I retired from the USPS about three years ago, but I still like to hear how my former colleagues are doing. From a recent private e-mail [my own comments in italics in square brackets]:
… I fear the following:
1) A unilateral override of our remote work MOU [Memo of Understanding—a kind of addendum to the union contract]. Trump has recently declared that ONLY HE has the right to interpret the law for the executive branch, and this includes all labor laws. The department of labor won’t matter, and he can just order the post office to ignore arbitration. He’s made a power play to eliminate the independence of any agency. This still has to be challenged in court, and I expect it will. But he’s challenging the system in ways it has not been challenged before, and anything is possible.
2) A unilateral decision to ARBITRARILY FIRE all Probationary Employees. This could involve those across all crafts, as well as those who recently promoted into management (and are going through their EAS [first level of management] probation).
3) A unilateral action by management to start using extreme productivity tracking to try and terminate us. In the federal agencies, all computers are being ordered to be installed with key loggers to track productivity, as if the only method of tracking productivity is how many characters per minute you type, or how many mouse clicks you make. These are not productivity trackers, but metrics designed to terminate people.
4) And if all 3 of these things are on the table, then everything else is as well – such as replacing postal IT with GSA IT. He could try to replace our internal HR with OPM. Anything is possible. After all, he’s the sole arbitrator of the law in his estimation.
The USPS is required by law to deliver, at a uniform price and service level, to all locations in the United States and its territories. How long will that continue if the Muskrats fire all the probationary rural carriers1? And what about delivering mail in Alaska where there are no roads2? Does anybody seriously think that a private for-profit company will do that?
Trump can claim correctly, and probably will, that the Postal Service loses billions annually; but IIUC, that’s almost all due to a legal requirement to fully fund the retirement system for decades, something that no other company does. My understanding is that they at least break even, on average, on actual services rendered; and IIRC, priority mail3 is actually quite profitable.
This is blantantly illegal; but Trump doesn’t care about the law. Republican congresscritters won’t do anything to stop it (they’re all scared of getting primaried, and I’ve read that some of them have even gotten death threats); and SCOTUS’ Gang of Six have shown themselves to be utterly shameless; so we don’t have an effective separation of powers anymore. I’m beginning to lose all hope.
1”Letter carrier” is the official term for the person who delivers mail to your home or P.O. box.
2Mail moves to and from small town post offices in Alaska in small aircraft. Yes, really. I was a programmer on a system that connects desired movements of the mail with available transportation, and “Alaska Contract” is one of the air transportation types.
3The marketeers’ term for what was called “parcel post” when I was growing up. 
; but I didn’t spot any of the keywords that might flag the study as too “woke” for the folks who want to keep the rest of us asleep. (I had thought that the cognitive assessment might be controlled by things like socioeconomic status or educational attainment, but I didn’t see anything about controls at all. Maybe that’s in a different paper.)