Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Welcome Tock It Up and Hear, a podcast about things
Speaker 2: falling apart and putting them back together again. I'm your host,
Speaker 2: Bio long so long ago, in a galaxy far far away,
Speaker 2: we talked about the collapse of the US Postal Service
Speaker 2: and the absolute horror show that's been inflicted on postal workers.
Speaker 2: When we last left our intrepid heroes, things were not great.
Speaker 2: They have continued to be not great. And with us
Speaker 2: to talk about this entire shit show is bad Mouth.
Speaker 2: He's a letter carrier and for it Worth and Tommy Espinoza,
Speaker 2: who is a former letter carrier and former union steward
Speaker 2: for the Post Office Union. That one. Yeah, look, it's
Speaker 2: like I got up at seven am this morning. It's
Speaker 2: up and that as I got up, you're getting you're
Speaker 2: getting tired. Via, But both of you two, welcome to
Speaker 2: the show, and I'm excited to talk to you both.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great to be back.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So all right, let's start in a place where
Speaker 2: many things start, which is to say, the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: the full crow upon which history pivoted. So one of
Speaker 2: the things that we talked about, listener sort of last
Speaker 2: episode is that post office workers are not legally allowed
Speaker 2: to go on strike. This is sort of nonsense, but
Speaker 2: it also doesn't mean that it's never happened. Oh, by
Speaker 2: the way, is this we're about to talk about wildcat
Speaker 2: strike disclaimers? No one here represents a union, there speaking
Speaker 2: of their individual capacity, et cetera, et cetera. None of
Speaker 2: this is legal advice. I do I have any more
Speaker 2: caveats that we usually say for these things. That's roughly
Speaker 2: all of them. Yeah, but did you want to talk
Speaker 2: about sort of the last time that things kind of
Speaker 2: looked like this and what happens?
Speaker 4: Yeah, tell me you want to take that one. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, just going back to the nineteen seventies, the working
Speaker 5: conditions for a letter carriers were so bad that most
Speaker 5: of them couldn't afford the cost of living. They found
Speaker 5: themselves in a position where they are working for a
Speaker 5: quasi federal position and are finding themselves on welfare, struggling
Speaker 5: just to find the means to get to work, oftentimes
Speaker 5: having to work a second job if they even have
Speaker 5: time for a second job.
Speaker 3: Because the Post Office has.
Speaker 5: And still is very good at skipping around a lot
Speaker 5: of labor laws. I think nowadays people probably work around
Speaker 5: sixty hour weeks. I think probably at a minimal around
Speaker 5: fifty hour weeks, especially around the holidays. And it's not
Speaker 5: just letter carriers, this is people inside of the distribution centers,
Speaker 5: inside of the warehouses.
Speaker 3: Things were not good.
Speaker 5: And on top of the actual working conditions themselves, the
Speaker 5: environment was incredibly toxic. There was a long history of abuse.
Speaker 5: You're dangling people's livelihood over their head. Think you're like
Speaker 5: holding a carrot over them, know, and it really pushed
Speaker 5: people to an edge. We saw a lot of violence
Speaker 5: on the workroom floor, not only from supervisors but from
Speaker 5: carriers that just snapped.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a time of great disparity.
Speaker 6: Yeah. The thing with the post office is tom was
Speaker 6: mentioned and they dangled a carrot, but there's never any
Speaker 6: goddamn carrot. It's all stick. It's supposed to be carrot
Speaker 6: and stick, it's all stick. There's no carrot there. Management
Speaker 6: in the post office is just trying to get you
Speaker 6: to move as fast as possible and cut corners, and
Speaker 6: that erode safety, it erodes service, and it just a toxic, horrible,
Speaker 6: horrible environment. And so back in the seventies before the
Speaker 6: wildcat strike, it was illegal then, just like it's illegal now.
Speaker 6: The NELC National Association of Letter Carriers Congress called all
Speaker 6: the shots like we had some collective bargaining rights but
Speaker 6: not full collective bargaining rights. But like back then, adjusted
Speaker 6: for inflation, starting wage was fifty thousand a year around
Speaker 6: about and it topped out at about sixty eight thousand
Speaker 6: dollars adjusted for inflation, and that took twenty one years
Speaker 6: to get to that point. Yeah, so it's pretty wild
Speaker 6: and like very similar to today. Now starting wage adjusted
Speaker 6: for inflation is just over forty thousand dollars before taxes.
Speaker 6: So we're making even less money now than we were
Speaker 6: before that wildcat strike, right, And a couple of other
Speaker 6: real familiar things like you know, on popular wars, rampant inflation,
Speaker 6: you know, Yeah, every time you turn on the radio
Speaker 6: or TV, there's some lunatic politician that you can't stand
Speaker 6: hearing about.
Speaker 4: Yeah, time is a flat circle.
Speaker 6: But Vince Sobrado, who was an organizer out of New
Speaker 6: York City, the ANOC didn't strike all over the country.
Speaker 6: It was New York and Chicago and San Francisco. It
Speaker 6: was some major hubs, right, And Vince Sobrado came out
Speaker 6: of that and we won in that strike one collective
Speaker 6: bargaining rights. Now the thing we gave up, and it
Speaker 6: was a trade off. So we have a no layoff clause,
Speaker 6: so they can't lay us off, but we gave up
Speaker 6: the right to strike, making sure that there wouldn't be.
Speaker 4: Another wildcat strike. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Right, So that's kind of why our hands are tied
Speaker 6: in that sense. Now, if we have an impasse with
Speaker 6: our with our negotiation, and like we get a tentative
Speaker 6: agreement and we during the ratification process vote that down,
Speaker 6: now we can either try and go back to the
Speaker 6: bargaining table or it gets brought in front of an arbiter,
Speaker 6: basically an impartial judge, and they'll have a panel. The
Speaker 6: Post Office will pick two and the NELC will pick two,
Speaker 6: and then I think there's one impartial that's supposed to
Speaker 6: be impartial between that. I believe that's how the arbitration
Speaker 6: process works. We got to prove our case in front
Speaker 6: of impartial arbiters instead of going on strike.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so, as we sort of mentioned before, one
Speaker 2: of the things about the Post Office is it's similar
Speaker 2: if people remember the rail like the rail strike that
Speaker 2: didn't happen where there's all of these troops you have
Speaker 2: to jump, you'd be able to go on strike. And
Speaker 2: that's because again, like rail workers, postal workers don't operate
Speaker 2: under the normal sort of national labor relations board like framework.
Speaker 2: Right now, admittedly there was a very good chance that
Speaker 2: it like in like seven months, we don't even have that.
Speaker 2: No one has that anymore. But you know, as we
Speaker 2: are right now, yeah, it's I think things are going good.
Speaker 2: But as things are going right now, let's get in
Speaker 2: to the current tentative agreement, and I guess we should
Speaker 2: actually we should roll this back a little tiny bit.
Speaker 2: For people who haven't listened to these episodes before, can
Speaker 2: you explain what a tentative agreement is?
Speaker 5: Right, So, a tentative agreement is effectively the first draft.
