>> The U.S.

Postal Service has been facing challenges for years following the rise of the Internet and subsequent decline in physical mail.

The situation has really gotten recently gotten even more complicated.

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, who is responsible for overseeing daily operations for the U.S. P S announced his resignation last week.

It comes as the Postal Service says it's working with Elon Musk's Department of government efficiency to cut costs, including slashing 10,000 jobs.

Joining us now with more on what it could mean for the future of the Postal Service and the potential impact on mail delivery.

Our Melissa Rake straw executive vice president of the National Association of Letter Carriers 25 and Michael Care National Business agent for the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 11.

Thanks you both for joining us.

We appreciate it.

Melissa.

Let's start with you, please.

There are some critics of the USPS.

They want the service to be privatized or merged with the U.S. Department of Commerce.

>> How do you think those changes would affect service?

>> Well, it would.

We can look at the model from the Royal Mail in England.

They privatized in 2013.

It increased costs for Baylor's and consumers.

It slowed down services and increased pension obligations and the mismanagement of pension funds.

So we can expect the same thing here.

What do you think the same thing would play out here?

Because what they wanted to is private eyes the profitable aspects like parcel delivery and then leave the unprofitable aspects like letter delivery on the socialize government services and over.

51 million homes in the U.S. that are not service spent any private carriers that the Postal Service would have service.

And the reason that private companies don't go there because it doesn't make a profit.

Michael Carrick, Prime privatization were to happen.

What would that mean for for local customers, especially those who are in lower income or are high crime areas.

>> Yeah, I mean, the the 2 main things we're looking be higher costs less service.

So a private communal pool service has universal service mandate, meaning that we're going to go everywhere every day, no matter what it is, we deliver what we have.

We take whatever the you know, the customer wants to put into the mail stream and that serve that universal Service has served America you know, well, over 200 years and if they start dismantling the network and selling off parts of the business and a private company, you have to, you know, come in.

Of course, they're going to go where it's more profitable.

They're going to go where it's safe go, you know, to do so by, for example, to Sunday was a Chicago.

Amazon doesn't want to deliver the packages.

They take it to the postal DOT because why we know it's universal service mandate.

So if you want to make sure get that service is going to be, you know, uniform that everyone is going to receive the service and you want to make sure that those costs are going to be equitable and you're not going to be gouged by a private company.

You have to have a public postal service.

At the same time, there have been, you know, complaints for years about the quality of service of USPS, Michael, in ideal world.

What what do you think USPS needs in order to to stay afloat?

>> Yeah, I mean, there's there's some financial things.

So first of all, the Postal Service doesn't receive any taxpayer money whatsoever.

The whole network in the system and our salaries as letter carriers, every everything is funded by postage.

You know, the whole thing.

So it's not like the postal service is a burden to anyone right now is just a service to the American people.

You have a live person who's out in every community, at least 6 days a week and that lies person.

You're not paying for your tax money is not paying for that.

But while we're out there making our deliveries were also looking out for the people in the community, we run the largest food drive in America every year were big contributors to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.

And we're out there, you know, if if you're you know, you want to check on grandmother, you know, whatever, making sure the kids get to and from school, you know, that kind of thing.

So the value of the Postal Service Network is is high.

I think.

>> That said, Melissa, the service lost 6.5 billion dollars in Lost 9.5 billion in 2024, is it possible to to right the ship?

>> It absolutely is possible.

You also have to someone running the Postal Service that's interested in investing in it and having it thrive.

This last quarter, the Postal Service did make a profit, but I think people should also keep in mind that this is a public service not designed to make profits and we can actually offer more services to a lot of communities that may be underserved.

There's been talks in the past about postal banking services, high-speed Internet.

Solar panels on all of our buildings.

That could help feed into the electric supply and communities charging stations for electronic vehicles in areas that don't have that.

There's plenty of expansion of services that we could provide.

And when you look over the last couple years with postmaster DeJoy.

He was trying to simply push parcel delivery.

Any slowed first kept class mail increase prices which caused us to lose some business.

So those kind of things it could be more home every consumer and not just focusing on the parcel delivery to towns like that.

You think the agency could afford to think more creatively to support itself?

Absolutely.

In the past we have seen the post office for Banking services for underserved communities.

There are underbanked communities all across this country, whether it be in the city of Chicago or in more rural areas.

Michael, we just mentioned Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, but he's announced that he is stepping down due He's one And do you think leadership has done enough to bolster the agency?

And are you concerned that, you know, in absence of this leadership?

>> That the agency might suffer?

Yeah, we're pretty concerned about who will be taking over the helm of the United States Postal Service.

I think that there are some things that are outside of the agency's control.

There's like there's some financial things, accounting, things dealing with it.

pension plans, W C p pain minutes are calculated that if you look at some of the things that postmaster DeJoy was putting out prior to him leaving the agency was true.

You know, those are things that through changes.

A lot things like that would help stabilize the finances of the postal service.

But at the end of the day, the Postal Service has to reinvent itself as the delivery mechanism for America in the in the modern era.

And that's not going to happen overnight.

But I think it's well worth it to do vest.

Like right now, they're redoing the whole fleet.

You know, the next generation delivery vehicle to be out there.

So electric fleet.

There's a lot of things that and the Postal Service has to position itself to be able to deliver packages officially and quickly, you know, to the American people because where?

Yeah, we've delivered everything all the time, right?

Whatever comes into the mail stream.

If the product of the future is going to be small packages that we have to be able to live small packages to American people.

Officials and we're almost out of time.

But Melissa, you know the Postal Service, it's older than the country itself is.

you know, tied to our American identity in the stamps.

>> That sometimes people collect being sort and it was once a symbol of career stability for many people to work as a postal worker.

What do you think people are losing?

If we if we lose an institution like the Postal Service in about 20 seconds So the Postal Service is part of the fabric of American communities all across this country.

We look out for our customers.

>> We check on your grandparents.

We check on people when they're on vacation were part of their whole, you know, looking over their homes and sort of thing all across this country.

We saw the expansion of roads and railroads to connect post offices.

It was the original Internet and it's going to continue to offer the services that modern day Internet