Photo by Matt Cohen.
On a day designated to remember the great Martin Luther King, Jr.—who was shot to death while protesting for the rights of garbage workers in Memphis—nearly fifty postal service workers gathered by the MLK Memorial to demand safer work conditions.
For most letter carriers, “safer work conditions” means not having to deliver letters after dark. Last November, Tyson Barnette—a part-time Postal Service employee in Prince George’s County—was shot and killed while delivering letters well after the sun went down. Police have yet to make any arrests, and Barnette’s killer is still at large. While last night’s rally was part memorial for Barnette—with his family coming up from Rock Hill, S.C.—it was also a rally calling for Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe to improve working conditions and safety for its employees. “Postal Service had a reputation for being a good middle-class job and it’s not anymore,” one postal carrier told the crowd during the rally.
Due to budget cuts and the closure of mail processing plants in recent years, letter carriers say that their routes have become overburdened, making it nearly impossible for workers to finish delivering mail before it gets dark. “The post office recently put out a bulletin that said the number of carriers out after dark has gone up from 20 percent to 40 percent,” one postal worker said to the crowd over the megaphone. “That’s unacceptable.”
But this isn’t an issue that affects just D.C. and the surrounding region. Postal workers from as far as New York City also attended the rally, frustrated by the long hours and fearful for their safety while on the job. Frank Kuget, a letter carrier working out of a Times Square Postal Service station in New York City, told DCist that workers at his station are also worried about staying safe. “When [Barnette] was murdered on the week of Thanksgiving last year, it really hit us hard,” he said. “We saw that it was a direct result of the plant closures and the job cuts that he was out there on that pitch black street making $15 an hour with minimal benefits.”
Workers and representatives from a number of unions — including Communities and Postal Workers United, Community Labor United for Communities and Postal Workers United, Community-Labor United for Postal Jobs and Services, Postal Defenders, and the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch — were on hand to march with the Barnette family from the MLK Memorial to the front of the Postal Service Headquarters in L’Enfant Plaza to deliver their message. “A lot of carriers are scared. I’ve been doing this for 20 years and I’ve never seen anything like this happen,” one postal worker told the crowd.
Eugene Puryear, an activist with the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), expressed his support of the postal workers. “They keep wanting to say that there’s something broken with the Postal Service, but from our perspective the only thing broken with the Postal Service is the Postmaster General and the U.S. Congress who continually disregard and disrespect letter carriers in this country,” he said.
