BOISE, Idaho — Dozens of postal workers gathered on the steps of the Statehouse Sunday to protest the uncertain future of the United States Postal Service as it is threatened with privatization.
“All these rural cities, they’re all served by us," says Mikey Scanlon, a rural letter carrier, delivering to customers on the outskirts of Boise.
“We’re one of the largest companies that service everybody in this nation — rural, city, major skyscrapers everywhere that you exist in this country, the U.S. Postal Service will take care of you," says Scanlon.
Scanlon and dozens of other mail carriers headed to the statehouse to speak out against what some worry may be the end of the Post Office — which has been around for nearly 250 years.
“There is the possibility of privatizing the post office and dismantling the post office," says Rob Truschka, who has been delivering mail in Boise for 20 years.
He says privatizing the post office would lead to higher shipping costs, longer delivery times for rural customers and impact the jobs of more than 500,000 people employed by the Postal Service.
“We don’t think that the post office should go away. The post office has been here for a long time. The people around the United States, they need the post office," says Truschka. “It’s important to their livelihoods. It’s important to the customers that are out here.”
“We have a lot of rural people in the state and they get mail service they would not get if it goes private," says Tim Grant, a now retired 34-year veteran of the Postal Service.
Grant says one of his main concerns is maintaining universal access to the Postal Service as a constitutional right.
“Now you can mail a letter from here to Alaska for the same price as you can mail it across town. That’s what universal service is all about," says Grant. “This is their mail service, it shouldn’t be contracted out to private enterprise because the service will not be the same. You will not get what you’re getting now."
“We’re doing a good job. We’re getting your stuff to you every day, and we wanna keep doing that like we’ve done for a long time. We just want to keep doing what we’ve done into the future—that’s all," added Scanlon.
