Speaker 1: Alson media.
Speaker 2: Either snow nor rain, nor heat nor darkness can stop
Speaker 2: the Persian Courier Service. Welcome to dick it Out and
Speaker 2: here a podcast about PUSSTAL Services, who reasked the question
Speaker 2: can the American capitalist class finally stop the American Post Office?
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Mia Long and with me to talk
Speaker 2: about what is going on with the post Office, what's
Speaker 2: going on with the post office unions, and yeah, how
Speaker 2: things are going downhill for the noble people who carry
Speaker 2: your mail. Is Tommy Espinoza, who's a union steward for
Speaker 2: the National Association of Letter Carriers. Tommy, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so
Speaker 3: much for giving us the mail care dollars, the male
Speaker 3: carriers a platform to stand on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm really I'm really happy to you and I'm
Speaker 2: really happy to get to talk to you about this.
Speaker 2: So I think the place we should start is with
Speaker 2: a bunch of very very weird stuff in how labor
Speaker 2: law works. So okay, for like most people in the
Speaker 2: United States, you have a fatally protected right to strike
Speaker 2: if you have a union. That is not true for
Speaker 2: federal employees. That is especially not true for members of
Speaker 2: the post Office and that is a real issue because
Speaker 2: the government has decided that, like, yeah, I know, all
Speaker 2: these people who do vital service are not allowed to
Speaker 2: go on strike and it absolutely sucks. Yeah. So I
Speaker 2: think this gets into sort of where I want to start,
Speaker 2: which is with the sort of history of the National
Speaker 2: Association Letters Carriers, a union that is not allowed to strike,
Speaker 2: and how sort of weird that is. So Yeah, I
Speaker 2: was wondering if you could talk a bit about sort
Speaker 2: of the origins of the union and what effect that
Speaker 2: has had on how organizing works or it doesn't work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the right to strike has been a rather divisive topic.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you're familiar with unions and just generally people
Speaker 3: on our side of our side of politics to be
Speaker 3: infighting a lot. I shouldn't come to a surprise. So
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty nine, just over fifty years ago, the
Speaker 3: salary for postal workers was under two dollars an hour.
Speaker 3: People were working months straight with no days off, and
Speaker 3: those were close to twelve hour days, and so these
Speaker 3: postal workers at the time qualified for welfare and decided
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy to go on strike despite it being illegal.
Speaker 3: This conversation is not new it was illegal then, it's
Speaker 3: illegal now. And I do want to be crystal clear here.
Speaker 3: I am not advocating for a strike that would also
Speaker 3: be against the law, and we don't advocate for anything
Speaker 3: that's against the law. What I do want to advocate
Speaker 3: for is the right to strike, because being quasi federal,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of limitations in what the NLC and
Speaker 3: the general postal unions are able to do. In total,
Speaker 3: there are nine bargaining agreements and seven unions within the
Speaker 3: Post Office, some of which are the manager's unions, so
Speaker 3: take that as it is. Yet, on top of not
Speaker 3: being able to strike, none of our money that we
Speaker 3: collect as uniondes can be used for lobbying purposes, so
Speaker 3: they can't support a single candidate or any of the
Speaker 3: parties involved. We have a separate fund for that with
Speaker 3: the NLC, called the Letter Carrier's Political Fund, to try
Speaker 3: and circumvent the restrictions that are put on there. And
Speaker 3: as a result of that, it's like we're fighting with
Speaker 3: our hands tied behind our back. We are unable to
Speaker 3: organize effectively. Our union leadership seems to be afraid of
Speaker 3: protests and picketing for fear that it'll be misconstrued or
Speaker 3: labeled as a strike, and they're I think generally afraid
Speaker 3: of public opinion.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a debilitating set of conditions because you've effectively
Speaker 2: taken away sort of the two major tools that you know,
Speaker 2: I mean unions of basically across all political strikes US. Right,
Speaker 2: You've taken away the ability to strike. You've taken away
Speaker 2: the ability to use your due's money to influence elections.
Speaker 2: So this immediately means you've taken away the tool that
Speaker 2: sort of militant unions use, which is strikes, and you've
Speaker 2: taken away the tools that more conservative unions use, which
Speaker 2: is buying attempting to buy politicians. And then also your
Speaker 2: leadership is like, we can't strike, I mean, we can't
Speaker 2: protest because someone might think it's a strike, the public
Speaker 2: might commanditusen. It's like that that doesn't seem I don't
Speaker 2: it really seems like it's like it's not only have
Speaker 2: you tied both hands behind your back, you've like tied
Speaker 2: them behind your back to your legs. You're now rolling
Speaker 2: around on the ground.
