Standing Up, Fighting Back!

(This article appears in the September/October 2014 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

In July, I was honored to chair the APWU’s 22nd Biennial National Convention. On the convention’s opening day, I presented the 2,000 assembled delegates with an overview of the State of Our Union. Excerpts of my speech are below.

Brothers and sisters: We are under attack from all quarters – Congress, Wall Street and the Postmaster General himself. Privatization is not a distant danger; it is a direct and immediate threat. A congressionally-manufactured financial crisis is being used to justify new assaults on our jobs and on the 239-year old public Postal Service.

To survive the onslaught, we must transform our union into a fighting, activist organization and we must build a Grand Alliance with the people of the country to defend our national treasure, the United States Postal Service.

Dire Straits

The U.S. labor movement is in dire straits. We are at the lowest rate of unionization in 98 years. This weakened union movement translates into declining wages for workers, a poverty-level minimum wage stuck at $7.25 an hour, and a massive shift away from traditional “defined-benefit” pension plans.

Yet while wages are down, corporate profits are soaring. Income inequality is growing. Think about it: Just six members of the Walmart family have the combined wealth of 42 percent of the U.S. population.

On the political front, our lack of political power is evident. Workers lack independent political expression and are trapped in the lesser-of-two evils politics. Meanwhile, new voter suppression laws are spreading throughout the land, directed at minorities, immigrants and the working class.

For the 99% these are times of “austerity.” Public education is being defunded and undermined. Higher education is out of reach for millions of our youth, and millions of graduates are saddled with debt. VA services are cutback, leading to disastrous results. Social Security and Medicare are constantly in the crosshairs of budget cutters. Everything that stands for the public good – public libraries, parks, schools, utilities, transportation and postal services – are under severe attack, as are public-sector workers and our unions.

It is in this context that we can best understand the drive to privatize postal services, a drive propelled by the domination of the USPS by big mailers.

Standing Up, Fighting Back

But workers are standing up and fighting back. Walmart workers are demanding dignity and a voice at work. Fast food workers are fighting for a living wage. In 2011, 100,000 Wisconsin workers stormed the state capital in defense of their unions. The people of Ohio and California resisted union-busting measures. The Occupy Movement, comprised mostly of young people, burst forth against Wall Street. And the Chicago teachers won a brilliant strike by forming a coalition with parents and the community. In North Carolina the Moral Monday movement is fighting back against voter suppression and in defense of the peoples’ democratic rights, including workers’ rights.

And standing on the history of the victorious postal strike of 1970, we of the APWU are also in the battle in defense of good, union, living-wage jobs.

The Stop Staples campaign is an excellent example of our fighting capacity and bodes well for our union. Staples and the USPS have felt so much heat that they have tried to derail our campaign by changing the name of the program – but not the substance.

The APWU and the other postal unions took a huge step forward when the four presidents formed a Postal Union Alliance. Our unity has manifested itself in the APWU’s unequivocal support for six-day and door delivery, and in the support of our sister unions for theStop Staples campaign. The four unions are now developing a coordinated strategy to fight the new round of threatened plant consolidations.

Looking Forward

Going forward, we have tremendous work to do.

We must develop a Grand Alliance between postal workers and our allies to protect and expand the public Postal Service. A major way to enhance service and strengthen the USPS is by offering basic postal banking – a “public option” to the Wall Street “banksters” who devastated our economy in 2008.

Let’s continue to meet privatization schemes with “street heat.” Let’s win the Staples fight and take that victory to stop the contagion of Village Post Offices, plant closings and consolidations, the wholesale subcontracting of Motor Vehicle Services, the piecemeal outsourcing of Maintenance duties and the subcontracting of Support Services functions.

Our Collective Bargaining Agreement will expire in May 2015 and full-scale preparations are now underway. To succeed, we must launch a campaign among our members and work together to restore rights for current and future postal workers.

In all our activities, it is vitally important that we involve young workers. Let’s continue to fight for Postal Support Employees and other young members to win career opportunities and improved rights and benefits.

Let’s hold firm against regressive postal legislation and fight for real postal reform that protects workers and service.

As we go forward we will vigorously enforce contractual gains of the past and seek ways to speed up the grievance procedure and make it more responsive to the needs of our members.

But while we are doing that, we all must understand that we will not grieve our way to victory on many issues we face. We will not stop plant closings and consolidations with grievances.

We will not Stop Staples with grievances. We will not win expanded services like postal banking with grievances. We will not save our national treasure with grievances. Nor will we grieve our way out of the hostile political environment. All that will take a determined fight.

Let’s rally our members, families and friends in the fight of our lives – to defend the United States Postal Service, our jobs, and the jobs of coming generations. Let’s do our part to revitalize our labor movement at home and abroad. It is time to Stand up and Fight Back!