If you want to see a true example of apathy, look at a typical postal worker. The USPS eliminated 37,000 jobs last year and will keep eliminating jobs. In any other sector of the labor force, an elimination of this kind is done under the guise of saving money by downsizing and privatization. Keep in mind, the real reason is to break the largest existing union, which will lessen money for the anti-GOP fight.
Also, look at where the GOP wants to put USPS wants to put offices—in private mini-post offices within non-union Staples stores. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Staples in floundering. The company initially had 2,000 stores in 26 countries, and now Staples is closing 60 more stores worldwide this year, 15 in the U.S. and 45 in Europe, in an attempt to save 250 stores. Staples’ pays $8.25 an hour versus the $25 an hour for union postal workers.
So how will taking away $25 an hour pay from 37,000 workers going to help the economy?
Again, this attempt to move the USPS into Staples is to break the unions, and apparently save Staples. This attack on the USPS was started by Congressman Darrel Issa, who has a criminal record, and a Congress, which forced the USPS to pre-fund its retirement and health benefits for 75 years in advance, which is why the USPS experiences deficits. It is a guise to break the unions.
The goal of the anti-worker GOP is to ultimately break the two largest unions: the Long Shoremen and the USPS, which would reduce $100,000 union money going into political campaigns on behalf of the wage slaves.
The postal workers who are, and have been, supporting the GOP, must reconsider their support. People must wake up and start fighting on the side that protects their jobs, and it’s not the GOP.
There is an awakening about what is going on because of the selling or the attempt to sell off post office buildings, which 1,100 were constructed during the FDR’s New Deal. These building sites are particularly valuable due to their historic importance, but again the GOP doesn’t care about this. They hate two things: unions and the New Deal.
Just how did the post office union workers get into this mess? I would say overall it was apathy on the part of the workers and union leaders, who did not keep reminding workers what they have and how and why they have it. By keeping workers ignorant of their rights it crack the door open for the GOP anti-union people to force their way in. I hope they have learned; and some have. I know one who is a tireless worker for the USPS union jobs, but it in a bastion of GOP dumbass fellow workers. We have a post mistress who knew nothing about what Issa was doing or why.
I just hope they wake up in time before my post office is moved to a Staples, which our county doesn’t have.
Yes, they are coming for us. Workers need to have one another’s backs because no one else will. Neither the broader labor movement nor the Democratic party are prepared to meet the urgency of this moment. So it’s going to fall upon the rest of us to mount a real resistance against Trump’s authoritarian takeover. We’re going to have to get our hands dirty. I don’t care if you have a good, well-paying union job and you are in the middle class now—if you see a worker being dragged out of his workplace regardless of how skilled the job and potentially taken to another country, you should be ready to be there for that worker. When I.C.E. shows up, gather around and shame them into leaving. It has worked in other places. America is sleep walking into authoritarianism, and if there’s anyone out there who is a member of a labor union that is safe—at this point— and doesn’t think this applies to them. Understand that they just haven’t gotten to you yet. They’re coming for all of us. There are ...
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