step in the right direction, especially in Connecticut,” said Elssa Green, a flutist from Guilford, “and the numbers of postcards that activists are trying to send to alert people about the dates and the places for their polling places all across the country.”
“Every little bit that [Trump] tears apart,” she added, “is going to make things harder for all of us to keep going forward.”
New Haven postal union steward Neagle: “So many people rely on the Post Office to get their prescriptions.”