Portland postal workers rally against Trump USPS changes, ‘degraded’ conditions

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Tina Fisher has been delivering mail for nearly a decade in Portland. She comes from a long line of letter carriers.

“My mother and my grandmother both retired from the post office and I thought, OK, I’m going to be set. This is a place to be when I need to retire,” Fisher told KOIN 6 News. But now, “not so much.”

With the current postal union contract, she had to take a second job as a cashier at a grocery store to make ends meet.

“I don’t want to work two jobs. I don’t want to work 12 to 60 hours. You know, 12 hours a day. I’d rather have a living wage where I can work my hours and go home,” she said.

She and more than 100 other Portland postal workers, union leaders and local politicians joined a nationwide “Fight Like Hell” rally Sunday to demand fair wages and protest proposed changes to the United States Postal Service by President Trump.

The rally, held at the USPS East Portland Post Office, called for living wages and an end to mandatory overtime, as well as the two-tier workforce system. They also protested against President Donald Trump’s intent to fire the Postal Board of Governors, who are responsible for directing an independent USPS.

Elana Pirtle-Guiney and Tiffany Koyama Lane, the President and Vice President of the Portland City Council, were among the speakers at the event. 

Trump also said he may put USPS under the control of the Commerce Department in what would be an executive branch takeover of the agency, which has operated as an independent entity since 1970.

Trump’s announcement also came after the resignation of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy on Monday.

Both the American Postal Workers Union and the NALC cautioned these events could result in privatizing the postal service.

“Privatization would really hurt a lot of rural people, minorities, low income people,” said Theresa Dunas, the executive board member for the National Association of Letter Carriers and a letter carrier herself. “Our rally has morphed from being wages to now, like, OK, help us save our jobs.”

Fisher put it another way.

“We are the Postal Service,” she said. “The Keyword is ‘service’. We are not here to bank a whole bunch of money and become a corporation. We’re here providing a service for every customer or every American in the United States.”

Lauren Pederson, also a letter carrier, said the USPS delivers “ballots, we deliver checks, we deliver letters. We deliver everything.”

Union representatives said they’re also working to get a better contract with pay increases, an end to mandatory overtime as well as better working conditions “like we had having 116-degree weather,” said letter carrier Jae Burlingame. “Man, my shoes literally melted.”

The postal union said they’ve been negotiating for two years and are now in arbitration.

In a statement to KOIN 6 News, USPS Communications Specialist Zachary Laux said: “We respect our employees’ rights to express their opinions and participate in informational picketing while off the clock. If employees choose to take annual leave for the rally during business hours, that’s their prerogative. If some rally without approved leave, that’s a matter for their managers to engage.”