The U.S. Postal Service is currently facing a financial crisis alongside concerns about keeping workers safe during the pandemic and preparing for the November election as more states seek to expand access to vote-by-mail programs.

On today’s show, we discuss all this and more with historian Philip Rubio, author of the new book Undelivered. Over the course of the hour, he offers history and context for the current crisis of the USPS, the labor strike of 1970, postal unions, failed efforts to privatize the postal service, mail-in ballots, and more.

Philip F. Rubio is a professor of history at North Carolina A&T State University. Prior to teaching, he worked as a mail carrier for twenty years in Colorado and North Carolina. He is the author of There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality (University of North Carolina Press, 2010) and Undelivered: From the Great Postal Strike of 1970 to the Manufactured Crisis of the U.S. Postal Service (University of North Carolina Press, 2020).

Cover photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash