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APWU Organizing
The Future Is NOW!

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

The theme is simple enough: “Organizing Is Our Future.” And the APWU is continuing its straightforward strategy to increase union membership, asking that all local and state offices develop committed organizing committees, healthy organizing budgets, and a solid plan of action.

APWU Organizing Scenes From Sacramento Fort Wayne’s Family Effort

For the second year in a row, the APWU organizing campaign is focusing on women in the workforce.

“We want to look back on 2008 and say that the campaign took place in all postal facilities in the United States and its territories,” said union Organization Director Frank A. Romero.

The union’s national headquarters has been providing organizing materials and reimbursing local and state offices 50 percent of the cost of pre-planned and approved organizing drives. “It still all comes down to one-on-one meetings,” said Northeast Regional Coordinator Liz Powell, who is spearheading the APWU “Make It a Family Affair” organizing campaign.

The Women’s Campaign

Women national officers spread the word about the organizing campaign.

“Like last year, the campaign focuses on the special needs of women postal workers, ”Powell said. “Women play an important role in the APWU, advancing the cause of women while fighting to make life better for all postal workers. We want women to reach out to female nonmembers, ‘woman-to-woman,’ and ask them to join.”

Mailings in March and April featured the distribution of organizing kits — buttons, stickers, balloons, flyers, brochures, T-shirts, and, of course, union sign-up forms. The kits were sent to more than five dozen locals and state organizations.

“But mailings are not enough,” Powell said. “We need the one-on-one contact that brought in 6 out of 10 new members last year and that has proven so successful in the past.”

The nationwide effort is being coordinated by a committee composed of the women national officers of the APWU, in conjunction with the Organization Department and APWU President William Burrus.

Although the campaign began during Women’s History Month (March), many locals jump-started their efforts.

These include the North Jersey Area Local, which had signed up 77 members through early April this year and the Cleveland Area Local, which signed up 21 new APWU members in January.

“This is a renewal of the commitment it takes to convince non-members of the compelling reasons to join with us to improve our workplace situation,” Romero said.

Wrapping Up a Secure Future

“We’re seeing some great results from both the “Organizing Is Our Future” campaign and the nationwide women’s campaign,” said APWU President William Burrus. “But there are still far too many non-members who fail to realize that regardless of whether they join, the APWU is their union, too.”

“As their union, we play an important part in all the decisions on their pay and benefits. Our actions determine their livelihood, and the more members we have involved, the stronger we are,” he said. “There is simply no valid reason for refusing to join.”

(Stay tuned to these pages for updates on the “Organizing Is Our Future” and women’s campaigns. If your local has not yet signed on to participate, call 202-842-4227.)

Scenes From Sacramento

Automation clerk Steve Lovell, shown here with steward Maxine Eno, has “re-connected with the APWU.” Dorothy Wilcox has been in the union since 1962. Julie Crutcher, right, a 20-year USPS veteran, is a recently rejoined “new member.”

Inspired perhaps by Dorothy Wilcox, one of the grandest veterans of them all, the Sacramento Area Local kicked off its organizing drive by signing up, among others, several returning veterans.

Steve Lovell, for example, has been a USPS worker since 1996. “I immediately joined the APWU family but — in 1998 — I was detailed to the manager’s office at the Sacramento P&DC, and I felt the APWU was negative towards me, so I left.”

Then, early in 2008, he had a change of heart. “After I had been talking off-and-on with union steward Sharron Jones I decided to re-connect with the APWU cause,” Lovell said. “I’m back because it is the right thing to do.”

Julie Crutcher has worked for the Postal Service for 20 years. “I came back to the union because of the excellent work of the Tour 3 stewards,” she said.

Topnotch work by the Sacramento postal workers’ union is nothing new. Dorothy Wilcox, now in her ninth decade, has been a postal union member there since Jan. 2, 1962.

“On a Wednesday I started work with the post office. The following Monday, my husband suffered a heart attack, and the following week I learned that I was pregnant,” Wilcox said. “Postal management wanted me to quit.

“If it weren’t for the union,” she concluded then (as well as now), “I would not have kept my job.”

Fort Wayne’s Family Effort

The Fort Wayne Area Local had a very successful 2007 membership drive, and Organizing Committee Co-Chair Amy Sutcliffe gives large credit to the campaign’s family atmosphere.

“My two teenage daughters — and their boyfriends — helped out and saw firsthand how crucial ‘family’ is to the labor movement. I give them credit for taking action to address the struggles of working people in America, and to work to help provide for fair treatment of labor issues.”

Sutcliffe said that her daughters also have worked election phone banks for the Central Labor Council. “I am very pleased that their exposure is making them more enthusiastic about being labor activists.”

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