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Taking for Granted What So Many Want

(This article first appeared in the May/June 2008 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine.)

It’s still early in 2008, and the upgrades have gone into effect for all APWU-represented bargaining-unit employees.

As of March 15, top-step Level 5 postal employees are being paid $50,018 a year; Level 6 employees have annual salaries of $51,049; and clerks at Level 7 are earning $52,191.

In addition, over the course of the 2006- 2010 contract, the following will be added to your salaries: a 1.2 percent pay raise on Nov. 21, 2009, and five Cost-of-Living Adjustments. Even with one COLA of zero, the last five adjustments have resulted in average salary gains of nearly $1,000 annually.

And consider that APWU-represented employees have health-insurance benefits that are topnotch, with an employer-paid share that is the envy of other public employees as well as a growing number in the private sector; that the job security is unmatched; and that employees are eligible for night differential and Sunday premium pay.

If that’s not enough, let’s take a look at:

• Protection of jobs against the impact of technology;
  
  
• Safety-and-health provisions that ensure secure working conditions;
  
  
• “Just cause” protection against unfair disciplinary measures; and
  
  
• The guarantee of a full-time career workforce in 200 work-year installations.

There are those who would say: “Yeah, so what?” To them, we say: “Well, look around.”

Look at family members, neighbors, and the far too many working folks nationwide who don’t begin to have what we all too often take for granted.

Anyone who has been paying attention at all for the last several years can see that working folks in this country are moving — have been pushed — in the wrong direction.

Collective Action

As postal employees, we are reaping the collective benefits of nearly four decades of collective bargaining. All of the above are a direct result of contract negotiations.

Collective bargaining has given us a better standard of living, and peace of mind that we can maintain that quality of life.

But we always are at risk for letting that quality slip away. Apathy is a terrible thing and it leads to complacency — a sense that others will fight your battles for you. Far too many of your co-workers — union members and non-members alike — are content to contribute nothing, to let the APWU provide advancements and protections.

All of us face many challenges in our lives, and in this day and age, merely providing for and raising a family is a challenge. Protecting and improving on all of the benefits achieved by the APWU for its members also is a great challenge.

What to Do

So what can we do — what can you do? What can be done to ensure that the steps taken by the union and those we represent don’t take us backwards? How can we avoid the fate of far too many working people in this country?

First of all, one of the greatest challenges for organized labor and working people is getting the right people in the right places — the U.S. Congress and the presidency. Change at the top is a top priority, now more than ever before.

Stop and think what has happened nationwide over the past dozen years or so. Job losses, a sense that we’re slipping in what we hoped to have for retirement, for the quality of the future for our children and grandchildren. Look at the high debt that future generations are faced with.

It’s time to take an interest: And to take note that organized labor, which is often referred to as a “special-interest group,” includes you. With your help, the labor movement speaks for you.

America needs you to get this country back on track. The APWU needs you to help us — organized labor, the voice of working men and women and their families — to make that happen.

Our elected representatives on Capitol Hill and in the White House work for us — not Wall Street; not the oil industry; not the pharmaceutical companies; not the military/industrial complex. If we’ve learned nothing else, it’s that what’s good for those institutions often is not good for America.

Working people made America great, and it’s up to us to help restore its greatness.

Please work for the candidates that speak and act for working families, then vote; it’s your right to decide this country’s future.

The votes cast in the November elections will represent the most important collective decisions made by working folks in this country in the last 50 years. We can get things going in the right direction again: It’s time to take back America, and we are the ones who can make it happen.

All the benefits that the APWU has achieved for you are benefits that all working Americans have a right to.

Let’s make it happen!

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