A couple hundred postal workers and allies rallied outside of Orlando City Hall Monday to protest ongoing concerns about the privatization of the U.S. Postal Service under the corporate-friendly Trump administration. One of four USPS unions, the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, is hosting its annual convention in Orlando this week, and organized the rally. Union members wore red shirts emblazoned “Protect Our Letter Carriers” and held signs that read “Enough Is Enough” and “Stop Privatization — Protect the USPS.”
According to the union, nearly 2 million Floridians live in rural areas that could be disproportionately affected by privatization. That’s because delivering mail to rural communities, while arguably necessary and a net positive, is less profitable. “We service every address every day in the country, no matter how far it is, where it is, or whatever the situation is,” Scott Stanley, a city letter carrier from Rockledge, told Orlando Weekly earlier this year. “You have private shippers that don’t go to every address every day, because it’s not profitable.”
The threat of privatization was similarly floated during Trump’s first term in office, and remained an unresolved, if dormant, concern during the Biden administration.
