How Many African Americans Work For The Us Postal Service

Josh Dubose did non intend to become a mail service carrier. Although his begetter, his stepmother, his sister and at to the lowest degree three uncles worked for the U.S. Postal Service, Dubose saw something different for himself.

Yet sixteen years into his career, he delivers mail in Prince George's Canton, Maryland. In his long ties to the Mail, Dubose and his family stand for a small slice of the nearly 21 percent of postal workers who are Blackness, according to the Mail. And those workers are waiting to learn their fates as the federal government weighs sweeping changes to the mail system that could cut jobs and services.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy recently said he would postpone plans to decrease the number of postal workers and brand other cuts until after the ballot, following swift backlash. Still, the proposed cuts could affect the livelihoods of a lot of Blackness people.

"This isn't the kickoff time I heard virtually business organisation for a lack of funding," Dubose said. "This feels different, though. At the aforementioned time, it e'er gets funded. So I'm taking the aforementioned arroyo — we will be all right."

Despite DeJoy'southward conclusion to postpone his cuts, fiscal issues have been a concern inside the Mail service for years, and the quantity of letters has drastically diminished while the volume of parcel delivery has risen during the coronavirus pandemic.

Philip F. Rubio, a history professor at Due north Carolina A&T State University, wrote the book "In that location's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality," published in 2010.

Not only has the mail service function "been vital to Black community development, but Blackness postal worker activism changed the Post Function and its unions," Rubio wrote. "This is a dynamic history, one that involves narratives of migration, militancy, community, and negotiation — and all at a workplace that African Americans saw as being inclusively, not exclusively, theirs."

A 1949 Ebony magazine article said Black postal workers had earned "customs prestige" with secure, reliable jobs that benefited their neighborhoods.

Slowly, that condition for the Black carrier has diminished, according to some of the postal workers who spoke to NBC News. But they maintain that their commitment persists, even during a pandemic and at a time when their health and paychecks are in jeopardy.

Some other postal worker who spoke with NBC News simply did not want to be identified said their work tin be a threat to their personal safety and now their wellness because of the COVID-nineteen pandemic, and however mail carriers have not stopped working, despite the movement to scale down Post.

Jay Thurmond, 46, a postal worker in Chicago, said he is bothered past the Mail's being tossed around like a political football, especially because of the fashion it dismisses Black workers.

"It's a tactic," said Thurmond, a post handler in Chicago for 25 years. "The Mail has been around forever, and we have a organisation, and information technology works."

He added, "It'south more than than work. Information technology'south a service. When your baby needs something or our troops in Afghanistan need something, you tin can trust the postal system. But you lot can't trust us with ballots? Information technology doesn't make sense."

Democrats passed a $25 billion bill for Postal Service in the next coronavirus recovery bill over the weekend to aid accost those concerns, only the actions from the top tell a story of undercutting the Postal Service's power to function at full chapters.

In the rut of this battle, which places their jobs in a tenuous situation, Blackness postal workers insist that their focus remains on the work.

Dubose said the delivery to emptying their trucks is strong, peculiarly in communities of color.

"It was supposed to be a temporary job, but I'm even so hither, and it's a job I do with pride," he said. "Information technology's not easy. We load our trucks each morning and nosotros work until all the mail is delivered. That's why you lot sometimes run into carriers working at night — sometimes not in the safest neighborhoods. But if people trust us with their bills, altogether cards, packages, I don't see why a election would be whatever unlike. We will deliver what'southward on the truck."