According to the dominant narrative, Amazon.com is the trailblazer of online retail in the twenty-first century; the United States Postal Service is a floundering, outdated public agency. Fittingly, most media coverage of the recent deal between the two to start offering Sunday package delivery paints it as a “lifeline” for the ailing USPS. But the current crisis offers the possibility for a transformative overhaul of the postal service — a transformation for which postal workers appear increasingly willing to fight.

The USPS is, indeed, ailing. In the fiscal year that ended on September 30, 2013, it reported a loss of $4 billion. And these numbers were an improvement compared its record loss of $16 billion in 2012. In October, chief financial officer Joe Corbett announced the agency has a dangerously low cash reserve — only five days of operating cash on hand — leaving the agency highly exposed to risk if the economy takes even a slight downturn.

Many look at the USPS’s financial woes as an indication that their business model has simply been rendered obsolete by the advent of email: “Nobody sends letters anymore!” Superficially, this seems plausible: the USPS has suffered revenue losses due to the decline in first-class mail volume. But parcel mail volume is actually on an upward trajectory, and will likely continue to go up as more people shop online. (If the Amazon/USPS partnership proves successful, other companies whose shipping traffic helps make up the $186 billion e-commerce market will likely pursue Sunday delivery, a potential windfall for the postal service.) Blaming the financial woes of the USPS on the internet alone isn’t sufficient.