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BANGOR — Dozens of Maine postal workers rallied in Bangor Thursday morning to protest against the Trump administration’s apparent efforts to privatize the U.S. Postal Service.
The event is one of many that took place across the country in response to President Trump handing over oversight of the postal service to his commerce department and comments he made regarding a potential “merger.”
“People need to know what’s happening, so they can take action on their own,” said Tom Smith, legislative director for the Bangor Area Local 536 of the American Postal Workers Union. “So, they can let their elected representatives know that ‘no, keep your hands off my postal service, this is ours, it doesn’t belong to the billionaires.”
The USPS is an independent agency of the federal government and a public service, which is why workers said Thursday that privatization would have consequences for everyone — especially rural Mainers who rely on the service for medications and other needs.
“You don’t know it’s there until it’s gone,” said Diane Libby, postal worker and branch president for the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, Eastern Maine. “That’s something people should really take a look at because once it’s gone it’s gone and if they do privatize it rural Maine will not get the service that other cities do.”
Thursday’s event in Bangor was organized by the American Postal Workers Union, along with a protest in Portland, as part of the national Day of Action.
“We’re not going to give up without a fight,” said Libby. “We want our service, we want our universal service, we want to provide that service to our customers and it’s all we’ve ever wanted to do.”
Elon Musk’s DOGE also reportedly plans to cut 10,000 workers and billions of dollars from the USPS budget.
“The biggest misconception I’m trying to educate people on is they keep saying the postal service lost 9 billion dollars, it didn’t It cost that much, because we’re a service,” said Smith. “No one would ever say that the U.S. Navy lost 14 billion dollars by commissioning a new vessel — also an essential service to the people — and that’s what we are.”
The USPS fiscal year report for 2024 found it lost $9.5 billion, with $1.8 billion being considered “controllable losses.”
“The postal service is under attack right now,” said Smith.
