Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced that his nearly five-year tenure as the 75th leader of the United States Postal Service would end immediately on March 24.
This announcement comes 10 days after he agreed to work with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the General Services Administration (GSA) on ways to make his department more efficient and six days before the first phase of service enhancements is expected to be implemented.
But DeJoy has expressed his confidence that, despite his departure, “the entirety of the Postal Service will aggressively shape its future and become more efficient, capable, and competitive as it continuously changes and improves to best serve the American public.”
The Postal Service reported a $9.5 billion net loss for fiscal year 2024, up from the $6.5 billion loss reported in 2023.
White House advisor Elon Musk has called for its privatization, and President Donald Trump has suggested it could be moved under the Department of Commerce. But all three men appeared to agree that immediate change was needed.
“It has long been known that the Postal Service has a broken business model that was not financially sustainable without critically necessary and fundamental core change,” DeJoy said in a March 13 letter to Congress. “Fixing a broken organization that had experienced close to $100 billion in losses and was projected to lose another $200 billion, without a bankruptcy proceeding, is a daunting task.”
DeJoy’s final weeks as Postmaster General appeared to be geared toward kickstarting that change. In that letter to Congress, he mentioned that 10,000 employees were set to start voluntary early retirement and that his department had cut 50 million labor hours, resulting in $2.5 billion in savings.
He also asked DOGE to look into the mismanagement of the department’s Workers’ Compensation Program, which he said resulted in $400 million a year in “excessive charges,” and the Postal Regulatory Commission, which he called an “unnecessary agency that has inflicted over $50 billion in damages” to his department.
“While our management team and the men and women of the Postal Service have established the path toward financial sustainability and high operating performance—and we have instituted enormous beneficial change to what had been an adrift and moribund organization—much work remains that is necessary to sustain our positive trajectory,” he said in his retirement statement.
The USPS’s agreement with DOGE drew the ire of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU).
“Our collective bargaining agreement is between the APWU and the Postal Service,“ the union said on March 14. ”Any effort by DOGE, or any other entity, to weaken our union rights or target our contractual protections and working conditions, will be met with immediate and sustained resistance by postal workers.”
DeJoy disclosed in his statement that he informed the Postal Service Board of Governors of his intention to retire in February, and Deputy Postmaster General Doug Tulino will temporarily assume the position until the Postal Service Board of Governors selects a permanent replacement.
“I am confident that Doug will continue our positive momentum during the period when the Governors undertake the important work of identifying and selecting the next Postmaster General,” DeJoy said.