Speaker 3: Right, And to talk about what happens when we pushed
Speaker 3: past all of these barriers and just do it Anyways,
Speaker 3: you know, in March nineteen seventy, two hundred and ten
Speaker 3: thousand postal workers defied law, defied the general leadership of
Speaker 3: the time. And it all started in New York where
Speaker 3: people clocked in and at nine o'clock they just walked out. Soon,
Speaker 3: let's see, it was Cleveland, Chicago, Los Angeles. The nation
Speaker 3: joined very shortly after. Once it broke the news that
Speaker 3: they were calling for a national strike. Nixon called in
Speaker 3: the National Guard to try and deliver mail, and the
Speaker 3: National Guard had no idea what they were doing. There's
Speaker 3: an amazing video that I'll try and send you afterwards.
Speaker 3: It's just the National Guard at our cases where we
Speaker 3: sort the mail. An interviewer is asking him, do you
Speaker 3: think that you're doing a good job. It's just like, no,
Speaker 3: it's just some kid, you know. And don't get me wrong,
Speaker 3: I'm just some guy. But you need the training, you
Speaker 3: need to know what you're doing. And it's not something
Speaker 3: that anyone can pick up in a day, but it's
Speaker 3: a job that anyone can do. But yeah, for the
Speaker 3: first time, the mail had stopped, and that won us
Speaker 3: collective bargaining binding arbitration, which is a process that I
Speaker 3: think most people within unions know what they mean, but
Speaker 3: to explain it, arbitration is what happens when our parties
Speaker 3: cannot agree on a settlement for a grievance and eventually
Speaker 3: we call in a third party, an arbitrator to decide
Speaker 3: for us, and those are generally lawyers. On top of
Speaker 3: binding arbitration, it gave us a new pay scale and
Speaker 3: set in motion. I think over it's got to be
Speaker 3: hundreds of raises between the colas and the new pay table.
Speaker 3: It used to be twenty one years for you to
Speaker 3: reach the top pay scale, which is absolutely ridiculous, and
Speaker 3: I think it's eight. Yeah. So the Post Office was
Speaker 3: forced to reorganize, and so is the union. This is
Speaker 3: where the American Postal Workers Union was born. And from
Speaker 3: this strike we were able to settle on the National Agreement.
Speaker 3: So there's the National Agreement, which is our binding contract.
Speaker 3: There's the JCAM, which is the Joint Contract Administration Manual,
Speaker 3: which is what the Post Office and the union use
Speaker 3: as the interpretation of the contract. That way we are
Speaker 3: not arguing and spending time about the contract could mean
Speaker 3: we can just focus on whether or not someone broke
Speaker 3: our agreement. So after this one would imagine that a
Speaker 3: quasi federal institution would honor the contract that was created,
Speaker 3: argain in good faith and treat their employees. Isn't that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know it's spoken like someone who has never
Speaker 2: watched the Federal co action.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely not. Before we get into issues that we
Speaker 3: face today, I do want to say that one of
Speaker 3: the main goals of our contract negotiations, or of this
Speaker 3: episode really is to create public knowledge of how our
Speaker 3: contract is not being adhered to. If there was one
Speaker 3: main goal that I'd have in mind, is just to
Speaker 3: have the Post Office honor what they signed and agreed
Speaker 3: to do. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And this is something that that it's a part of
Speaker 2: being in a union that doesn't get talked about very much,
Speaker 2: which is that the contract doesn't mean anything unless the
Speaker 2: union enforces it. Because the moment the contract happens, the
Speaker 2: bosses will attempt to not abide by it. And this
Speaker 2: is what a lot of union militancy back in the
Speaker 2: sort of heyday of militancy was. I mean, like, you know,
Speaker 2: if you look at like how the UAW worked in
Speaker 2: like the sixties, right, they'd have a guy with a
Speaker 2: whistle standing on the line, and if someone did a
Speaker 2: contract violation. He would blow the whistle and everyone would
Speaker 2: just sit down and you'd immediately have a strike, right,
Speaker 2: and it wor you know, and like that level of miltancy.
