The flash point of the demon­stra­tions was in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., where some 250 union mem­bers and sup­port­ers led by APWU Pres­i­dent Mark Dimond­stein sought to enter the pub­lic meet­ing of the USPS Board of Gov­er­nors. The demon­stra­tors were denied entrance, but they kept up a loud demon­stra­tion at the entrance to the USPS head­quar­ters to make their anger known to the Board mem­bers inside, accord­ing to union spokesper­son Sal­ly Davi­d­ow. Protest­ing in sol­i­dar­i­ty with APWU were rep­re­sen­ta­tives of sev­er­al oth­er unions, and Sen. Jon Tester (D‑Montana) and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Nor­ton (D‑D.C.) gave sup­port­ing speeches.

With ral­lies at more than 150 loca­tions nation­wide, the Amer­i­can Postal Work­ers Union (APWU) called for a can­cel­la­tion of plans to close 82 mail pro­cess­ing cen­ters ear­ly next year and the rever­sal of broad­er pri­va­ti­za­tion efforts that elim­i­nate good union jobs.

Union work­ers at the U.S. Postal Ser­vice staged one of their largest nation­al demon­stra­tions to date Novem­ber 14, protest­ing fresh job cuts and con­tin­u­ing efforts to pri­va­tize some post office operations.

A moment of dark lev­i­ty came when the Board announced that it had accept­ed the res­ig­na­tion of Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Patrick Don­a­hoe, a devel­op­ment that was cheered by the union mem­bers. While Donahoe’s res­ig­na­tion was not tied direct­ly to the plan to close the 82 pro­cess­ing cen­ters or oth­er spe­cif­ic job-cut­ting plans, the union has been focus­ing much of its crit­i­cism on Don­a­hoe as the author of many of those ini­tia­tives. Ear­li­er this year, for exam­ple, APWU launched a nation­wide boy­cott of the Sta­ples office sup­plies chain for its part in a Don­a­hoe-engi­neered plan to shift some postal oper­a­tions into the hands of the pri­vate­ly owned, non-union company.

“I think the res­ig­na­tion will be sig­nif­i­cant only it rep­re­sents a pol­i­cy change [at USPS]. If not, we are in the same fight, the same bat­tle” with new Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al Megan Bren­nan, Dimond­stein says. ​“We want the poli­cies of pri­va­ti­za­tion reversed.”

“She can’t pos­si­bly be any worse” than Don­a­hoe, ​“so there is some hope” for a pol­i­cy change, says George Askew, Pres­i­dent of Bal­ti­more-based APWU Local 181. Lead­ing a group of about 30 pro­tes­tors at the city’s main post office Novem­ber 14, Askew said Donahoe’s four-year tenure has been marked by attacks on union jobs and increas­ing anx­i­ety and dis­af­fec­tion among union members.

APWU’s imme­di­ate demand is for a one-year mora­to­ri­um on the pro­cess­ing cen­ter clo­sures now sched­uled for 2015. Accord­ing to Dimond­stein, APWU and the oth­er postal unions have gath­ered the sup­port of 51 U.S. Sen­a­tors in favor of the mora­to­ri­um, and Bren­nan should take this expres­sion of pub­lic sen­ti­ment into account.

“The Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al has the author­i­ty to make the deter­mi­na­tion,” to order a mora­to­ri­um, and Bren­nan should do so when she offi­cial­ly takes office Feb.1, Dimond­stein says.

At the infor­ma­tion­al pick­et line in Bal­ti­more, Local 181 Shop Stew­ard Court­ney Jenk­ins stat­ed that USPS pri­va­ti­za­tion pol­i­cy ​“impacts peo­ple like me, who will have to find work else­where. It affects hun­dreds of thou­sands of us” across the country.

A six-year vet­er­an at the USPS mail facil­i­ty in Linthicum Heights, Mary­land, Jenk­ins said talk among his co-work­ers is ​“appre­hen­sive and stress­ful” over the poten­tial for job cuts. ​“Peo­ple are afraid. They want to know: ​‘Is it com­ing here?’”

Jenk­ins said he was not hope­ful that the appoint­ment of a new Post­mas­ter Gen­er­al would bring any imme­di­ate change.

“All of the [recent job cuts and moves towards pri­va­ti­za­tion] have hap­pened under her watch,” he said, in ref­er­ence to Brennan’s cur­rent posi­tion as the chief oper­at­ing offi­cer of USPS. ​“She was suc­cess­ful at USPS [in earn­ing pro­mo­tion] by fol­low­ing along with Don­a­hoe the whole time. She would have to change her stripes,” to agree with the union demands for pol­i­cy changes, he says.