> >>Help me with the lingo please: what does it mean to "go postal"?
>
> >This refers to the postal workers who occasionally snap from the pressure
> >and bring guns to work and start shooting their supervisors or fellow
> >workers. There was a rash of this in recent years.
>
There has indeed been an intensive productivity drive for a
number of years at the post office, and the atmosphere can get
almost military. At the same time, there has been pressure on wages
and benefits. Naturally the postal workers were promised that
eventually they would reap some benefit from all their sacrifices,
and naturally each sacrifice only led to more sacrifices. This year's
contract negotations comes during a period during which the post
office has been making oodles of money, while the productivity drive
has been as intense as ever. Yet the workers get crumbs.
The tentative contract is quite unpopular. There is a chance it will
be voted down nationally. Even the vice-president, William Burris, of
the APWU has denounced the settlement, although--as a good union
bureaucrat--he didn't advise voting no on it. (The Washington Post,
Dec. 9, 1998) A number of postal workers are campaigning against this
contract. There will be a mail-in ballot, from about Dec. 17 to Jan.
4. Please help militant postal workers by spreading the information
about the contract settlement to any postal workers you know.
I include below a leaflet which has been distributed among a number
of postal workers in the Detroit area, and which has had an excellent
reception there:
*Vote NO! The tentative contract settlement
is an insult!*
(from Detroit Workers' Voice, Dec. 9, 1998, #21)
Tentative contract agreements have just been
reached between USPS management and the unions
representing clerks and mail handlers. As we write, an
agreement with the letter carriers' union has yet to
take place, but it likely will be patterned on the
other agreements. These contracts are a complete insult
which should be voted down by the rank and file.
Over the last four years USPS management has made
some $5 billion in profits. These profits come from the
sweat and blood of postal workers. They come from ever-
heavier workloads, from keeping a tight lid on wages
and benefits, and from farming out postal work in
various privatization schemes. Does USPS management
reward the workers for their efforts? No. They offer us
a contact which offers us a few tiny crumbs, which does
nothing to protect us from increased work burdens and
allows even more privatization. They are saying in
effect that "we got away with treating you like dirt
for the last four years (and more), so we will continue
to treat you like dirt with this new contract."
USPS management is trying to ram this rotten
contract down our throats with the help of the national
postal union leaderships. The APWU (clerks) and the
NPMHU (mail handlers) national leaderships are bragging
what a great contract they have won. Here's what they
consider a great victory:
*Billions for management,
peanuts for the workers*
While profits have been pouring in hand over fist,
this new contract contains a pitiful wage increase of
2.0% in the first year and 1.4% in the second year.
Wow, how generous! This amounts to a puny $12 per week
increase in the size of a Level 5 workers' paycheck
after 2 years. Originally management offered no wage
increase but only two lump-sum payments totaling $1900.
This sucked. But isn't it also an insult that the total
amount of basic wage increases a worker would get in
the present agreement is only about $1.37 per week more
than management's original lump-sum offer? Meanwhile,
outgoing Postmaster General Marvin Runyon got a
retirement package worth over a million dollars for his
brief stay as chief slave-driver and was treated to a
retirement party that cost $150,000.
The union leaders also tout a tiny increase in the
share of health insurance costs to be paid by the USPS,
resulting in the employees' share being reduced to 15%.
But this doesn't begin to make up for the fact that,
before the last contract, the employees' share was only
10%. So with this new "victory" workers will still pay
5% more of the share of health costs than 5 years ago!
*More privatization*
The APWU and NPMHU leaders are boasting that this
contract contains powerful protections against
privatization. This is a lie. There is a so-called 18-
month "moratorium" on new national privatization
agreements. But it's not worth the paper it's written
on because the proposed contract also allows management
to establish 25 new privatized priority mail centers.
Moreover, what happens after the 18 months? That
doesn't even cover the length of the contract. So
management could privatize whatever it damn well
pleases in the last 6 months of the contract!
True, one of the 25 subcontracted facilities will
use postal employees. But this is just an experiment to
see if the work can be done just as cheaply by postal
employees. It's a lose-lose situation for the postal
workers. If the work isn't done as cheaply,
privatization goes ahead. But if postal workers work
just as cheaply, this means they will have to accept
increased workloads and poorer compensation. In other
words, this is just another attempt at driving down
postal workers' conditions by threatening them with
privatization. It's a method of pitting one group of
workers against another to the detriment of both.
*Increasing use of casuals*
In its never-ending drive for slave-labor,
management would like to replace as many career workers
as possible with low-wage casuals who work only at
management's whim. The NPMHU agreement states that the
cap on the percentage of casuals employed at an
installation will rise to 12.5%.
*Vote NO on the sellout agreement,
prepare for struggle!*
Management has been running roughshod over us for
too long. Now is the time to stand up against them.
Let's have a massive NO vote against the contract.
But we cannot simply vote NO and rest easy. If the
contract is rejected, management and the union
leaderships will then take the contract to arbitration.
History has proven that contracts that go to
arbitration come back with little for the workers.
That's why management in the past has shown little
inclination to reach a negotiated settlement. The
arbitration boards are closely tied to the same fat-cat
capitalist establishment that has been on a rampage
against the jobs and conditions of the workers across
the country.
If there is to be a serious struggle for a decent
contract, the rank-and-file must mobilize themselves
for mass action. The more a protest movement against
the contract can be built, the more pressure will be
put on management and the arbitrators to give us what
we deserve. Who will organize such a movement? Some
local union leaders like the APWU's Roger Holbrook have
voiced criticism of the local contract. But the track
record of the local leaders show they cannot be relied
upon to build serious resistance to management or that
they are interested in mobilizing the bulk of workers
for a real fight. That task must be undertaken by the
rank-and-file itself.
As we encourage our co-workers to vote NO, let's
also discuss what forms we can use to build up a mass
protest movement. True, postal strikes are illegal. But
this is only another reason that we must get organized.
If workers are not yet prepared to defy the anti-strike
law, let's organize other protests to help unify our
ranks and put us in a better position to use even more
powerful forms of struggle in the future. We don't have
to sit passively by while others decide our fate. Let's
take matters into our own hands. <>
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Joseph Green
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Communist Voice" magazine website:
http://www.flash.net/~comvoice
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Joseph Green
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