Speaker 5: When you are going through and negotiating, you will reach
Speaker 5: a contract where management and the union kind of agree
Speaker 5: and they put it before their union members. And the
Speaker 5: idea is that your union members are able to vote
Speaker 5: whether or not this tentative agreement. And again, like that
Speaker 5: mouth was saying, if it gets rejected or if it
Speaker 5: gets turned down, then it goes back to the drawing board,
Speaker 5: or we get an arbitrator, and it goes through a
Speaker 5: lengthy process. Our specific contract has been under negotiation since
Speaker 5: before I was in the Post Office. The amount of
Speaker 5: back pay that they're going to have to pay on
Speaker 5: some of these races is kind of insane, and I
Speaker 5: imagine that a lot of people won't see it for
Speaker 5: a long time. But yeah, that's what an a tentative
Speaker 5: agreement is. A lot of people think that it's a
Speaker 5: bad thing to go back to the drawing board, or
Speaker 5: a bad thing to renegotiate or be put before an arbitrator.
Speaker 5: I largely think that is a myth. If you think
Speaker 5: about any sort of negotiation, the first the first offer
Speaker 5: is never the best one. I think a lot of
Speaker 5: people are just afraid that somehow you would end up
Speaker 5: giving more than you're getting. And I think that's just
Speaker 5: the way that the rhetoric has gone for unions lately,
Speaker 5: and I.
Speaker 3: Guess I need to adjust that a little bit.
Speaker 5: Because the Teamsters, they even like the Service Workers' Union,
Speaker 5: they're all really doing well. The Communications Union, we're in
Speaker 5: a little bit of a different age. But a lot
Speaker 5: of the Post Office is old heads, military veterans, that
Speaker 5: kind of sort who just come from a little bit
Speaker 5: of an earlier time when the labor movement was really
Speaker 5: starting to plant their feet on the ground.
Speaker 6: Yeah, a lot of them are still dealing with I
Speaker 6: like most of us are the hangover from the Reagan years, right,
Speaker 6: So they're all terrified of union stuff. Even though they
Speaker 6: love the union and they're in the union, they're very
Speaker 6: distrustful of it. And they don't think that we can
Speaker 6: ask for what we deserve. They think we need to
Speaker 6: ask for what they think we can get based on
Speaker 6: the shit that management is saying because they're again still
Speaker 6: shell shocked from the Reagan years and all the anti
Speaker 6: labor stuff.
Speaker 2: And that's how a profound impact on most of the
Speaker 2: unions that survived that period. A lot of them didn't, right,
Speaker 2: Which is which is you know, part of part of
Speaker 2: why you get people who behave like this. But on
Speaker 2: the downside is it means that you get handed a
Speaker 2: lot of deals that absolutely suck. But do you know
Speaker 2: what else absolutely sucks? It's the roddicts and services. That's
Speaker 2: for this podcast. They probably don't I don't know. We
Speaker 2: are back, so let's talk about what the tentative agreements
Speaker 2: that y'all are being asked to sign is right now.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so it's been I think we're coming up on
Speaker 6: six hundred days since our last contract expired.
Speaker 2: Jeez.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there's people that just want their backpay. So even
Speaker 6: if the back pay is dog shit, they're desperate because
Speaker 6: inflation is eight percent across the country in some places, right,
Speaker 6: and like people are just desperate for that chunk of money.
Speaker 6: That delaying process feels very very intentional.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So the Tenet Agreement comes out around five hundred days
Speaker 6: after negotiations were supposed to have started, and there's all
Speaker 6: sorts of nonsense going on during then. But we're getting
Speaker 6: promises like it's going to be a historic agreement, we're
Speaker 6: going to get significant raises. We're going to go to
Speaker 6: an all career workforce, which, by the way, we.
Speaker 4: Don't have right now.
Speaker 6: That is by the way, yeah uh okay. So in
Speaker 6: every other trade, you have an apprenticeship program, right, so
Speaker 6: when you get on the job, you're wet behind the ears,
Speaker 6: you're brand new, you are automatically career, you are automatically
Speaker 6: paying into your retirement, you're automatically getting the regular benefits
Speaker 6: everyone else is. In most trades, you're paying half the
Speaker 6: dues that the journeymen are paying, and you, you are
Speaker 6: considered a full employee.
Speaker 4: You're the new jack. You're getting all the shit jobs,
Speaker 4: but you are a full employee.
Speaker 6: The post Office has a position called the City Carrier Assistant,
Speaker 6: which on paper and how they'll tell you, sounds like
Speaker 6: an apprenticeship program, but it's really more like they took
Speaker 6: an apprenticeship program and an unpaid internship and jammed them together.
Speaker 6: Because these kids are coming in and I'm not even kids.
Speaker 6: I'm forty years old. I started as a CCA at
Speaker 6: forty years old. They're coming in making less than twenty
Speaker 6: dollars an hour. They're not considered a career, so they're
Speaker 6: not paying into the retirement. You haven't got all the
Speaker 6: same union protections. Your benefits are super low. You get
Speaker 6: five days of annual leave a year and no sick
Speaker 6: time like it's it's yeah, it's a meat it's a
Speaker 6: meat grinder. So that was a big thing, and it
Speaker 6: creates a whole thirred tier because we already have two different,
Speaker 6: two different tiered wage system, which sucks enough, and you
Speaker 6: anyone that pays attention to labor.
Speaker 4: That drives a huge wedge between.
Speaker 6: Workers, and it crushes solidarity at kneecaps a union, and
Speaker 6: now with the CCA position in this non career workforce,
Speaker 6: it's created a whole third tier.
Speaker 2: This is one of the things that the UAW is
Speaker 2: fighting for. It's like, is eliminating tearing system all together,
Speaker 2: because if you're actually trying to get a functional union
Speaker 2: and make people's jobs better, that's the thing that you do.
Speaker 2: And having a third tier yeah not good, extremely bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 6: And it's because they've adopted sort of this Amazon model
Speaker 6: of doing things where they just have this burn andsurn
Speaker 6: situation where like Amazon Bezos said that he doesn't want
Speaker 6: anyone working for Amazon for more than like two years. Yeah,
Speaker 6: if they have these people constantly and they're constantly burning
Speaker 6: through and they never have to pay full benefits, they
Speaker 6: never have to pay into their retirement, they never have
Speaker 6: to pay them more than twenty dollars an hour, and
Speaker 6: they can just get you to work your ass off
Speaker 6: and burn out and quit within two years. As people retire,
Speaker 6: their labor costs go down. It's evil. It's absolutely it's
Speaker 6: some jack welch hateful bullshit.
Speaker 5: So touching on that, if people are really quitting before
Speaker 5: they reach a point in their career where they're educated
Speaker 5: and can stand up for themselves or stand up for
Speaker 5: each other on the workroom floor. That's one of the
Speaker 5: major reasons that our union is failing. And like you said,
Speaker 5: you use the exact example that I would have. The
Speaker 5: Amazon model is working really well if you can just
Speaker 5: make it so that people are so miserable they quit
Speaker 5: their job before they understand what their rights are, how
Speaker 5: they can protect each other, what even the contract says
Speaker 5: on the basics of when can you call out, when
Speaker 5: are you required to come in? Can they send you
Speaker 5: home early without your pay? That's massive And when we
Speaker 5: were talking about the conditions of the nineteen seventies and
Speaker 5: how long it takes you to get to the top
Speaker 5: of the pay scale, this third tier actually increases that
Speaker 5: time by sometimes three or four years. I've known people
Speaker 5: who have been ccas for three or four years. I
Speaker 5: don't think I've seen beyond that, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 5: What this does is it means that before you go career,
Speaker 5: you're spending all this time you're effectively a fully trained,
Speaker 5: full employee, completely capable of doing everything that's required of you.
