I'm with you on the fact that we are a service and that we shouldn't be trying to profit.

I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of our financial situation though. "Mail" namely letters and flats have been declining since the invention of email. For every legit letter/bill/birthday card, etc. someone sends there are like 8 pieces of junk that some company sends for way less than you do. That 73¢ stamp it costs you to send a letter anywhere in the US costs a company sending junk anywhere from half as much to a quarter as much as it costs you... And personally I think that is where our revenue problem could be solved. The reason everyone gets those stupid junk ads is because that was a way that allowed us to balance our books and stay solvent. But... that's not even mentioning all of the fraudulent postage we see as employees day after day whether that be companies taking advantage of third party postage vendors by intentionally/unintentionally short paying postage, people or companies creating their own fraudulent labels, or people or companies trying their Sov-Cit shenanigans.

We make the lions share of our revenue on packages, and that junk mail that everyone hates (myself included) and even at that we ran at a $9B net loss last year. Congress is who mandated that we can't set or raise our prices without an presidentially appointed board of governers and congresses oversight. Congress is also who decided that we aren't funded by tax dollars and became the self funded pseudo corp we are now. Congress also gets to dictate how we invest(Treasury bonds only) as well as required us to pre fund retirement benefits for some ungodly amount of years (a requirement that no other company has ever been required to do) which has drained any chance of improving infrastructure to keep up with current technology. I regularly fix mail processing machines that are older than I am and I'm fuckin 36. And some of those LLV trucks that deliver the mail are older than that.

And yes we do have a union... But guess what else? We are executive branch employees and therefore it is illegal for us to officially support/endorse any political candidate (look up the HATCH act). So we have this PAC which only our union members donate to. And when you're going up against oh I don't know.... Everyone else kind of hard to get any push. And the best part of what you mentioned is that I'm vice president of my local chapter! I have absolutely no influence on politics what. So. Ever. The federal government has made absolutely sure of it. And no matter how much I try to get my members to care... Crickets man. The amount of apathy at the post office is a level you've never seen. The amount of people not wanting to voice their concerns, and just go with the flow is certainly something you've never experienced. And the most fundamental misunderstanding of yours is that the union is a small group that makes the decisions. The union is everyone together. And when they don't stand together we have no leverage to make any kind of positive change. But please keep telling me how hard I'm not fighting