Speaker 2: You don't need to get like be at that level
Speaker 2: to enforce a contract, but you have to actually be
Speaker 2: willing to do stuff and to fight management over it.
Speaker 2: And if you're not willing to do that, your contract
Speaker 2: is effectively meaningless. And that's a real issue with a
Speaker 2: lot of unions.
Speaker 3: Which just kind of circles back to one of the
Speaker 3: big issues that we face is that if we were to
Speaker 3: do that, that would be a willing for delay of mail,
Speaker 3: and we could be charged for it just for trying
Speaker 3: to enforce the contract.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Which the thing I think is really interesting, just
Speaker 2: to circle back to the nineteen seventy strike, is that
Speaker 2: so the strike was illegal, right, Nixon brings in the
Speaker 2: army and the National Guard to break it, and the
Speaker 2: strike still wins. And not only does it, you know,
Speaker 2: I mean you could argue whether it achieved total victory,
Speaker 2: but not a single person who walked off the line
Speaker 2: got arrested, even though all of them technically committed a crime.
Speaker 2: And that's something that like you know, I think, okay,
Speaker 2: the enforcements of laws depends on sort of depends on
Speaker 2: a set of relative balance of forces and whether people
Speaker 2: care about enforcing the law, which is how like for example,
Speaker 2: like if you pirate like seven movies and you get
Speaker 2: you get three copyright strike, you go to prison. But
Speaker 2: you know, like the sam Altman or whatever like AI
Speaker 2: company can literally steal everything on the entire Internet and
Speaker 2: get money for it, and no one will love to
Speaker 2: prosecute him, right, And so so you know, whether or
Speaker 2: not something is illegal is to a large extent or
Speaker 2: the difference between something being illegal and you going to
Speaker 2: prison for it largely has to do with the balance
Speaker 2: of forces involved. And that's something that you should keep
Speaker 2: in mind when and this is this is the thing,
Speaker 2: this is the thing that that cuts the other way
Speaker 2: a lot too write like a lot like employers just
Speaker 2: do illegal actions literally all the time, and it doesn't
Speaker 2: matter because the state doesn't care.
Speaker 3: Yeah, By and large, labor laws in America are set
Speaker 3: up in favor of the businesses of the employers. If
Speaker 3: you're familiar with workers comp or any of the systems
Speaker 3: involved in the Federal Employees Compensation Act, it's not enforced.
Speaker 3: We have cases that are pending arbitration where someone's been
Speaker 3: run over by a worker has been run over by
Speaker 3: a postal vehicle while they were working. The post Office
Speaker 3: effectively takes them off of payroll to increase the damage
Speaker 3: done to the individual. Eventually, the Department of Labor says, yes,
Speaker 3: we will pay this individual, and the post Office is
Speaker 3: liable to pay them. But now they are off the rolls,
Speaker 3: which means there's a greater period of time before this
Speaker 3: individual gets their money. And there's a certain form that
Speaker 3: within the post Office the managers need to fill out.
Speaker 3: I believe it's an eighty one thirty or you know.
Speaker 3: All these forms have some numbers associated with them that
Speaker 3: they just refuse to fill out. And there's no recourse,
Speaker 3: there's no cheez path for us to take to make
Speaker 3: them hurry or make them get this individual the money
Speaker 3: that they're owed. And some people this doesn't ruin their
Speaker 3: lives and they've already paid off their house or whatever.
Speaker 3: But I imagine for many many working Americans that's that's their
Speaker 3: livelihood immediately down the drain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, unfortunately, we need to go to ads for a
Speaker 2: little bit because unfortunately my boss's boss's boss's livelihood depends
Speaker 2: on these ads. Buying technically does too, but like Lord knows,
Speaker 2: I don't see that money. So ads, we are back,
Speaker 2: And yeah, I guess that leads into the next place
Speaker 2: you want to go to, which is talking about what
Speaker 2: are the specific grievances today that y'all are dealing with
Speaker 2: and the union is not dealing with.
Speaker 3: Right So, in terms of grievances within the union and
Speaker 3: our negotiation, a lot of it does have to do
Speaker 3: with the aforementioned workers' compensation. Employees are just simply not
Speaker 3: getting paid. I think the biggest problem with the union
Speaker 3: and the grievance procedure today is that management has figured
Speaker 3: out this really effective strategy. If they don't settle on
Speaker 3: the lower levels and it gets pushed up to arbitration,
Speaker 3: then we have a massive backlog of cases appending arbitration,
Speaker 3: which could be scheduled years out. I think if you
Speaker 3: do the math for our current rate of handling these
Speaker 3: cases and how many cases we have, it'll take around
Speaker 3: fifteen years to get through the.