Speaker 5: You're just not getting any of the career benefits making
Speaker 5: a minimum wage, and on top of that, the way
Speaker 5: our benefits work is it does come out of your paycheash.
Speaker 5: Sheet's not like other jobs where it might be a
Speaker 5: separate package or already calculated. In for instance, a lot
Speaker 5: of the trades, they'll say, hey, you get twenty three
Speaker 5: an hour, but the reality is you're making around twenty
Speaker 5: nine or thirty. Because you're not paying into your health
Speaker 5: insurance or your retirement or anything like that, you're effectively
Speaker 5: making less than minimum wage. You're almost paying to go
Speaker 5: to work as a CCA then just to be yelled
Speaker 5: at and told that you're not going fast enough even
Speaker 5: though there's no street standard. But that's getting into a
Speaker 5: little bit of nipicky key contract stuff that language.
Speaker 6: But yeah, so yeah, that's one thing that they're promising
Speaker 6: is to get rid of that non career workforce. So
Speaker 6: this TA comes out and after hearing that we're getting
Speaker 6: rid of the non career significant raises, it's going to
Speaker 6: be historic for us. What they offered us was one
Speaker 6: point three percent.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christy. Yeah, I mean this is some thing for
Speaker 2: if you are in a union and you hear your
Speaker 2: leadership say the words historic contract. You are screwed. That
Speaker 2: agreement is going to suck. I remember on this show
Speaker 2: literally live and recording right before they're supposed to be
Speaker 2: the teamster's ups strike, right Like, I'm literally on the
Speaker 2: episode with two of the union people and we get
Speaker 2: the text of the contract in the middle of recording,
Speaker 2: and we get the thing with it is this is
Speaker 2: an historic contract and we're like reading it in the
Speaker 2: middle of the episode. Was like, wait, this fucking sucks. Shit.
Speaker 2: It's like, that's how you know you are duped when
Speaker 2: you get the historic when they start pulling out the
Speaker 2: historic contract thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you think if you're making six figures a year,
Speaker 6: you could understand how to buy a used car and
Speaker 6: know that you promise low and deliver high. Like, I
Speaker 6: don't understand how they exist figures of the year. They
Speaker 6: haven't figured that out. But yeah, so in this contract,
Speaker 6: one point three percent, and that's enough to piss anyone
Speaker 6: off because that drops about the same time that we
Speaker 6: all see the longshore men getting going back to the
Speaker 6: table because they didn't get sixty percent, you know what
Speaker 6: I mean. Yeah, I'm surprised more people just didn't call
Speaker 6: in sick because we all got this news on the
Speaker 6: worker and floor, and I was like, did you see
Speaker 6: this shit? I know people that quit that day, you
Speaker 6: know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's it's wild. So
Speaker 6: one point three percent. They're keeping the city carrier assistance,
Speaker 6: the n career workforce. They're removing some of our union
Speaker 6: protections right like it used to be. You have a
Speaker 6: twelve sixty hour rule. You don't have to work more
Speaker 6: than twelve hours in a day or sixty hours in
Speaker 6: a week. You can say I can't do this, I'm
Speaker 6: going home, and the union could protect you. Now, if
Speaker 6: you are a CCA, or if you have signed up
Speaker 6: to do overtime and they tell you to stay sixteen hours,
Speaker 6: you have you have no choice.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ. You gave up things for a one point
Speaker 2: that's that's a one point three percent raise, is like,
Speaker 2: like that that's the kind of thing that you get.
Speaker 2: If like I don't know, say, like you got like
Speaker 2: some unbelievable concession package somewhere else, maybe conceivably you would
Speaker 2: take that, or maybe maybe it's a thing where like
Speaker 2: you're you're you're like a nurse and your problem doesn't pay.
Speaker 2: Your problem is you're working like two million hours a week,
Speaker 2: But like that's that's a that's a you got concession
Speaker 2: somewhere else kind of thing, not a we gave up
Speaker 2: stuff for like the worst rays you've ever seen.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean it makes you think about, like what
Speaker 6: was there? What was their first offer? Like, mind you
Speaker 6: it's been it's been over five hundred days of negotiations.
Speaker 6: What was the first offer? We got to put the
Speaker 6: fuel in the mail trucks ourselves? Like what you know
Speaker 6: what I mean, what Tom do you want? Do you
Speaker 6: want to talk about? What the tone of agreement doesn't address?
Speaker 5: So the tenetive agreement we spoke about the Post Office
Speaker 5: is strategy for uh, dealing with our grievances or how
Speaker 5: to combat the union last episode, and so for the
Speaker 5: people that didn't listen to it or just need a refresher,
Speaker 5: the Post Office has found this extremely effective strategy that
Speaker 5: if they just don't agree at any point in our
Speaker 5: in our grievance procedure, which is if they violate the
Speaker 5: contract and we want to be made whole, whatever that
Speaker 5: may look like, they can just keep on saying no
Speaker 5: and push it up to arbitration, because there is a
Speaker 5: grievance procedure that ends up with a third party intervening
Speaker 5: as well, and if they push enough of those grievances up.
Speaker 5: We have a major backlog on this process because our
Speaker 5: final resort is now just the standard of operation, and
Speaker 5: what that means is that there's nothing to force the
Speaker 5: post Office to comply with the contract if someone wasn't
Speaker 5: paid correctly, or was missing a whole day of pay,
Speaker 5: got sent home, or was put on emergency placement, which
Speaker 5: is a process where they say you did something dangerous
Speaker 5: and so they can take you off the clock.
Speaker 3: It could be.
Speaker 5: Months or even a year before your case is even
Speaker 5: looked at. They do have a process, of course, where
Speaker 5: they try and prioritize it, but it's obviously not working.
Speaker 5: The other thing that the contract doesn't really touch on
Speaker 5: is our uniform situation, where the companies that make and
Speaker 5: manufacture the uniforms for our letter carriers and actually for
Speaker 5: all the positions in the Post Office are effectively trying
Speaker 5: to sell you a shirt for like eighty dollars or
Speaker 5: correct The most egregious one is like your winter parka
Speaker 5: is posed to four hundred dollars and your balance that
Speaker 5: you're you're given is I think three eighty FM I
Speaker 5: don't know it's been more.
Speaker 4: It's up to four ninety nine.
Speaker 6: But the rain trench coat, just the raincoat is four
Speaker 6: hundred and sixty five dollars and you have to get
Speaker 6: it through a vendor, so you can't even pay them
Speaker 6: money to do that. A pair of polyester pants that's
Speaker 6: going to fall apart in two months ninety.
