Community Persists for USPS Letter Carriers While Conditions Worsen

Maximillian Alvarez: In an age where we have become so divided on so many issues, it’s astounding that poll after poll continues to show that one of the only federal agencies that the vast majority of Americans actually like is the U.S. Postal Service. The creation of a public, affordable, reliable mail system that guarantees universal access and delivery to everyone across this massive country is one of the most impressive things that the United States has ever accomplished.

For years now, we have watched as the public postal system has been throttled in broad daylight by people who want to kill it and make lots of money in the process. This is not a new problem. So much of the damage that has been done to the USPS was set in motion 20 years ago with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006. Among other things, it required the Postal Service to pre-fund retiree health costs. The USPS has basically been limping on ever since.

Things haven’t gotten any better of late. The Associated Press recently reported, ​“The US Postal Service will run out of cash within a year, unless Congress lifts a decades-old cap and allows the agency to borrow more money… If it doesn’t, the postal service might not be able to pay its employees or vendors by February of 2027 with potentially dire consequences for mail delivery.”

So what is going on with the United States Postal Service? What is it like to work for the USPS under these conditions, and what impact are these constant attacks on the public mail system having on the working people who depend on it? To talk about all of this, I’m really grateful to be joined on the show today by Connor Mauche. Connor is a letter carrier in New York, and he serves as a shop steward for Branch 3 of the National Association of Letter Carriers. I want to give the disclaimer that Connor is speaking here on his own behalf, not on behalf of the USPS or the NALC. Connor, thank you so much for joining me today. I want to ask you to describe for our listeners: From the good to the bad to the ugly, what is it actually like to be a letter carrier in the United States in 2026?

Connor Mauche: Thank you, Max. As carriers, we love this job. I feel like I’m a part of the community because I know the neighborhood. I’ve seen old men fall down the stairs, I’ve called the fire department, stuff like that. That’s not something you get with Amazon or with FedEx. And we’re having to take up a lot of the extra work of the private sector and getting a pittance in those contracts. So it’s untenable, but the fact is, the private market gets so much money because it subsidizes its costs by utilizing us to do the last mile delivery where they won’t go. So the private market would suffer without us also.

Letter carriers were the largest force within the Service, so our contract is the most expensive for the Postal Service. Every time our contract goes up, they always [play] broke because they want to give us the least they can in negotiations. And this happened last time. The incompetence of the last negotiations were so horrendous that our contract expired before they got the new one. The faith we have at the national level is extremely low. 

Alvarez: I wanted to just ask if you could paint even more of a picture of your day-to-day working life. For you as a letter carrier, what does a typical day look like, and how has the nature of that work changed in recent years? 

Mauche: In the past 20 years, there’ve been massive changes in the day-to-day. We’re seeing the middle-class life postal service guaranteed back in the 1970s and 80s slowly decreasing because inflation has hit us. When I started, it was only $18 an hour, and you start off as a temp, so you have up to two years before you can get into a career position. At that point you are just like a glorified runner, a dog, for the Postal Service. They max you at 11-and-a-half hours [per day]. I would work 10 to 14 days in a row without a single day off.

It’s a lot of work, but you feel gratification from having a route, a neighborhood, that you’re responsible for. When I have a day off and I come back to work, everybody knows I wasn’t there the day before.

Sure, now they monitor us and they use GPS to follow you. That was something that, 20 years ago, didn’t exist. Back then, you’d spend four hours on the street, maybe two-and-a-half in the office. Now you spend maybe an hour in the office, and then six-and-a-half on the street. Mail volume has declined by almost 50% since 2006, but they’ve made routes longer. Now I have to use more stairs and I’m outside for longer, so the job has gotten harder on the body. I don’t know a single mailman who’s made it 30 years in his career without a hip replacement or a knee replacement. It takes a huge toll on the body in the long term.

Alvarez: The postman is such an identifiable figure with that kind of humdrum working of daily life. In different types of communities, they’re one of the few non-family figures that you see everyday and that actually have a repeated connection to the community. It’s got me thinking about how people have gotten more isolated and lost that very sense of community. But there are still hints of it, like the fact that we have a postman that we know by name. I wanted to ask, as someone who gets more interaction with people than, I think, most people in this country do ever, how does American society look through your eyes?

Mauche: There’s so many little things that go into the job that makes it personable. Even when crime has happened, I take the edge of like, I don’t want to involve myself too much because, I gotta walk this block the next day. You know, I see a drug deal happen, I don’t care. That’s not my job. I’m not the police. I’m not going to talk to the police. And as a union, we have it on the books. We do not collaborate. Unless you get a court order, I don’t tell you. If Immigration and Customs Enforcement shows up, I don’t know anything. Leave me alone, because I have to actually serve the community here, and I can’t be seen as interfering.

Alvarez: When people hear that the USPS is going to run out of money, it just feels like there’s a lot of ominousness surrounding this beloved agency. So if you could talk straight to your average listener here a bit about the contract negotiations and the sort of core issues there for workers, but also how people should be understanding the state of the USPS right now?

Mauche: We do have a significant problem with leadership at the national level at NALC. This is also a contract year. Wages have just completely not kept up with the workload. I’m really, really betting on this being a year that we can actually turn around, because there are genuine leaders within the union.

I don’t think that the Postal Service is going anywhere because of the detriment it would cause this nation. It’s illegal for us to go on strike, and that’s in our contract, and that’s something we should get rid of. But if we want to do that, there are ways to get around that. The most essential power we have is our labor and striking. People will not let public service like this just go under without a fight.

Alvarez: And what would you say as a final message to fellow Americans out there? Just leave us with a sense of what we would actually be losing if we did lose the USPS, and why this is such an essential service that we need and that we’re gonna really miss if it ever goes away.

Mauche: That’s the key word. It’s a service. I think a lot more people nowadays are understanding that, just like the fire department, the idea of privatizing a public service like this would hurt. Even if you directly only get a couple of mail pieces a year, whether that’s passports or government documents. There are so many essential services that it covers. For it to just disappear overnight, you would feel an effect.

And the postie, that’s a guy on your block who can take care of your grandfather when he falls down the steps. How many times have I heard stories in my own office from my own guys that they’ve saved people’s lives by just taking that little extra effort just to say, ​“Well, I’ve noticed she always gets her mail and she’s been laying on the floor with a broken hip for two days.” That’s a very common story that you will find with guys like us who walk the block and we’re there as a public service, not just to make revenue.

This episode of the Working People Podcast was published on April 1.