Speaker 2: Long christ not assuming there's no new ones.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's like you know when you go to
Speaker 3: a restaurant and there's that little stanchion out there that
Speaker 3: says it's a five hour wait from this point. That's
Speaker 3: the point that we're at. Anything beyond today, we'll be
Speaker 3: further along Jesus Christ. And so I think that is
Speaker 3: just a major problem for us. Clearly. Yeah, management is
Speaker 3: not complying with any of this, and it makes us
Speaker 3: so that our employees have to wait. Something I do
Speaker 3: want to talk about that's outside of the grievance procedure
Speaker 3: if we can, is just what's going on with the
Speaker 3: post Office and the Postmaster General. Yeah, all right, So
Speaker 3: I want to go at this from the customer perspective first.
Speaker 3: I think that's the best way to relate to people.
Speaker 3: I think by and large, people are losing faith in
Speaker 3: the post Office. Either you have no idea what's going on,
Speaker 3: or you don't care. And that's fine, I'd say. Before
Speaker 3: I joined, I didn't think of them at all. You know,
Speaker 3: they're just the guy that shows up at my house
Speaker 3: every morning. A lot of people seem to think that
Speaker 3: the post Office is going out of business, and our
Speaker 3: customers are facing increasingly long lines, misdelivered or lost mail,
Speaker 3: and an increase in postage for a service that is
Speaker 3: getting worse. People are paying more for worse service, and
Speaker 3: it's easy to point out those issues from the outside
Speaker 3: and be rightfully upset at them. I do feel like
Speaker 3: we're doing a disservice to our customers, and I'm not
Speaker 3: really not trying to attack them when I say that
Speaker 3: they're uninformed or clueless to the inner workings of the
Speaker 3: Post Office. I do directly want to attack Congress and
Speaker 3: say that, yeah, when they posted, they had pushed forward
Speaker 3: a bill called the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act in
Speaker 3: two thousand and six, which required the Post Office to
Speaker 3: prefund one hundred percent of its retiree health benefits and
Speaker 3: liabilities seventy five years into the future. What so, overnight,
Speaker 3: the Post Office was handed a five point five billion
Speaker 3: dollar burden. And that's where the whole I don't know
Speaker 3: if you remember, I certainly wasn't conscious of it at
Speaker 3: the time, to save our post office stickers that were
Speaker 3: being sold and trying to fund the post Office, and
Speaker 3: really that's where the rhetoric of the Post Office is
Speaker 3: going under comes from. The Other thing I want to
Speaker 3: point out is that we are quasi federal. We actually
Speaker 3: accept nothing from tax payer monies. It says it's a service,
Speaker 3: but really the post officees ran as a business. We
Speaker 3: don't even get subsidized because they don't need to. My
Speaker 3: local union president loves to remind us that the post
Speaker 3: Office is a business that has a revenue of seventy
Speaker 3: eight point two billion dollars, and he'll want me to
Speaker 3: stress that the point two is extremely important because point
Speaker 3: two of a billion is twenty million. They are not
Speaker 3: in jeopardy. We are not going out of business. And
Speaker 3: the Postmaster General, Louis de Joy, he's the second highest
Speaker 3: paid public servant in America, just underneath the President of
Speaker 3: the United States.
Speaker 2: He's played Ward and Clarence Thomas.
Speaker 3: Wow. Yeah, I think it was like three hundred and
Speaker 3: eighty thousand a year or something like that. The Joy
Speaker 3: was appointed by Donald Trump. I'm assuming this is kind
Speaker 3: of a baseless assumption, So forgive me. I'm not doing
Speaker 3: my research here, but I'm assuming that they're buddies because
Speaker 3: d Joy has no idea.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't she the guy that Trump brought in,
Speaker 2: like specifically to destroy the post Office as part of
Speaker 2: the campaign to steal the election.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there's been a lot about the Joy defrauding
Speaker 3: the election process. I wasn't part of the post office
Speaker 3: to see the inner workings of it, so it's kind
Speaker 3: of hard for me to say if it was hearsay
Speaker 3: or not, but I believe it because de Joy has
Speaker 3: no idea how to run a post office. He's never
Speaker 3: been involved with this kind of business. He is, in
Speaker 3: the same way that Trump is a businessman, a horrible businessman,
Speaker 3: and his Delivering for America plan could really be redefined
Speaker 3: as consolidation efforts for a business. So what they're doing
Speaker 3: is they're consolidating infrastructure and the workforce, which means closing
Speaker 3: post offices in order to save money and shoving three
Speaker 3: installations into one building. That's why the lines are getting longer.
