For Postal Workers, the Challenges Go Way Beyond Ballots

These are especially challenging times for the Postal Service’s work force of more than 630,000 employees. Beyond chronic understaffing and the fear of operating during a pandemic, they are facing broad changes in the works by a new postmaster general who has promised to bring the system’s financial losses under control. They worry about a push from conservatives to fully privatize mail delivery.

And now, even as they are criticized for delivery delays in many parts of the country, they are under intense public pressure to ensure that mountains of mail-in ballots arrive on time and without further endangering the integrity of the already tumultuous 2020 election.

President Trump has only intensified the challenges for postal workers, and undercut their morale, by promoting baseless accusations about widespread fraud in mail voting. He has also continued his criticism of how the Postal Service has managed its relationship with Amazon, one of its largest customers.

Mr. Trump has long maintained, in the face of evidence to the contrary, that the Postal Service undercharges Amazon, whose founder, Jeff Bezos, also owns The Washington Post.

Mr. Trump has also long derided the Postal Service as a “joke” and Amazon’s “delivery boy.”

Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union, said Mr. Trump’s attacks on the agency were “the ultimate insult to postal workers, especially in a time of pandemic.” His union, which has largely donated to Democratic campaigns, endorsed Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, in June.