Postal union president focused on keeping USPS an ‘affordable option,’ amid agency’s financial woes
The Postal Service typically sees its best financial results in the first quarter of each fiscal year. That’s because it gets a boost from the year-end holiday season, and political mail whenever there’s a busy election season in November.
But USPS is starting fiscal 2026 in the red. It reported a $1.25 billion net loss for the first quarter. For the same period last year, it posted a rare net profit of $144 million — a brief hope that the agency was rounding the corner on its long-term financial problems.
At a Feb. 5 meeting of the USPS Board of Governors, Postmaster General David Steiner focused on improvements in service performance. USPS delivered 87.3% of first-class mail on time — up from 83.5% for the same period last year.
Jonathan Smith, president of the American Postal Workers Union, took office last November. He’s been a member of APWU since 1988, and previously served as president APWU’s largest local, the New York Metro Area Postal Union.
“Our holiday performance reflects operational improvements and our growing expertise in how we run this massive network, we can and will do better,” Steiner said
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Jonathan Smith, president of the American Postal Workers Union, told Federal News Network in a recent interview that USPS should focus on affordability and improved service to win back customers.
Smith started his leadership role last November. He’s been a member of APWU since 1988, and previously served as president of APWU’s largest local, the New York Metro Area Postal Union.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: Could you tell me a little bit about the platform that you ran on to become APWU president, and how you feel that message resonated with members?
Smith: I ran both mostly as the members’ candidate. A lot of times in the labor movement, people are tired of people pretending to be labor leaders and actually being politicians. What do I mean by that? We have a lot of labor leaders who go and try to get the pulse of their membership, and whatever they think the majority of their members think becomes their opinion, whether they really believe that or not.
I pride myself on being a labor leader based on how I was brought up — that it’s my job to identify what is wrong, and then I have to convince my members that we have to do certain things in order to correct whatever is wrong, or to then make things better, for us as a whole.
People resonated with my message because they wanted to get back to real labor leaders, real people concerned about the issues. They wanted somebody who was concerned about what they were dealing with on the workroom floor. They wanted to deal with safety issues that seemed to be ignored. They wanted to deal with the morale that happened to be seriously low, because of the constant threats of privatization.
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Q: Let’s talk a little bit about the recent significant snowstorm that hit much of the East Coast. APWU, it’s large umbrella of crafts that your union represents. What do you make of the current snow situation, and how USPS is handling the aftermath?
Smith: We’re used to working through storms. When you talk about, ‘We deliver your mail in rain, snow or sleet, through gloom a day,’ we take that very seriously, because we are concerned about the service that we give to the American people.
We understand that when there is a storm, there is nothing more important to the American people than to get packages, to get information, to hear from their loved ones, the elderly to get their medicine. So we cannot let something as little as snow keep us from our mission when some of the things we deliver actually keep people alive.
Q: You mentioned in your opening remarks about fears of privatization. This is something that’s been a long-standing concern for union leadership. One thing that we’ve heard from the current Postmaster General David Steiner is that he’s not interested in privatizing the Postal Service. What do you make of those comments?
Smith: I’ve only met Mr. Steiner once, and it was more of a meet-and-greet meeting. Working at Waste Management, his claim to fame was taking the union [rate] down from 32% to 20%.
I don’t care what he says. I want to see what he does. And when I start seeing him do something — I got an open mind. I’m willing to negotiate with anyone, but I’m not going by his words. Because his actions, based on my research and where he’s been previously, do not match the words that he is bringing to the people that I represent.
Q: Can you tell me your thoughts on the 10-year Delivering for America plan? This is something that happened under Steiner’s predecessor. It means a lot of things, but a lot of it is overhauling the postal network. This is something the union has looked at cautiously. But what do you make of the whole situation?
Smith: I don’t know what to make of it, because I don’t know what Steiner’s version of this 10-year plan is.
I was not in favor of the mission of [former Postmaster General Louis] DeJoy because it went against common sense. If you say that I’m going to put all your mail on trucks and take everything off of planes and say, ‘I’m going to ship a package from New York to California, and it’s going to get there just as fast,’ common sense tells you that that can’t happen.
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I mail a package from one side of the town and to the other side of town, and it takes it two more days than it used to take, and now you say because you’ve got two more days, that package was delivered on time.
You have to realize that in the Constitution, it’s not only our responsibility to deliver mail, but it also says prompt and efficient. That goes into the service mission, because it’s not only you getting your package, it’s getting your package when you expect to get your package, or when you should reasonably expect to receive your packages.
It’s my job to protect the requirements of the contract, but it’s also my job to use common sense. You have to use a common-sense approach, and if it doesn’t make sense, then it cannot pass the smell test of being the best service for the American people.