Speaker 3: It also means that from dispatch the employees have to
Speaker 3: drive an extra mile or two into their working zone,
Speaker 3: which of course means that we're going to go into overtime.
Speaker 3: And this just throws a wrench in the mail handling process.
Speaker 3: He has single handedly made the service a lot more reliable,
Speaker 3: and I do think that you're right. Irreliable, yeah, sorry,
Speaker 3: more unreliable, And I do think that you're right. He
Speaker 3: wants to destroy the post office, not only for the election,
Speaker 3: but to the point where it makes more sense to
Speaker 3: go private. Now is the time to point out that
Speaker 3: the Joy is a major shareholder in FedEx, which is
Speaker 3: christ which is a subcontractor for the USPS, and he
Speaker 3: has millions of dollars in equity involved. He's got skin
Speaker 3: in the game.
Speaker 2: Love open corruption so great.
Speaker 3: And so on the local level, on what's going on
Speaker 3: in my office, I actually have one of the better
Speaker 3: offices that I've seen are heard about. I have been
Speaker 3: sent to other offices, and I have experience firsthand the
Speaker 3: bullying and harassment from management pushing us to go faster.
Speaker 3: But even at one of the better offices, I work
Speaker 3: sixty hour weeks. I don't have set days off. It's
Speaker 3: not even a rotation. When I get home, I'm spent.
Speaker 3: And my commute isn't that bad. I think I'm about
Speaker 3: fifteen minutes each way. And I really can't imagine driving
Speaker 3: two hours after an eleven hour shift just to eat
Speaker 3: and come back and do it again.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's just unsafe.
Speaker 3: Like let's say, oh, yeah, it would be illegal, but
Speaker 3: since it's in the contract, it's not illegal. Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So the sacrifice that you make when you're joining the
Speaker 3: post Office. Well, I guess I should explain. When you
Speaker 3: join as a letter carrier, the first ninety days, they
Speaker 3: can fire you for any reason, and you're something called
Speaker 3: either a CCA or a PTF, and that means part
Speaker 3: time flexible or a city carrier assistant. You are only
Speaker 3: guaranteed four hours for showing up for work. You're not
Speaker 3: guaranteed to be scheduled. So if they don't like you,
Speaker 3: they just will schedule schedule you once a week for
Speaker 3: an unknown amount of time until you quit. And if
Speaker 3: you're in a busy place, then that just means that
Speaker 3: they're going to work you to death. So when you
Speaker 3: join the workforce, immediately you lose time with your family.
Speaker 3: You lose time with your loved ones and your friends.
Speaker 3: And I myself, am so fortunate that all my loved
Speaker 3: ones have been beyond understanding. But every time I talk
Speaker 3: about it, I get asked the same thing, why don't
Speaker 3: you quit? And the truth is this job is awesome.
Speaker 3: I love it, I want to work it. I just
Speaker 3: want it to make sense and be livable, and I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna give up just because we haven't reached the
Speaker 3: point where it is. You know, if you walk away.
Speaker 3: Now it doesn't get better. I'm sure someone would take
Speaker 3: my place, but it helps to have people stick around.
Speaker 2: That's actually a pretty commedy. I mean, this is one
Speaker 2: of the amazons shredch right for from their warehouses. They
Speaker 2: intentionally want to cycle through people because the more the
Speaker 2: more new people you have continuously cycling through, the less
Speaker 2: organized and the less sort of like must knowledge, they
Speaker 2: have less you have to pay them, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And so if you can just cause high
Speaker 2: turn off rates on purpose, that's that's the thing that
Speaker 2: a lot of these sort of business google like Nightmare
Speaker 2: factory people love in their workforces and makes everyone else's
Speaker 2: life just a living hell. But you know, they're still
Speaker 2: getting paid.
