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Cliff Guffey,
President |
Below is a response by former APWU President William Burrus to a question posed online by a union member. Other questions cover a wide range of topics, from contract enforcement to union governance.
Question:
I am a Mail Handler in Huntsville AL. I follow your articles faithfully and share them with co-workers at my plant. Congratulations on your upcoming retirement. You will be deeply missed by ALL union brothers and sisters. Thanks for all you have done for all crafts. I hope you have a wonderful, well-deserved retirement.
Ray, Huntsville (AL) Processing & Distribution Facility
President Burrus:
Thank you for your letter and your kind words. I have devoted the past 43 years of my career attempting to improve conditions for postal employees, and your acknowledgement is satisfying. The struggle between management and the employees is constant as we strive to determine authority and compensation. I have lent my voice on behalf of the employees to help ensure that they get their due.
It is unfortunate that our unions differ in philosophy regarding how workers are best served. As a student of the American labor movement, I have concluded that labor unions should be organized based on the scope of the employer. I believe the defining line should be not the duties workers perform, but where they work; therefore I conclude that all postal employees should be represented by a single union.
Workers gain nothing by limiting the scope of their union’s authority. We should never be defined by the work performed, but by who has the ultimate authority over the work. The union is like a family where individual members may have competing objectives: Our boundaries should be unaffected by our internal differences.
Ironically, your union has accepted the basic premise that labor must partner with others to gather the resources to challenge the employer, but it has expanded outside the postal community to affiliate with a union that has no connection to the Postal Service. There is no logical reason that postal mail handlers are a division of Laborers International while refusing to align in solidarity with their fellow postal workers.
Over the next 11 months I will continue to do all within my power to expand and protect the rights of the employees.
Once again I thank you for your kind comments and I wish you and your family all that you wish for in this holiday season.
Jan. 4, 2010