Q: One other thing that’s been changing a lot recently is prices for mail. The Postal Regulatory Commission is going to put a cap on that. They’re only going to allow USPS to set one price hike on mail once per year for the next couple of years. From an affordability perspective here, what are your concerns about the postal service being an affordable option for the American people?
Smith: I’m looking for the Postal Service not only to be an affordable option, but to be a more realistic option. You have to realize that the Postal Service cannot be related just to the movement of mail. There’s other services that we should be providing to our community.
What about all these electric vehicles — wouldn’t it be nice to have electric vehicle stations at your post offices that we can use? What about when you’re in town and you can’t find a copy machine? We can make copies right there at the Postal Service.
Postal banking was a great idea. We showed that we could be very successful with that. And the other advantage is that we are the most trusted government service, and have been the most trusted government service for a long time, when the American people feel a lot more comfortable having the ability to do these things.
What about giving us the opportunity to deliver liquor and stuff like that? There is a prohibition against that right now. There’s all types of ideas. Privatization is not the idea.
Q: As far as the idea of the Postal Service and their finances, they’ve been posting multibillion-dollar net losses for quite some time, and this is after Congress stepped in. In 2022, they passed postal reform legislation. What do you feel it will take for the Postal Service to turn things around, to be an agency that can manage its books and still deliver for the American people?
Smith: What we have is a crisis of open-mindedness, a crisis of service. You go into the Postal Service and you get frustrated because the line is going outside the door, and when you get inside the door, you see eight windows there, but only two of those windows are open.
You’re saying, ‘Well, where’s the other six people working these windows?’ not realizing that that’s all the employees we have. There is nobody sitting in the back. There are postal workers sitting there, working through their lunch breaks. They get in early, and they leave late. The sacrifices that the postal worker has made need to be commended.
We have proven that we are the only ones who can handle this mission. So the problem is a lack of thinking outside the box, not a lack of finances. And that is, if you get our staffing together, we will remain what we’ve always been for the last 250 years, the best Postal Service in the world.
Q: Last year, former Postmaster General Louis DeJoy agreed to work with DOGE on a couple of issues. One of the things he directed them to take a look at is the Postal Service’s real estate footprint across the country. What are your concerns, as DOGE and USPS continue to take a look at the Postal Service’s presence in so many different communities?
Smith: I come from New York, and I had to fight them off from trying to take a lot of our facilities and closing those facilities. You’ve got to realize that some of those facilities are beautiful, historic facilities and very good locations. But guess what? Every time they tried to close one of those facilities, the proposal was to build condos, to build stuff that does not fit the community that they’re in. It’s a money grab. That’s exactly what it is, and they want these facilities because they’re after money and they’re not after service. They don’t realize that. They keep trying to pigeonhole the Postal Service as a business. When the Postal Service is a service. It is a service. The concentration should be to offer more services to the communities that they serve.
Q: I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you about last year’s peak holiday season — Always a time when Postal Service employees are working long hours to deliver mail and packages to households in its busiest time of the year. What would you say about the USPS workforce’s ability to carry out the holiday season? What have you heard from your members as far as the holiday season went?
Smith: We did what we do every holiday season. We deliver. We did our job to the best of our ability. Now I haven’t heard any major complaints about the delivery service during the peak season, but it is my understanding that we had a very successful season, like we always have, despite some of the obstacles they put in place, such as Delivering for America, which we have no control over. But what we did have control over, we did very well, like we always do, we delivered America’s mail.
Q: APWU has a contract in place through 2027. But beyond that, what do you feel are going to be the issues that are going to wind up on the negotiating table?
Smith: Some of the obvious issues — the protection of our benefits, the protection of our COLA, to try to get a moratorium on privatization.
I think by the time negotiations come around, it will be a more fruitful conversation on what we’re doing with AI. AI is becoming a problem, just not for the Postal Service, but for every industry. What is the use of AI? To eliminate the use of people power, and we put it in the hands of machines.
So these are some of the typical things that I believe that we’re going to be talking about. We’re going to be talking about the great turnover of our workforce. What can we put in place as an incentive to get people to stay at the Postal Service? The specifics of that I’m getting ready for the national convention in August. Those decisions of what is a greater priority beyond those things will be decided by the delegates at the convention.
Q: As far as the artificial intelligence piece of things, what are your concerns for your members, as far as AI goes?
Smith: The very goal of automation is to eliminate the need for people you know, and AI is a concern. As it gets more popular, it becomes a serious threat, not just for postal workers. It’s in whatever industry you’re in.
That is going to expand to every industry. It’s something that’s here to stay, and it’s something that’s going to have to be addressed.
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