Speaker 4: Five dollars, Oh my god.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, no, it's it's wild. It's wild price gouging.
Speaker 6: And they were going to address that. And what they
Speaker 6: did was they increased are they increased our uniform allowance
Speaker 6: by thirty five dollars, which is like three pairs of
Speaker 6: socks from those magazines, right, incredible stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's it's it's wild.
Speaker 2: Someone should dig into who's running that company and like
Speaker 2: who they're working with to get those contracts, because probably
Speaker 2: a fun story there.
Speaker 5: I think it's like four out of five of the
Speaker 5: approved manufacturers where the distributors are owned by the same people.
Speaker 2: So oh great, okay, yeah, I'm bequeathing this as a
Speaker 2: gift to I know there's a bunch of journalists. You
Speaker 2: listen to this, go go do that story. I guarantee
Speaker 2: you'll find some unbelievably unhinged stuff.
Speaker 5: And a quick shout out to any letter carriers that
Speaker 5: are are listening to this. If you don't use your
Speaker 5: entire allowance, look out for the ccas, look out for
Speaker 5: the PTFs, the non career and the fresh faces on there.
Speaker 5: If you don't use the entirety of your uniform allowance,
Speaker 5: to the way that they view it is that they
Speaker 5: can give us less money, So use all of it.
Speaker 5: Don't protest by not spending that money. It's not even yours,
Speaker 5: so suspend it, give it to someone.
Speaker 6: Do something, you know, Yeah, get the new jack in
Speaker 6: your office a fucking raincoat, because like I tried to
Speaker 6: do the math on it. For winter gear, for a
Speaker 6: place like Minnesota, to get all the winter gear and
Speaker 6: your summer gear, it's going to take you four years
Speaker 6: of uniform allowances to get all that gear.
Speaker 4: Jesus right, it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And like it's Minnesota, right, Like I'm from Chicago,
Speaker 2: so like it is, it is slightly warmer in Chicago
Speaker 2: and you get wincheles in negative forty here, yeah, and
Speaker 2: like Minnesota is much worse. So like that is that
Speaker 2: that is not like optional stuff. That is the difference
Speaker 2: between you having hypothermia and you notia.
Speaker 6: Yeah, no exactly, and God forbid you want to buy
Speaker 6: a pair of shorts as well, because Minnesota summers get
Speaker 6: over one hundred index h.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking speaking of ways to not die in Minnesota summers,
Speaker 2: here are some product and services that will probably not
Speaker 2: help you with that, but maybe they will and we
Speaker 2: are back.
Speaker 6: One of the other things that Tom touched on that
Speaker 6: this agreement doesn't address is he talked about the non
Speaker 6: compliance and the grievance backlog, but also just the toxic
Speaker 6: work environment, which we've talked about, and it's so bad.
Speaker 6: The whole reason we have the trope of someone going
Speaker 6: postal is usually because someone's bullied to a point where
Speaker 6: violence occurs. They either take it out on management or
Speaker 6: my own manager in my first year got in a
Speaker 6: fistfight with one of the clerks.
Speaker 2: Jesus correct.
Speaker 6: The post office has lost grievances because management was threatening
Speaker 6: to shoot an employee. Any letter carrier would have been
Speaker 6: fired for that immediately that manager got a letter of warning.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we have a joint statement on violence in the workplace,
Speaker 5: which I think you were about to get into the leg. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they're just not complying. It's a very one sided thing. Effectively,
Speaker 5: management has qualified immunity.
Speaker 2: Great, great, your managers are also cops that could attack you. Incredible,
Speaker 2: incredible stuff from the post office.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then and then there's a bunch of wage
Speaker 6: stuff too. I mean personally, I caught my own manager
Speaker 6: putting in all the ccas for two hour lunches because
Speaker 6: the ccas are new and don't know what they're doing,
Speaker 6: and they don't know to check their time all the time,
Speaker 6: putting us all in for two hour lunches and then
Speaker 6: told me, tried to pretend to me, oh, that was
Speaker 6: just an automatic computer error. Whereas if we take a
Speaker 6: thirty one minute lunch, I have my phone blowing up
Speaker 6: being asked why I'm not moving and delivering the mail.
Speaker 6: But you guys managed to accidentally miss a two hour left.
Speaker 4: Come on, don't lie. You don't got a lie. You
Speaker 4: don't getta lie to be my friend, like, come on.
Speaker 6: And then and then there's other places around the country
Speaker 6: where we the anlc's one grievances where management was making
Speaker 6: CCA's work in the dark, delivering mail till like seven
Speaker 6: thirty pm and clocking them out at.
Speaker 4: Four o'clock in the absolu business.
Speaker 6: All right, So they got people out there working for free.
Speaker 6: It's it's and we have to catch we have to catch.
Speaker 4: Them doing that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they're never going to own up to it that
Speaker 6: they all watch their payroll. The management structure at the
Speaker 6: post office, it's like the TMU version of Game of Thrones.
Speaker 6: They're all nasty, they're all backstabbing each other, and like,
Speaker 6: the nastier you are and the more willing you.
Speaker 4: Are to screw people, the higher up you.
Speaker 6: Go in management at the post office, like it's it's disgusting.
Speaker 5: So there's even more convoluted ways that the management finds
Speaker 5: to effectively steal from the employees. And one of them
Speaker 5: huge problem is changing the metrics on what a route
Speaker 5: looks like. And so they can alter the times of hey,
Speaker 5: how long you were in the office packing your truck
Speaker 5: when you got back to the office and started unloading
Speaker 5: and cleaning. And so what they do is they make
Speaker 5: it look like the street time took you, let's call
Speaker 5: it five hours, and you were in the office for
Speaker 5: four hours. That way they can make a route look
Speaker 5: smaller than it actually is and have an excuse not
Speaker 5: to hire another person, which makes it so that this
Speaker 5: poor carrier who was assigned to this route now has
Speaker 5: a ten hour day, eleven hour day just by default
Speaker 5: on a light day, on a regular day. This is
Speaker 5: a really big problem for the rural carriers. Their contract
Speaker 5: is a little bit different. Effectively, they get paid by
Speaker 5: the job, not necessarily hourly, or that's the case for a.
Speaker 3: Lot of them.
Speaker 5: And so if you're adjusting their times, they're going to
Speaker 5: be paid out for an eight hour day. But the
Speaker 5: route has just been stretched out through this method of
Speaker 5: just dishonest scanning and disalmist entries and they get free labor.
Speaker 5: And I'm not even well versed on the RCAA contract.
Speaker 5: That's a whole other You know, there's only nine unions
Speaker 5: that go into the post office, which means there's probably
Speaker 5: nine different contracts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and in every single one of these contracts, they're
Speaker 2: inventing new, different and unique ways to do wage theft
Speaker 2: just steal people's money, which and it's worth noting again
Speaker 2: like if a post carrier like broke into an office
Speaker 2: and stole the amount of money that is being stolen
Speaker 2: from them, they would go to prison forever, right, But
Speaker 2: because it's your boss doing this, Like, the worst thing
Speaker 2: that happens to them is they have to go through
Speaker 2: a grievance procedure even though they are just literally robbing you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, you do not fuck with the
Speaker 6: mail cops. But the mail cops the postal inspectors work
Speaker 6: for management. Yeah so yeah, and management does nothing but
Speaker 6: sit in their chair all day, sniffing their own farts,
Speaker 6: watching tiktoks and trying to figure out how to screw
Speaker 6: people through the virtue of spreadsheets while we are all
Speaker 6: out working our asses off. It's a very demoralizing and abusive,
Speaker 6: abusive situation. So we were hoping that shit would get
Speaker 6: addressed in the tenetive agreement, and none of it was.
