OPINION:
When David Steiner became U.S. postmaster general in July 2025, many hoped his first order of business would be abandoning his predecessor’s now largely discredited reorganization plan. Instead, he looks to be doubling down on it.
That was and is a mistake.
The U.S. Postal Service is hemorrhaging money. Congress is again trying to decide what to do about it, but is not finding it easy.
Meaningful reform means taking on the politically powerful postal unions, which grew fat and happy and larger under Louis DeJoy, who oversaw the Postal Service during President Trump’s first term and kept it in place into the second.
No elected official wants to fight the unions so close to an election, but Congress may have to anyway. The problems continue to grow.
The Postal Service is a national necessity. It is the only delivery network required by law to provide universal service, but it cannot continue to absorb billions of dollars in losses year after year, and relief without reform or accountability is not a viable long-term solution.
The cost of sending a first-class letter has risen 50% over the past five years, driven by an unsustainable situation created by Mr. DeJoy. The bloated full-time employment rolls, rigid work rules and an intransigent bureaucracy that protects inefficiency at great expense to its customers are hallmarks of today’s Postal Service and aren’t getting the job done.
Mr. Steiner’s path forward should follow a plan that focuses on core competencies and on responsibility for “last-mile” delivery, while outsourcing rather than operating the functions that keep the service running.
Among Mr. DeJoy’s bigger mistakes was trying to turn the Postal Service into an entity that did the work now done more economically through existing public-private partnerships.
His legacy is an organization in which labor costs constitute 70% of total expenditures, the workforce is much larger than required for regular operations, union contracts block modernization, automation accountability and downsizing, and inefficiency is protected rather than corrected.
Mr. Steiner has had nearly a year to change the culture so that management no longer prioritizes labor peace over operational performance or customer service. So far, he has not accomplished much.
That is a bad deal for Americans, who need affordable, reliable mail and package delivery services.
After Mr. DeJoy embarked on a hiring spree, undertaken on the grounds that adding more full-time employees to the payroll was cheaper than seasonal hires, the USPS has nearly the same number of employees as it did 20 years ago, despite a significant decline in the volume of mail it handles daily.
We have seen the results: a $2 billion loss in the second quarter of fiscal year 2026, with the year’s loss projected at $8 billion. By contrast, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says the federal government has reduced its total headcount by 12% since January 2025.
That is 345,000 fewer government jobs.
It may get worse. The unaudited March financials show that USPS is almost $1 billion behind and may lose as much as $9 billion. Mr. Steiner needs to get it in gear and push for what is needed, especially to reverse Mr. DeJoy’s push to insource.
Mr. Steiner should immediately impose a spending and hiring freeze and then expand existing relationships with private-sector partners to deliver transportation, sorting and retail access while bringing internal functions to a “last-mile” focus.
It is time to shed the inefficiencies that make it impossible to achieve financial solvency, even if that means taking on the union bosses who oppose any reform that threatens headcount, work rules or control.
If Mr. Steiner can transform the Postal Service into an entity that serves America’s interests rather than those of an internal bureaucracy, we will get more efficient, performance-based contracting rather than guaranteed employment. We can get modernization and a sustainable cost structure that aligns with mail and package volume realities.
If Mr. Steiner cannot do this, then we will continue to face mounting financial losses, further service performance issues and workforce and investment strategies that bake in higher fixed costs as volumes and revenues decline. Ultimately, USPS will require a taxpayer bailout.
It is a simple choice, made complex only by political considerations. Continue protecting the bureaucracy to pacify the unions, or reform the postal system to efficiently meet USPS’s public service mission of affordable mail and package delivery services to every business and consumer. Congress ought to see that.
• A veteran journalist and former columnist for UPI and U.S. News & World Report, Peter Roff is now affiliated with several Washington-based public policy groups. You can reach him at RoffColumns@GMAIL.com and follow him on social media @TheRoffDraft.
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