Black postal workers worry USPS changes could impact job security
In 'Hollywood Shuffle,' Bobby Taylor observed how 'There’s always work at the post office.' But is there?
In the 1987 Black comedy Hollywood Shuffle, Bobby Taylor, the character played by director-star Robert Townsend, shrewdly stated: “There’s always work at the post office.” But is there?
For years, scholars have written that Black postal workers have played a critical role in the U.S. labor and Black equality movements. Yet, recent measures implemented by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy have raised concerns that the supposedly cost-cutting changes could seriously disrupt how the U.S. Postal Service has been a source of African American middle-class prosperity for generations.
In a recent report from NPR, a retired Philadelphia mail carrier said that the agency helped him provide his family with a good life.
“I was able to raise them, help pay for my son’s college education, provide a good middle-class lifestyle for us,” said Garry Simmons, who retired from the agency in 2017.
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The NPR report notes that the USPS has employed African Americans since the end of the Civil War, when Congress passed a law that ended Whites-only hiring practices for the mail delivery service.
“African Americans, starting with Union Army veterans, abolitionists and others, began finding their way into this government job,” says Phil Rubio, a history professor at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University whose also written several books on African American workers and the USPS.
Over 27% of postal service employees are Black.
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Actor Danny Glover has advocated for the preservation of Black employment at the USPS. In 2018, the actor wrote an opinion piece opposing the privatization of the agency.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a $25 billion aid package in August, but the Senate is not expected to take up the bill, and the White House has threatened to veto it.
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The USPS finds itself in the spotlight as millions of absentee ballots for November’s 2020 presidential election are expected to be used across the nation amid America’s coronavirus pandemic.
Postmaster General DeJoy has suspended his controversial budget-cutting measures until after the election in November.
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