Speaker 6: So there's all sorts of problems with that. I'm with
Speaker 6: building a fighting an elc and we are basically a
Speaker 6: bottom up more of a radical reform caucus. I am
Speaker 6: out of Fort Worth, but like it's started in Minneapolis,
Speaker 6: and you've got people in Chicago and New York and Naples, Florida,
Speaker 6: and San Antonio, Hawaii, all over the country who are basically,
Speaker 6: we are tired.
Speaker 4: Of we are tired of our.
Speaker 6: Leadership being in bed with management or at least doing
Speaker 6: things where they look like they're in bed with management.
Speaker 6: We've been putting on vote no rallies all over the country.
Speaker 6: You've probably seen some of the news.
Speaker 2: And this is vote no for the tin devisse. Yes,
Speaker 2: this is this is this is a vote to send
Speaker 2: your bargaining reps back to the table with the demand
Speaker 2: that we can't take a deal that sucks this much.
Speaker 2: That's what a vote no thing is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So yeah, we've been trying to get letter carriers to
Speaker 6: vote no on it. That's so we've been doing the
Speaker 6: vote no campaigns so we can vote this shit down
Speaker 6: and get it in front of a judge, because once
Speaker 6: it goes into arbitration, there's a lot of fear mongering things,
Speaker 6: Oh we could lose this, Oh we could lose that.
Speaker 6: Oh we could lose this. But like Mia, you you
Speaker 6: said it yourself. These are all concessions. We're not getting
Speaker 6: anything for giving up all these things. One point three
Speaker 6: percent is what we're getting.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, like one point three percent is the kind
Speaker 2: of raise that like in a normal functioning union is
Speaker 2: like that, that's like a company's opening agreement that both
Speaker 2: you and the company knows you're not going to take
Speaker 2: Yeah like that, it's a.
Speaker 6: Joke, Like that in and of itself would be a
Speaker 6: major concession to get something else. But we're doing all
Speaker 6: these concessions to get that. Yeah, that's the win quote unquote.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So the thing is the Postal Reform Act says that
Speaker 6: we are supposed to get paid comparatively to a comparable
Speaker 6: company in the private sector. So an arbiter is going
Speaker 6: to look at that and try and look at UPS,
Speaker 6: UPS or Amazon, and the Post Office is really trying
Speaker 6: to push it towards Amazon, which is why I try
Speaker 6: to talk to every letter carrier I know to support
Speaker 6: and get some crosscraft solidarity with Amazon, because without going
Speaker 6: on too much of a rabbit trail, the whole you know,
Speaker 6: a rising tide lifts all ships, and one union in
Speaker 6: another industry helps everyone in every other industry.
Speaker 4: And trying to get people to understand that.
Speaker 6: But like you compare our contract to UPS and UPS
Speaker 6: they top out with I think their benefits package tops
Speaker 6: out one hundred and twenty four thousand a year, and
Speaker 6: it's about you know, five or eight years to reach
Speaker 6: top scale. Ours tops out with this tentative agreement at
Speaker 6: ninety three thousand a year. And it still takes us
Speaker 6: thirteen years to get to top steps. Christ, that's not comparable, right,
Speaker 6: So I'm not afraid of arbitration. I'm hoping we get
Speaker 6: this in front of an arbiter, because unless that arbiter
Speaker 6: is completely crooked, I can't see him saying, well, you
Speaker 6: guys deserve one point three percent.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So when I first saw bad Mouth talking and what
Speaker 5: his posts were on Reddit and stuff like that, I
Speaker 5: got really excited because I remember when I was speaking
Speaker 5: to my local president and talking to the stewards in
Speaker 5: my area across like a couple of different stations. The
Speaker 5: kind of big question was what do you do when
Speaker 5: the union breaks your heart? And I guess the answer
Speaker 5: is everything that Badmouth has just talked about, You build
Speaker 5: a better one. You remind people that there is an alternative,
Speaker 5: that everything started somewhere.
Speaker 3: And if you go to his first.
Speaker 5: Episode on the From Aid to Arbitration podcasts, he has
Speaker 5: something called the CCA Corner where he's educating the newcomers
Speaker 5: the fresh spaces. He's just talking about horizontal power and
Speaker 5: I was listening to that episode before we had spoken.
Speaker 5: I got so excited just to hear what this person
Speaker 5: was up to You know.
Speaker 6: I tried to say sneak in as many anarchist ship
Speaker 6: without saying I'm an anarchist. I try and sneak as
Speaker 6: much of that ship in as I can. I get
Speaker 6: old heads who have a Trump hat on talking about
Speaker 6: anarchist docking points.
Speaker 4: It's it's funny as fuck to me, you.
Speaker 5: Know, who won't break your heart frogs that support this
Speaker 5: podcast if you don't buy them, but therefore cannot be.
Speaker 2: Is there anything else you want to talk about with
Speaker 2: arbitration or should we move on to the impending doom
Speaker 2: of the post listeners? Yeah?
Speaker 6: I think I think the arbitration there's a whole lot
Speaker 6: of fear mongering and ship I think anyone paying attention
Speaker 6: to things. We can't get a worse deal is the
Speaker 6: main point there, and that's that's the whole point of
Speaker 6: the vote no campaign is to just tell people, hey, dude,
Speaker 6: we might as well go down swinging like we're not
Speaker 6: going to get a worse deal than this.
Speaker 4: But that's that's pretty much it for arbitration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's let let's let's move on to the
Speaker 2: future of the post office, which I want to take
Speaker 2: a second to mention that like, Okay, look like I
Speaker 2: am not someone who has any respect for the people
Speaker 2: who built the US government. However, if you want the
Speaker 2: US government to like exist, right, the postal service is
Speaker 2: something that was deemed so important that it is like
Speaker 2: establishing the postal service is in the main body of
Speaker 2: the constitution. Now freedom of speech right, and like the
Speaker 2: right to free association that is not in the main
Speaker 2: body of the constitution. That is a fucking amendment. Right.
Speaker 2: The people who built the American system thought that the
Speaker 2: postal service was a more important thing to make sure
Speaker 2: to have in the main body of the constitution that
Speaker 2: set up the modern version of the government. Right, they
Speaker 2: thought that shit was more important than like you're right
Speaker 2: to have freedom of assembly, like you're right to not
Speaker 2: literally be grabbed off the street and tortured, which is
Speaker 2: like the Fourth Amendment. Right, So, like you know, in
Speaker 2: the scale of priorities of like how how important is
Speaker 2: the postal service? Like that's how important people who set
Speaker 2: it up thought it was. And those people were not
Speaker 2: very smart and like a bunch of racist slave voters.