Speaker 3: Right, And so I try and hold that in mind.
Speaker 3: When I've been overworked and I'm at the end of
Speaker 3: one of my major shifts because I had to carry
Speaker 3: part of another route because someone else called out, I
Speaker 3: really have to stop and think to myself that this
Speaker 3: other person who called out is just as exhausted as
Speaker 3: I am is probably going to get a letter of
Speaker 3: warning for calling out. That's another issue. They don't want
Speaker 3: you to use your leave Jesus Christ. I'm going to
Speaker 3: file an unfair labor practice because they've been doing that
Speaker 3: a lot at my office.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: As well. It reminds me a lot are issues of
Speaker 3: your recent episode. I think it was you about the
Speaker 3: nurses Union, the shift change episode. Their members are dealing
Speaker 3: with a lot of the same things, where the unions
Speaker 3: are so big that they become detached from the me membership,
Speaker 3: and we are finding out afterwards what our bargaining agreements are,
Speaker 3: what our strategy was. Everything's after the contract has been signed,
Speaker 3: and that's just not how unions were meant to be.
Speaker 3: They're meant to be from the bottom up, by the workers,
Speaker 3: for the workers. But it really does feel like it's
Speaker 3: like national is its own entity. And so I guess
Speaker 3: that would bring us to talking about the union and
Speaker 3: the future of the union.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's get into that.
Speaker 3: So I got to be careful here because Brian renfro
Speaker 3: he's our national leader of the union. He's been struggling
Speaker 3: with problems in his personal life. And I don't feel
Speaker 3: like I'm outsteeing him as its public knowledge, at least
Speaker 3: within the Post Office. It's public knowledge he's dealing with
Speaker 3: substance abuse with alcoholism, and that's something that hits very
Speaker 3: close to home within my family, and I really don't
Speaker 3: want to demonize that he's struggling, But what I do
Speaker 3: want to say is when you're going through something like
Speaker 3: that and you've accepted a position on the national level
Speaker 3: like this, you really need to either step down or
Speaker 3: appoint someone to handle things in your place. As negotiations
Speaker 3: started over a year ago, he kind of went missing
Speaker 3: and it was later revealed that he was an inpatient,
Speaker 3: which is fine, get your help, but there was nothing left,
Speaker 3: no notes left for us to strategize with, and our
Speaker 3: membership is just in the dark. And beyond that, the
Speaker 3: leadership has gone missing. It's very dark times for the
Speaker 3: NALC well.
Speaker 2: And that's also just sort of like an organizational problem,
Speaker 2: right If your organization is set up in such a
Speaker 2: way that a small number of people being incapacitated means
Speaker 2: total paralysis and no one has any idea what's going on,
Speaker 2: that's just a bad way to run something, And especially
Speaker 2: it's a terrible way to run a union because the
Speaker 2: union's you know, power is supposed to be from from
Speaker 2: its organization and from the collective power of a large, large,
Speaker 2: organized group of people who can make decisions for themselves.
Speaker 2: And if it's if that's not happening, and you get
Speaker 2: to the point where these decisions are being made by
Speaker 2: a very small number of people who can just sort
Speaker 2: of vanish like that's that for whatever. And you know,
Speaker 2: literally whatever reason that is right, it could just be
Speaker 2: you get sick. It could just be like whatever happens,
Speaker 2: that's just a terrible way to organize things. And I
Speaker 2: guess it's also like I want to make take it
Speaker 2: like like like a little tiny tangent to be like,
Speaker 2: if you're doing any organizing project, your goal is to
Speaker 2: organize yourself out of a job, like you're like I ideally,
Speaker 2: if you were in an organization, it should be able
Speaker 2: to function without you. There should Not having an indispensable
Speaker 2: person is a fiasco. Don't do that. This is true
Speaker 2: of both like your tiny local mutual aid group, as
Speaker 2: much as is true of your giant national union. So this,
Speaker 2: this has been this has been mea talking about the
Speaker 2: indispensable person don't have.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's kind of the funny thing about joining
Speaker 3: a union. From an anarchist perspective, it gets a little
Speaker 3: funky how hierarchical they typically are, and the problems that
Speaker 3: we know we are going to face when you have
Speaker 3: a system that's built like a pyramid. Yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 3: And so I was saying, we're in dark times, but
Speaker 3: there's such a bright future that I can see for us.
