Pouring rain didn't stop more than 100 retired and current Cincinnati postal workers and their supporters from rallying in front of the John Weld Peck Federal Building downtown Sunday.
The letter carriers were there to protest a suggestion by President Donald Trump that he might try to cut as many as 10,000 workers from the U.S. Postal Service — or privatize it entirely.
Trump has called the postal service "a tremendous loser" for the United States. The service ran a roughly $144 million surplus last quarter, but could face billions of dollars in losses this year. Trump has suggested merging it with the U.S. Department of Commerce or parting it out and letting for-profit companies assume its functions.
That, postal workers say, would jeopardize a key function guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and would also have big economic implications.
"There are currently 7.9 million jobs tied to the postal industry," National Association of Letter Carriers Cincinnati Branch 43 President Ted Thompson told the crowd. "These proposals and these attacks on us will have a trickle down effect on them."
The postal service employs more than 640,000 people, including 200,000 letter carriers — the workers who deliver the mail. Those workers deliver more than 376 million pieces of mail a day, NALC says.
Retired letter carrier Steve Helmers and his son Adam were among those who showed up for the Sunday protest. The elder Helmers expressed concerns about how service would suffer for rural communities and places where delivering the mail isn't profitable should the postal service be privatized.
Adam Helmers echoed those concerns. He said the postal service is a public service, not a business, and shouldn't be run like one. He also said he was worried about the proposed job eliminations Trump has floated.
"Cuts are definitely going to hurt," he said. "We're definitely overworked. Last week I almost had 70 hours. As soon as one person calls off or is sick, it's rough on the rest of the postal workers. There's not enough carriers, I don't think."
Workers who process the mail and their supporters held their own rally Thursday outside Cincinnati's main mail processing center on Dalton Avenue in Queensgate. They expressed similar concerns about proposed changes to the postal service.
"If they cut the services, especially in the outlying areas, you could go days without any delivery," Greater Cincinnati Ohio Area Local American Postal Workers Union President Don Hoffrogge said at that event.
Trump, for his part, has pledged that changes won't damage the performance of the postal service — and should improve it.
"We want to have a post office that works well and doesn't lose massive amounts of money," Trump said last month. "We're thinking about doing that, and it'll be a form of a merger, but it'll remain the Postal Service, and I think it'll operate a lot better than it has been over the years."
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