Speaker 2: So I would argue it's actually more important than they
Speaker 2: thought it was because they're you know, I mean, like
Speaker 2: obviously their priorities are completely out of whack.
Speaker 6: But like, I am not a founding father, stand but
Speaker 6: the post office was actually invented by Benjamin Franklin, who
Speaker 6: I don't believe owned any slaves, and yeah he was
Speaker 6: really racist, but yeah, oh yeah, I mean, like I know,
Speaker 6: I know that, I know that part. I'm I just
Speaker 6: I don't think he actually owned anybody, but like that's
Speaker 6: it's a yeah, yeah, and it was started I think
Speaker 6: fifteen years before the Constitution was even written.
Speaker 2: Oh no, he did. He He did own a slave
Speaker 2: as a young man, and I think freed him.
Speaker 4: You know, I was trying to.
Speaker 6: Get the racist bastard a little bit of a win.
Speaker 2: But like we're finding this out live on the so yeah,
Speaker 2: he did for his early life and then became an
Speaker 2: abolitionist later, which is still bad.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, that's uh. You know, I'm glad you came
Speaker 4: around eventually, I guess. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Look, we're finding this out live on the show. Oh
Speaker 2: my god, that was a lot of time of him
Speaker 2: owning slaves. That absolutely, I take that.
Speaker 6: I take back my critical support, uncritical opposition.
Speaker 3: To help with Brent Franklin teach us that in school.
Speaker 4: To hell with Bent Franklin too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're coming in this Trump administration and stuff. And
Speaker 6: let me tell you that the situation wasn't really great
Speaker 6: under Biden either, because we have a Postmaster Lewis Dickhead
Speaker 6: to Joy. He was put into place by Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: And you've seen they wanted to slow walk the post
Speaker 6: Office into privatization since the Reagan years, right, and they're
Speaker 6: just slowly chipping away at service and quality. D Joy
Speaker 6: was connected to XPO, the giant logistics company. He had
Speaker 6: stock and I can't remember what position he held. He
Speaker 6: apparently detangled himself from that when he became postmaster.
Speaker 4: But you know, they all say that I don't know
Speaker 4: for sure. I am not an accountant, so I can't.
Speaker 2: Do that well and like and like, also I want
Speaker 2: to point out the president of the United States is
Speaker 2: issuing a cryptocurrency like that shit that shit is that
Speaker 2: she is so fake now?
Speaker 4: Like oh god, yeah.
Speaker 6: So like Joy's also got a reputations of just being
Speaker 6: a massive job killer besides looking like a low rent
Speaker 6: spider Man villain. So under his tenure, we've seen service
Speaker 6: take quality.
Speaker 4: Take a nose dive.
Speaker 6: And I want to talk about this stuff and this
Speaker 6: might get my ass in trouble, But like I am
Speaker 6: tired as a as a letter carrier who loves my job,
Speaker 6: loves saying hi to people in the neighborhood, loves walking
Speaker 6: three yards and knowing the names of all the dogs
Speaker 6: on my route, and being the face of the post office.
Speaker 6: It is so frustrating to have people blame the mail
Speaker 6: man and the letter carrier for the decline in service
Speaker 6: because we are out there being brutalized by the Post Office,
Speaker 6: doing our best and fighting against the degradation of service.
Speaker 6: That is a top down problem with leadership in the
Speaker 6: post Office. I wanted to outline some of the stuff
Speaker 6: that I have evidence of and have seen firsthand of
Speaker 6: management undercutting the service of the post Office. They willfully
Speaker 6: delay the mail all the time. There's pictures of racks
Speaker 6: and racks of DPS. It's assorted letters and they come
Speaker 6: in trays just sitting in a warehouse somewhere, and management
Speaker 6: they will order you on a regular basis to prioritize
Speaker 6: delivering packages over the mail. If it's a big, heavy
Speaker 6: day and they're looking at labor hours, they will sometimes
Speaker 6: tell you to not deliver the mail and just.
Speaker 4: Deliver the packages because the packages.
Speaker 6: Have a tracking number, and their boss can get in
Speaker 6: They can get in trouble for that, but they can
Speaker 6: lie and hide the mail for another day.
Speaker 4: Like that shit happens all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's like can just be like they can
Speaker 2: just be like hiding like your bills.
Speaker 6: Yep, or like social Security check yeah yeah, also your
Speaker 6: junk mail. Have you ever have you ever ordered something
Speaker 6: and it says it was delivered but you didn't get it,
Speaker 6: and then it shows up the next day, or it
Speaker 6: says that, oh there's a vacation hold, I didn't put
Speaker 6: this on hold and then it shows up the next day,
Speaker 6: or you got to go down to the post office
Speaker 6: to get it.
Speaker 3: Or recently, severe weather delay.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well I mean the severe the severe weather delay
Speaker 6: can happen, but I'm talking What I'm talking about is
Speaker 6: ones where the package didn't make it to the letter
Speaker 6: carrier who's out there delivering. Because this has happened to
Speaker 6: me multiple times, and it didn't make it to me
Speaker 6: before I left the station. But because they want to
Speaker 6: make their numbers look good for their boss, they will
Speaker 6: scan it at the station as if it was delivered
Speaker 6: or as if it's a Jesus yeah.
Speaker 4: So because they.
Speaker 6: Want their numbers to look good, because their entire job
Speaker 6: is life on a spreadsheet. And so then I have
Speaker 6: to I have to talk to my customers the following day.
Speaker 4: But like it said, it is delivered. I didn't.
Speaker 6: I saw you, and you didn't drop it off. I
Speaker 6: was worried someone stole it. What happened. I was like,
Speaker 6: I know exactly what happened. I know what their name is.
Speaker 6: That's some of the service degradation. We've had people in
Speaker 6: other areas catch management throwing.
Speaker 4: Away mail Jesus Christ.
Speaker 6: Yeah, oh yeah, management reprimanding carriers who follow the manual
Speaker 6: and provide good customer service. Like I've been on the
Speaker 6: phone where I've had my manager call me because I
Speaker 6: was standing in one place for five minutes because I
Speaker 6: was helping an elderly woman move her garbage cans and
Speaker 6: helped her get some groceries out of her car to
Speaker 6: bring in. You know, all the stuff that you see
Speaker 6: the good mail man, the reason why people loved the
Speaker 6: post office.
Speaker 4: Shit like that.
Speaker 6: I got told no, you're not doing that, and I
Speaker 6: had another customer come up to say hi to me
Speaker 6: while I was on the phone, and I just stopped
Speaker 6: to say hi as I'm walking by, and my manager
Speaker 6: chewed me out for even talking to the person. They
Speaker 6: don't care about us, and they throw us all under
Speaker 6: the bus all the time. Because if I don't deliver
Speaker 6: a package because they never made it to me and
Speaker 6: it says delivered, the customer will come and complain at
Speaker 6: the post office.
Speaker 4: Management will tell them, Oh, I'll talk to the carrier.
Speaker 6: That carrier made a mistake, and it's no carriers do
Speaker 6: make mistakes, but like this intentional degradation of service to
Speaker 6: make the numbers, that blame always goes on the letter carrier,
Speaker 6: and it is we love our job. We love our jobs,
Speaker 6: We love our communities.