Speaker 3: Branch nine of the NAOC, and namely this individual Tyler Vasser,
Speaker 3: who when I had originally posted on Reddit asking for attention,
Speaker 3: he's the one that I thought would be great for
Speaker 3: this inner view. His Branch nine has passed a resolution
Speaker 3: to form an open bargaining strategy for contract negotiations, and
Speaker 3: I hope this sweeps the nation. We're not allowed to strike,
Speaker 3: as I've mentioned, and our leadership is so shy when
Speaker 3: it comes to activism or mobilization of the workforce. They
Speaker 3: don't want to touch the topic. The closest thing we
Speaker 3: have to it is a rally that is Enough is
Speaker 3: Enough that's being held in Baltimore soon about the violence
Speaker 3: that's being done to postal workers. We're being robbed and
Speaker 3: we're being harassed. But even then, we're missing a large
Speaker 3: chunk of the danger that is posed to postal workers
Speaker 3: because yes, we're being robbed on the streets, but we're
Speaker 3: also being bullied and harassed inside of our work places
Speaker 3: by management, by the people who are supposed to empower
Speaker 3: us to do the job effectively, and so they don't
Speaker 3: want to touch the topic of a strike, I think,
Speaker 3: for fear of retaliation. But to me, pushing for the
Speaker 3: right to strike is a I'm not sure how to
Speaker 3: word this. It is such an important part of the
Speaker 3: nilc's identity, the postal strike of nineteen seventy that it
Speaker 3: seems silly to ignore it today and pretend like it
Speaker 3: didn't happen. So for the future, I think that activism
Speaker 3: is our key to success. I think that the old
Speaker 3: heads that lead our union come from a time where
Speaker 3: unions were frowned upon, where activism was frowned upon. But
Speaker 3: I think that public opinion will be largely in our favor,
Speaker 3: and that public opinion can really put pressure on the
Speaker 3: legislative branch on Kongs And if we are transparent about
Speaker 3: our union, what we're asking for, the issues that we're facing,
Speaker 3: I think that the public would be on our side.
Speaker 3: If the people in America knew that management was falsifying
Speaker 3: time records or training records and interfering with workers' comps
Speaker 3: claim and back pay, or that they're not paying the
Speaker 3: settlements that they've agreed to pay, that they're not scheduling
Speaker 3: arbitration sessions big or small, that they would care, and
Speaker 3: that they would join us in the streets. One major
Speaker 3: thing that happened, I think it was last year in
Speaker 3: the summer, we had a letter carrier. His name is
Speaker 3: Eugene Gates, who died in the Texas heat Jesus because
Speaker 3: management told him not to take as many breaks or
Speaker 3: he would face discipline. These pressures that we face when
Speaker 3: when you're threatened that you will lose your job if
Speaker 3: you don't listen to us, you will push yourself to
Speaker 3: the point of exhaustion. And further, Yeah, I think that
Speaker 3: the post office killed mister Gates. And yeah, there wasn't
Speaker 3: as much outcry or or anger behind the movement. I
Speaker 3: often find myself thinking that while I don't have the answers,
Speaker 3: I do know that we need to care more. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and it's hard to care when when you're exhausted. I
Speaker 3: acknowledge that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I think there's two things about that. One.
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't and this is something I've gotten
Speaker 2: to with a lot of the sort of interviews that
Speaker 2: I've done on the show is that I think a
Speaker 2: lot of very very basic jobs have labor conditions that
Speaker 2: are unimaginably appalling that people just don't know about. And
Speaker 2: I think people are very sympathetic too, once they actually
Speaker 2: understand what's happening in the kind of just horror show
Speaker 2: stuff that's happening in these workplaces. And the second thing
Speaker 2: I think that's sort of important in terms of getting
Speaker 2: people to you know, like trying trying to actually do
Speaker 2: like mass mobilizations even just to get people to understand
Speaker 2: what's going on, is that I think a lot of
Speaker 2: people who are facing these kinds of conditions think that
Speaker 2: they're alone and think that it's just something that happens
Speaker 2: to them, or they've been in them for so long
Speaker 2: they think that it's sort of normal. And having a
Speaker 2: bunch of people go no, like A, this happens and
Speaker 2: b it shouldn't happen is extraordinarily powerful because you know,
Speaker 2: like that that feeling of isolation is is the thing
Speaker 2: that all of that you know, you're that your bosses
Speaker 2: depend on to make sure that you know you you
Speaker 2: just keep going along with these conditions even though they
Speaker 2: are just objectively horrific, and I think any strategy that's
Speaker 2: not based on that is just not going to go anywhere.
