Pennsylvania USPS workers form rank-and-file committee: “We call for a struggle that unifies all postal workers”

6 October 2026facebook iconThe following is the founding statement of the Southern Pennsylvania Postal Workers Rank-and-File Committee. It is part of a growing independent movement of postal workers across the US, which also includes recently-formed committees in St. Paul, Minnesota and Springfield, Massachusetts.

To join the committee or for help building your own, fill out the form below or text 1-484-466-8841.

The postal workers of southern Pennsylvania declare the formation of a rank-and-file committee in solidarity with all postal workers in the United States and around the world. We are in solidarity with all workers who confront dangerous speed-up, the absence of safety on the jobs, attacks on our pay and benefits.

We call for a struggle that unifies all postal workers with workers in the parallel, privatized delivery services—UPS, FedEx, Amazon and others—as well as with workers in manufacturing, office and clerical work, and every other industry, in the United States and internationally.

The postal service—a product of the American Revolution—has been systematically bled over decades by both Democratic and Republican parties. We have been forced to operate like a profit-making company despite the clear intention by the Founding Fathers to have the mail system as a universal right to all in the name of having an informed society able to fight back against tyranny.

Instead, we are losing workers: clerks are cut and are being forced to bid against mail handlers in the facilities to keep their jobs while CCAs are being kept as part-time workers forever. We face delivery trucks that reach 130 degrees Fahrenheit, and grueling overwork. At our facility, never a day goes by where we know when we’re getting off. You can’t make an appointment or plan your life around such circumstances.

At the same time, overtime is being removed by the postmaster, who is illicitly deleting our clock rings when we work late, to save money and remove the obligation to pay us our rightful compensation. When this is brought to the attention of our union leaders in the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), our rightful grievances are ignored or bartered away like a bargaining chip between the union leaders and management.

At the national level, the fascist Trump administration has gone to work laying off and firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers through the misnamed “Department of Government Efficiency,” and it has likewise tried to push our own members out of their jobs and close entire post offices. It is attempting the destruction of a public service on behalf of the private delivery corporations that want our work and our routes.

While our service is bled dry and we are told there is no money for jobs, Postmaster General David Steiner—a former executive on the board of private competitor FedEx—has awarded himself generous bonuses, including a $170,000 bonus upon assuming the position in 2025. Congressional reports have cited payments as high as $305,000 during his time at USPS.

Steiner’s office has issued a report threatening the complete destruction of USPS by early next year. The scenarios now on the table include ending six-days-a-week delivery, closing most local post offices (more than 70 percent are deemed “unprofitable”), eliminating the universal service obligation that guarantees every American equal access to the mail, and steep rate hikes. Management has already suspended payments into our pension funds to “save” $400 million on our backs.

Likewise, we oppose the efforts of the existing unions to artificially separate us and weaken our struggles. The National Association of Letter Carriers has led us into a dead end, sending our contract to mediation and arbitration rather than organizing a single day of struggle.

The decision by outgoing NALC president Brian Renfroe to resign his post is a cheap face-saving move by the union so that it can continue to sell us out under the direction of another “leader” who has none of our interests in mind. None of the so-called reformers in the election have a plan to address the challenges we face, nor do they even bother directly stating what the serious issues are.

In a recent public statement, presidential candidate and current NALC vice president James Henry sought to hypocritically call out the “division within our Union,” failing to add that—with a yearly salary that is nearly $486,000—Henry has presided over this “divide” between the workers and the bureaucracy. He acknowledges this was “unmistakably reflected when approximately 71% of voting members rejected the 2023–2026 tentative agreement.”

Henry and the other candidates for leadership are merely vying for the chance to directly control our dues money. Nothing more will change in the election. Furthermore, the election for NALC president is set to conclude following the December 12 deadline of our union contract’s arbitration, meaning we won’t even have any say about the conditions we work under.

The effort to contain us while the destruction of our jobs is underway shows that the NALC, the American Postal Workers Union and the rural carriers union are plotting against us together with our employer. We reject the idea that we can elect the right “pro-worker” leaders to get the job done for us.

As with the 1970 postal worker wildcat strike, any real fight is going to have to come from the efforts of our own members over the heads of the so-called leaders. We must organize ourselves into our own rank-and-file organizations to coordinate and unite our struggles to avoid being co-opted by the union leaders and management.

Thus, we endorse the recent call of the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee for all USPS employees to resist the Trump administration’s efforts to weaponize our jobs to suppress the vote in the upcoming elections. We will not be the instrument of the disenfranchisement of the American people. The efforts to slash spending on the postal service and all other public programs is connected to Trump’s plans for dictatorship, which is being done not because Trump represents some kind of unspeakable evil but because he is seeking to compensate the capitalist investors and shareholders whose interests he serves above all else.

Unlike the official NALC, APWU and rural unions, we call for real worker solidarity and don’t discriminate by trade or employer. All workers—trade union or no trade union—are going through the same things: unsafe work, low pay, long hours.

Can you tell me more about the 1970 postal workers wildcat strike and how it was organized?How does the privatization drive at USPS connect to similar attacks on postal and public services in other countries?Ask more questions at SocialismAI.comAs such, we also endorse the campaign of our fellow worker Will Lehman for president of the United Auto Workers. Will’s campaign embodies the basic principles we stand for: building worker power from the floor up and removing power and decision-making from the overpaid and unaccountable union executives who take our dues and charge us for the “privilege” of being sold out again and again. His fight is our fight, and we extend to him and to autoworkers everywhere our full solidarity.

We vow to fight to defend democratic rights, the economic rights of all workers, and the historic legacy of our institution—a testament to what a revolution can accomplish. The current crisis of American capitalist society means that we need a workers’ revolution to defend all of our rights from a system that can no longer sustain even its own institutions, such as USPS, formed in 1775.

The post office was built by and for working people. We will not surrender it to FedEx, to UPS, to Amazon, or to the political establishment that serves them.

Join us. Build a rank-and-file committee in your own workplace. Unite with the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees. The future of the post office—and of the entire working class—will be decided by our independent, organized struggle.

End the speed-up and pay us for every hour worked.

No privatization—keep the post office a public service.

Reject the sellout union leadership and lead the fight ourselves.

Solidarity with all workers, everywhere—and we won’t suppress the vote.

We call on all postal workers that accept these demands to text us at 1-484-466-8841 or write to us at the link below.