Speaker 4: I got like I might. I'm gonna start crying if
Speaker 4: I talk about this too much.
Speaker 6: Like I love bringing treats to dogs, like I get
Speaker 6: Christmas cards from old folk on my route, like I.
Speaker 4: Know, like I know when the people's birthdays are.
Speaker 6: And I had an old timer on my route, sat
Speaker 6: outside to say ah to be every day. Suddenly he
Speaker 6: wasn't and his wife was out in the garden and
Speaker 6: I said, where is he? Oh, he passed last night,
Speaker 6: And she starts crying are crying and like I get
Speaker 6: in trouble for taking five minutes to give her a
Speaker 6: hug and talk things through for.
Speaker 4: A second, Like it's yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2: This is one of these areas where like delivering the
Speaker 2: mail is a social thing, but the thing is like
Speaker 2: sociality is the enemy of capital, and that's that's the
Speaker 2: people who are running the post office that they don't
Speaker 2: give a shit about, you know, like the actual social
Speaker 2: bonds and ties that you know, that that are the
Speaker 2: thing that society is supposed to be composed of. Like
Speaker 2: they care about their metrics and them being able to
Speaker 2: make more money in them, you know, being able to
Speaker 2: advance higher in their career ladder. Yes, it reminds me
Speaker 2: a lot of the campaign against the school system, where
Speaker 2: you deliberately other fund things and then you blame the
Speaker 2: teachers for why the service is bad, and it's like, well,
Speaker 2: it is not the teacher's fault that there's like forty
Speaker 2: eight kids in a classroom, right, like yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: and there's there's also a very very similar prepatization campaign
Speaker 2: run by a bunch of Australia powerful forces. So let's
Speaker 2: go back and talk a bit about like who the
Speaker 2: people are who are doing this and what their sort
Speaker 2: of plans are.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so you have to Joy he's doing that, and
Speaker 6: we have all of these they're starting to some of
Speaker 6: the stuff they're building these I think they're called sdncs.
Speaker 6: It's basically they take a bunch of post offices from
Speaker 6: a metro area and then they make one big distribution
Speaker 6: hub like Amazon. Well that is adding an hour commute
Speaker 6: onto some of these letter carriers. They come in, they
Speaker 6: get to their mail truck, and then they have to
Speaker 6: drive their mail truck for an hour to even start delivering. Right.
Speaker 4: It's a huge message.
Speaker 6: It's a huge fiasco, and it feels very intentional because
Speaker 6: what's going to happen when they close those facilities built
Speaker 6: by the government down and it starts to privatize. Well,
Speaker 6: what do you know, Amazon just got a new hub
Speaker 6: or whoever ends up trying to step in. That's a
Speaker 6: little conspiracy brain But like certain fiascos done by the
Speaker 6: Joys delivering for America, Plane Taylor made to fail for
Speaker 6: the Post Office but work for someone else. And then
Speaker 6: also you have Brian Renfrow, who is the current president
Speaker 6: of the NLC, the one who was telling us that
Speaker 6: our tentative agreement was going to be historic, when all
Speaker 6: it does is help management. He has gone on speaking
Speaker 6: tours lying about this tentative agreement, and everything he says
Speaker 6: sounds like management gave him a script. And there's a
Speaker 6: whole lot of theories on that and how when he
Speaker 6: you know, when he loses his position, people have running
Speaker 6: bets on what position he's going to take in the
Speaker 6: Post Office the second he's voted out.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, he's.
Speaker 6: The one who's negotiated this whole contract. He used his
Speaker 6: position as president. He iced out everyone from the union.
Speaker 6: He's the only one who talked to the Post Office.
Speaker 6: So this, this tentative agreement is his baby. Wait what yep,
Speaker 6: the executive council What yeah, he didn't tell the executive council.
Speaker 2: Well, he didn't have like a bargaining team.
Speaker 6: No, he had a bargaining team that were all of
Speaker 6: outside contractors. He had no one from the union with him.
Speaker 6: What yeah, because he wanted it to be his baby.
Speaker 2: That's so unhiddh. That's like I need to stop here
Speaker 2: for a second because that's like, if your union is
Speaker 2: doing that to you, you need to understand, like, dear listener,
Speaker 2: that is not how any of this shit is supposed
Speaker 2: to work. Yep, Like, even even a normal corrupt union
Speaker 2: will have a bargaining team that is composed of like
Speaker 2: it will have a bargaining team that isn't outside contractors.
Speaker 2: So there'll be people from inside the union who are
Speaker 2: like the stooges of like whatever sort of management click
Speaker 2: is in power. Like having them all be outside contractors
Speaker 2: is one of the most ludicrous things I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: You need to negotiation cutting out. That's so wild, Oh
Speaker 2: my god.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, no.
Speaker 6: And the thing is, we're coming up on six hundred
Speaker 6: days without a con without a ratified contract, Like he
Speaker 6: has been the only one doing it this whole time.
Speaker 6: And there's a bunch of shady shit. Okay, So he's
Speaker 6: struggled with alcoholism. I have dealt with addiction. I have
Speaker 6: lost friends to addiction. I have family members struggle with addiction.
Speaker 6: I respect anybody who is going to take care themselves.
Speaker 6: But he disappeared for something like fifty days or something.
Speaker 6: Didn't tell anybody, He ghosted everybody. He ghosted everybody, And
Speaker 6: this is the early days of negotiation. People stepped in
Speaker 6: to start negotiating without him. It turns out he had
Speaker 6: gone and checked himself into rehab. But the thing is,
Speaker 6: the NLC has two fucking vice presidents. I have all
Speaker 6: the respect in the world for someone to take care
Speaker 6: of themselves. But when you got two hundred and seventy
Speaker 6: seven thousand employees livelihood you're responsible for, and you got
Speaker 6: I don't care if you got cancer, if you got
Speaker 6: an addiction problem, or I don't care what it is.
Speaker 6: If you got to step away to take care of yourself,
Speaker 6: please do that. But put your vice, one of your
Speaker 6: two fucking vice presidents in charge. So what happens is
Speaker 6: someone steps in while he's gone, he comes back, gets
Speaker 6: mad that at them, strips them of their responsibilities, blackballs
Speaker 6: them from the union, and goes back into negotiations all
Speaker 6: by himself, Which is why getting to the next point
Speaker 6: on this. At the most generous, he is in ept
Speaker 6: as hell. He is in ept as hell and just
Speaker 6: the worst sort of person to be in there. At
Speaker 6: the worst, he has corrupt as hell and just DeJoy's stooge.
Speaker 6: And the thing is, we work for the federal government.
Speaker 6: Whether it's malice or incompetence with a federal government, it's
Speaker 6: usually both, and it doesn't matter which one it is
Speaker 6: to me, Whether he's corrupt or just an idiot, it's
Speaker 6: all the same to me because I can't make my
Speaker 6: fucking rent. So we expect de Joy and the Post
Speaker 6: Office to do us dirty. That's their job as management.
