Henrico U.S. Post Office workers, retirees join nationwide rally for funding, protections for vote-by-mail

U.S. Postal workers lined the street in front of the Richmond Main Post Office at 1801 Brook Road July 28 morning to protest funding cuts to the U.S. Postal Service, holding signs that said ‘Protect Our Public Post Office’ and chanting “The mail is not for sale!”

The postal workers at the event said that more than delayed mail is at stake.

The protest was part of the American Postal Workers Union’s nationwide U.S. Mail Not For Sale campaign, opposing the Trump administration’s moves to cut funds to the U.S. Postal Service, privatize the service and stop mail-in voting.

U.S. Postal Service cuts over the years impact both the workers and the customers said Sandy Terry, vice president of the APWU local 199 and a mail processor at the U.S. Post Office’s Sandston Regional Processing and Distribution Center facility. The site employs 600 employees who process 500,000 packages a day.  

“When a smaller post office is closed, you’re going to go 50 to 100 miles to get your mail from the main post office,” said Terry. “If they cut out some of the carriers, you're not going to be able to get your mail.”

Mail-in-voting is another service that Terry said was crucial to continue despite pressure from President Trump to stop it. On Monday, the Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to clear the way for an executive order from Trump that could dramatically change mail-in voting ahead of November’s midterm elections.

“We do what we have to do in each election no matter what Trump says,” said Terry. “He said he won the election. That's fine. A lot of it was mail-in ballots. So, you can't sit there and blame and talk about mail-in ballots when he used it also. And Joe Biden won it with mail-in ballots. So, we are doing what we have to do to keep it going, but we need the public to step behind us.”

Terry and the other protesters, who were mostly retired postal workers, said they were protecting a crucial American service.

“We’re here to protect the Post Office, which has been around for 250 years,” Terry said. “Funds are diminishing. We're here to protect that purpose and people’s vote.”

He warned that further cuts in funding would impact mail delivery.

“It would affect older people, handicapped people,” Terry said.

'The people need to step up for us'

In this area, there are more than 1,000 people who hold APWU membership.

The APWU has called for postal leadership to support the workers’ vision for the service, more funding to strengthen the Post Office and to protect vote-by-mail rights.

The mail processing center in Sandston processes mail for resident and businesses in the broader Richmond region, including Henrico, Richmond, Chesterfield and Petersburg.

The demonstrators’ requests for increased funding might help residents who over the years have experienced late and missing mail deliveries.

Terry said that cuts to the U.S. Postal Service impact workers’ morale. Decades-long talk of privatization wear on the U.S. Postal Office workers, too, he said.

“We go door-to-door, all the way down to the last mile. In the surrounding counties, the smaller post offices are the ones that people know each other. So, we need to keep everything open that we can,” Terry said.

He called on people to join the APWU’s campaign.

“The people need to step up for us. The people need to call and protect the Postal Service because we're out here for the people,” Terry said. “We are a service, we're not a business, and we need the public to help and stand up for us. Call their congressman, their Senators to tell them to protect our post office. Stop taking money away. Stop trying to privatize the service. This is their post office.”

At the Richmond protest, Pamela Richardson, an APWU national business agent who supports U.S. Postal workers in Washington D.C., Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia said the service is still being funded as it was in the 1990s.

“We don't get any government funding, per se, for the postal service. But in order for us to be competitive, we would like to have that raised. We're out here today protesting all over the United States of America on our day in action to let the public know this is a treasure,” said Richardson.

The USPS (an independent federal entity) is self-funded, relying upon the sale of postage, its services and products instead of taxpayer funds.

“The United States Postal Service belongs to the people. And the things that we are able to do through the mail should not be a part of a political forum because someone's upset that those individuals who don't drive, who have disabilities, who have aged to the point, they can't get to the poll, have this option available to them,” Richardson said.

She said that states like Oregon, which has been providing voting through mail, are models that demonstrate that that system can work.

“The new administration is saying ‘We don't want them to do that. We want to know do they have an ID? Are they a true American born under true citizenship?’ Too many things that tear us apart," said Richardson. "This is a melting pot. The United States of America, everybody is from somewhere. So anyone that comes here and legitimately gets a right to vote through the mail, we want that to continue.”

Cars honked in support of the demonstrators, but the postmaster at the Main Post Office told the group they could not stand on the Post Office property.

“I started out right here. This is not a protest. This is us trying to protect their jobs,” said Linda McFarland Jones, who gestured to the building where she worked for 45 years, visibly upset, as two tow trucks circled the parking lot threatening to remove the demonstrators' cars. “We’re trying to protect this public service.”

Dina Weinstein is the Citizen’s community vitality reporter and a Report for America corps member, covering housing, health and transportation. Support her work and articles like this one by making a contribution to the Citizen.