Speaker 3: Right, And one of the strategies that I really want
Speaker 3: to push forward as I grow within the union. And
Speaker 3: don't get me wrong, I want to stay as steward.
Speaker 3: I think that educating our members and being part of
Speaker 3: the workforce is my place in the union. But what
Speaker 3: I want to push is for union solidarity. I want
Speaker 3: the NLC to hire organizers, specifically organizers to try and
Speaker 3: get the public mobilized and as well as the workforce,
Speaker 3: so that we can put pressure on Congress, so that
Speaker 3: we can show our bargaining teams that we support them,
Speaker 3: and so that we can have clearly defined bargaining terms.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I think that having solidarity between unions and
Speaker 3: reaching out to the other movements in a time where
Speaker 3: union support is higher than ever is such a clear
Speaker 3: path that we are just ignoring for whatever reason, because
Speaker 3: people are afraid to speak out against the Post Office.
Speaker 3: And so I'm really not sure what's going to happen
Speaker 3: with our current contract, but I do know that the
Speaker 3: fight never ends, and that while we stand on the
Speaker 3: shoulders of giants, we have to pay respect to these
Speaker 3: giants by not giving up now. And I'm a relatively
Speaker 3: new employee and steward, but I'm really walking in the
Speaker 3: footsteps of some warriors. The branch president I mentioned, Ken Lurch,
Speaker 3: has given me so much support and education and has
Speaker 3: done so much hard work over the years that I
Speaker 3: don't have to reinvent that weel, none of us do.
Speaker 3: We just have to continue the struggle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's a great place to end.
Speaker 2: Unless you have anything else that you want to make
Speaker 2: sure we get to.
Speaker 3: No, nothing, nothing on this topic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So how can how can people support you and
Speaker 2: postal workers just in general? If there's specific place you
Speaker 2: want them to go?
Speaker 3: In general? There is on the na LC site, which
Speaker 3: is just an AOC dot com, there is a section
Speaker 3: where you put in your address and it it'll give
Speaker 3: you the email addresses, the phone numbers for your representatives
Speaker 3: so that you can make some noise. Again, we're amazingly
Speaker 3: limited in what we can do, so there's not really
Speaker 3: anything that you can donate to to help us, including
Speaker 3: the letter Carrier political fund. But yeah, just pay attention
Speaker 3: to us. Maybe leave a bottle of water out in
Speaker 3: your front door, says for the postal worker. You know,
Speaker 3: there's nothing better that you can do than talking about it.
Speaker 3: Word of mouth is the best advertisement.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, we will, we will. We will put that
Speaker 2: in the show notes. I hope you all win, and
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't think I've ever said this genuine
Speaker 2: ly in my life, but thank you for your service.
Speaker 3: I appreciate that. Yeah. I never imagined myself to become
Speaker 3: a federal employee, and it is just as bad as
Speaker 3: I imagined. Yeah, so I do want to shout out
Speaker 3: Actually it's a little meta, I guess, but I do
Speaker 3: want to shout out some important episodes of it could
Speaker 3: happen here that hit me very closely. If I can. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: go for it, because a lot of the people listening
Speaker 3: will be postal workers that have been pointed in this direction.
Speaker 3: Please look at the Mayan mar episodes, the Free Burmer,
Speaker 3: the Burmese Revolution, and look at the work that me.
Speaker 3: I believe you've done the same work as James with
Speaker 3: border kindness. Those are two topics that I think y'all
Speaker 3: hit really well and that really touched me as a person.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I'll relisten to those episodes when I'm having a
Speaker 3: hard day just to remind myself that it's all the same,
Speaker 3: it's all the same fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it absolutely is, And I mean I think that's
Speaker 2: that's sort of the beauty. I mean, it's both the
Speaker 2: beauty and the horror of this world is that on
Speaker 2: the one hand, all of us are being crushed by
Speaker 2: the same sets of forces. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: it means that whatever fight that you're taking is also
Speaker 2: a part of the larger fight forget all of us free.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, So just fight the burnout and stay in
Speaker 3: the fight. Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is be nicked up here, go make trouble
Speaker 2: for people who suck.
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