Speaker 6: But to have the president of our own union doing
Speaker 6: this to us is unacceptable and like it's yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: So on that note, that's one of the big pushes
Speaker 5: for the union recently has been to reach open bargaining
Speaker 5: where the membership is actually a part of it. And
Speaker 5: that's what to my knowledge, it's one of the major
Speaker 5: issues that the building and fighting an IOC or the
Speaker 5: building better union talks are going towards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you can you talk about what open bargaining is.
Speaker 2: It's a thing that should be the standard for all unions.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I mean, open bargaining is effectively the bottom
Speaker 5: up structure of having your members or even the representatives
Speaker 5: put forward motions that are open to the public and
Speaker 5: open to the membership so that you can effectively ask
Speaker 5: for more or get a different variety of opinions and strategies,
Speaker 5: you know, the duality of power kind of structure. But
Speaker 5: what the Post Office currently has, it's not open bargaining
Speaker 5: or what postal union has. It's not open bargaining. They
Speaker 5: have their own team that they send in. They don't
Speaker 5: talk to the membership. You kind of just elect your
Speaker 5: officials and then they come back with whatever they ended
Speaker 5: up with, and they don't consult with any of their
Speaker 5: bottom line, which is problematic for obvious reasons, including this
Speaker 5: one where someone can go missing for fifty days and
Speaker 5: most of the membership has no idea. I've even talked
Speaker 5: to people. I think it was like two or three
Speaker 5: weeks ago. I went to a bar and I ran
Speaker 5: into a letter carrier from the next city over as
Speaker 5: a go did you vote?
Speaker 4: Know?
Speaker 5: And it's like, what are you talking about? He doesn't
Speaker 5: know that there's a vote going on.
Speaker 4: Is out there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, I guess.
Speaker 6: I mean, like the main objective we want to I'm
Speaker 6: sure we're running at a time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 4: I could talk about this shit for days. I mean
Speaker 4: I do. That's pretty much all I do anymore.
Speaker 6: Like Tom was saying, the building of fighting ALC and
Speaker 6: pushing for the vote, no thing. The main thing that
Speaker 6: we're wanting is coming on too shows like this and
Speaker 6: getting the public perception of what the letter carrier deals
Speaker 6: with what's going on. Because this Trump's coming in, they're
Speaker 6: going to be trying to privatize it like they always do.
Speaker 4: That's already been in the works.
Speaker 6: It's important that the public knows this degradation of service
Speaker 6: is the point of it, and how can the public
Speaker 6: sort of support our fight so we can keep the
Speaker 6: post office. So I wanted to just share a couple
Speaker 6: of links. If you're a letter carrier and you want
Speaker 6: to get involved with reforming things from an electoral end,
Speaker 6: there's the Concern Letter Carriers and you can go to
Speaker 6: Concern Lettercarriers dot com. They're going to be running in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty six to get rid of Renfro if you
Speaker 6: are impatient like me and you can't fucking wait that long.
Speaker 6: And even if you're not a letter carrier, you can
Speaker 6: see how we're fighting with the building of Fighting ANLC,
Speaker 6: which is more of a radical bottom up reform caucus.
Speaker 6: If you want to get involved in that, or you
Speaker 6: just want to kind of get updates from people who
Speaker 6: aren't going to bullshit you, you can go to Fighting
Speaker 6: NLC dot com to check that out. Oh, Tom, did
Speaker 6: you want to talk about the NLC Legislative Action Center.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so we touched briefly on last episode. The NLC
Speaker 5: actually can't really use a lot of the money and
Speaker 5: funds from the union itself to lobby or to push
Speaker 5: Congress or anything like that, so there are separate organizations.
Speaker 5: There are facets of our organization that do that. You
Speaker 5: can find that at NLC dot org. Specifically, they do
Speaker 5: have a link where you put in new zip code
Speaker 5: and it gives you the appropriate congress member to write
Speaker 5: a letter to and really push them on what to do.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 5: You can also donate to their fund if you see
Speaker 5: so fit and are able to do so.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and at that Legislative Action thing is actually pretty
Speaker 6: cool because you don't even have to call. They'll have
Speaker 6: pre filled out things that you can just click, enter
Speaker 6: your email and it'll do it for you. So it's
Speaker 6: a real quick snap. It's the easiest way to harass
Speaker 6: for your congress person aside from drunk dialing Ted Cruz,
Speaker 6: which is my favorite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll have links to all that well, linked to
Speaker 2: all that in the Discover.
Speaker 6: There's one more plug I wanted to make because all
Speaker 6: the fires out in LA right now, because you have
Speaker 6: letter carriers where the post office burned down, and so
Speaker 6: did their house, and now they're they're reporting to duty
Speaker 6: at another post office twenty minutes away to go and
Speaker 6: deliver deliver mail to a devastated neighborhood. Because the thing is,
Speaker 6: when shit happens, whether it's a hurricane or a fire
Speaker 6: or you know, the first people who show up are
Speaker 6: your neighbors or the punks or the punks and mutual
Speaker 6: aid in your neighbors show up, the first person you
Speaker 6: see from the government.
Speaker 4: We're federal employees, were not federal allies.
Speaker 6: But the first hint of normalcy that a lot of
Speaker 6: people get is trying to just hide out and be safe,
Speaker 6: and then they see their mail man walking through their
Speaker 6: fucking lawn trying to deliver to their shit, you know
Speaker 6: what I mean. Like that's important. And we all love
Speaker 6: what we do. We love being a part of the community,
Speaker 6: and we love helping. And sorry, I knew I was
Speaker 6: gonna cry at some fucker point.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 6: So the NELC is an NLC disaster relief fund. The
Speaker 6: public can donate to it. It's usually letter carriers. We
Speaker 6: all donate to it. And what happens is if your
Speaker 6: house burns down like in LA right now, or if
Speaker 6: like you were devastating the fires in in in Hawaii
Speaker 6: or whatever. When that happens, a letter carrier can apply
Speaker 6: and as soon as they're approved, which can happen within
Speaker 6: a day or two, they automatically get sent like a
Speaker 6: thousand dollars from the fund to just pay for their
Speaker 6: pay for their hotel or pay for their rent a.
Speaker 4: Car, and then they get approved.
Speaker 6: It's not a fix all, but they'll get like they'll
Speaker 6: get another check after a little bit to help with
Speaker 6: some of their damages after they make their claim. That's
Speaker 6: something that normally it's just letter carriers giving to letter
Speaker 6: carriers so we can all take care of each other.
Speaker 6: But like the public is allowed to donate to that too.
Speaker 6: I know there's a lot of you guys have already
Speaker 6: been talking about a lot of mutual aid stuff at
Speaker 6: the beginning of your episodes lately. I just want to
Speaker 6: plug that one as a mailman specific one. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 6: sorry for crying.
Speaker 2: No, No, Yeah, I mean it's emotional.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that shit sucks, bro, Yeah.
Speaker 2: It really does. Yeah. Is there anything else that you
Speaker 2: want to make sure people know before we head off?
Speaker 5: If I have one thing, it's just help your co workers.
Speaker 5: You don't have to be a steward. You don't have
Speaker 5: to be anything. Just find somebody who don't think deserves it.
Speaker 3: Help them too. I guarantee you.
Speaker 4: That did he do.
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