Call to Action
Please join and invite your State/Local Legislative Directors to join
Legislative/Political Director Judy Beard & President Mark Dimondstein
in an important Postal Service Reform Act Update
Thursday, February 10, 2022, 2:00pm EST
Please register as soon as possible by using the below listed link
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LAhWNtCjRQ264MUyl9qiZw
Please join and invite your State/Local Legislative Directors to join
Legislative/Political Director Judy Beard & President Mark Dimondstein
in an important Postal Service Reform Act Update
Thursday, February 10, 2022, 2:00pm EST
Please register as soon as possible by using the below listed link
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LAhWNtCjRQ264MUyl9qiZw
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Join our nationwide phone action for the USPS Fairness Act on Feb 25. Sign up to call your senators.
Sign up for the country-wide phone action here>>Dear Robert,
Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the USPS Fairness Act with a huge bipartisan majority. Now it's time for you to help build support in the Senate.
House members voted with a two-thirds majority to pass the Act. It was a big win and it happened because APWU members like you made thousands of calls and wrote letters to Congress members, as well as meeting with them.
Now the fight passes to the Senate. We need to keep that pressure up. Will you to step up and help preserve and improve the Postal Service? Join the country-wide phone action on Feb 25.
In 2006, Congress saddled the US Postal Service with an extraordinary burden of funding retirees’ health care 75 years into the future. That burden is strangling our public Postal Service and risking its full or partial sale to private corporations.
Just last week, when the White House released its budget, it included the recommendations of the 2018 White House Task Force on the Postal Service. They include service cuts, lower pay for postal workers, and accelerated outsourcing and privatization of postal work.
The USPS Fairness Act (S. 2965) would help put the Postal Service back onto a sustainable path for our communities by repealing that mandate and reducing the threat to our jobs.
This bill already has bipartisan support. We can get this passed if we all take action together. Sign up now and be a part of our online action day on Feb 25.
In union solidarity,
President Mark Dimondstein
1300 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20005 | www.apwu.org
Sign up for the country-wide phone action here>>Dear Robert,
Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed the USPS Fairness Act with a huge bipartisan majority. Now it's time for you to help build support in the Senate.
House members voted with a two-thirds majority to pass the Act. It was a big win and it happened because APWU members like you made thousands of calls and wrote letters to Congress members, as well as meeting with them.
Now the fight passes to the Senate. We need to keep that pressure up. Will you to step up and help preserve and improve the Postal Service? Join the country-wide phone action on Feb 25.
In 2006, Congress saddled the US Postal Service with an extraordinary burden of funding retirees’ health care 75 years into the future. That burden is strangling our public Postal Service and risking its full or partial sale to private corporations.
Just last week, when the White House released its budget, it included the recommendations of the 2018 White House Task Force on the Postal Service. They include service cuts, lower pay for postal workers, and accelerated outsourcing and privatization of postal work.
The USPS Fairness Act (S. 2965) would help put the Postal Service back onto a sustainable path for our communities by repealing that mandate and reducing the threat to our jobs.
This bill already has bipartisan support. We can get this passed if we all take action together. Sign up now and be a part of our online action day on Feb 25.
In union solidarity,
President Mark Dimondstein
1300 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20005 | www.apwu.org
H.R. 2382 Passes the House – APWU Members Instrumental in Victory!February 5, 2020
On Feb. 5, the USPS Fairness Act (H.R. 2382) passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming, bipartisan support – 309 ‘yea,’ 106 ‘nay,’ and 15 Representatives did not vote. The House’s passage of this legislation is the first step toward repealing the retiree health care prefunding mandate set forth in the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA). The prefunding mandate is responsible for 92 percent of Postal Service net losses since 2007 and is a threat to the financial sustainability of the Postal Service.
“Passing this legislation in the House is a positive step toward relieving the Postal Service of the manufactured financial crisis caused by the prefunding mandate,” said Legislative & Political Director Judy Beard. “APWU members were absolutely instrumental in educating their Representatives on this issue and obtaining support for the legislation. Without you, we would not have been able to achieve this milestone.”
APWU active, retired, and auxiliary members made over 7,570 calls to Congress and conducted numerous office visits urging support for this legislation. “Our members’, allies’, and sister postal unions’ efforts to speak to Congress and the public about the truth behind the Postal Service’s financial burden are paying off with this bipartisan legislation,” said President Mark Dimondstein. “Again, we see the power of workers and collective action.”
With H.R. 2382 passing the House, we now turn our attention to the companion bill in the Senate, S. 2965.
SENATE DAY OF ACTION ANNOUNCEDThe passage of H.R. 2382 in the House has us fired up and we are ready to take our fight to the Senate! Once again, we will be asking our APWU members to participate on a national call-in day of action on Tuesday, February 25.
APWU members, along with our allies, will flood the phones in their Senators’ offices and ask them to become a cosponsor of S. 2965. Thousands of APWU members called in during our last call in day of action, resulting in every member of the House of Representatives being contacted and numerous Representatives signing onto the bill. We are confident we can duplicate that success and achieve suppo rt for S. 2965, but we need your help!
On Feb. 25, postal workers and the communities we serve are standing up for our public Postal Service. It's time to protect America's most cherished institution.
The House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed the USPS Fairness Act. Now let's get it through the Senate. We are telling our Senators to pass the Senate companion bill, S.2965.
In 2006, Congress saddled our public Postal Service with an unfair and unsustainable burden of pre-funding retiree health care benefits for the next 75 years! That means paying now for USPS workers who aren't even born yet.
The USPS Fairness Act will start to put that right by removing the unfair burden. By repealing the prefunding mandate, the Postal Service would then be able to focus on investing and innovating services in order to better meet its mission to service every American household and business.
On Feb. 5, the USPS Fairness Act (H.R. 2382) passed the House of Representatives with overwhelming, bipartisan support – 309 ‘yea,’ 106 ‘nay,’ and 15 Representatives did not vote. The House’s passage of this legislation is the first step toward repealing the retiree health care prefunding mandate set forth in the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA). The prefunding mandate is responsible for 92 percent of Postal Service net losses since 2007 and is a threat to the financial sustainability of the Postal Service.
“Passing this legislation in the House is a positive step toward relieving the Postal Service of the manufactured financial crisis caused by the prefunding mandate,” said Legislative & Political Director Judy Beard. “APWU members were absolutely instrumental in educating their Representatives on this issue and obtaining support for the legislation. Without you, we would not have been able to achieve this milestone.”
APWU active, retired, and auxiliary members made over 7,570 calls to Congress and conducted numerous office visits urging support for this legislation. “Our members’, allies’, and sister postal unions’ efforts to speak to Congress and the public about the truth behind the Postal Service’s financial burden are paying off with this bipartisan legislation,” said President Mark Dimondstein. “Again, we see the power of workers and collective action.”
With H.R. 2382 passing the House, we now turn our attention to the companion bill in the Senate, S. 2965.
SENATE DAY OF ACTION ANNOUNCEDThe passage of H.R. 2382 in the House has us fired up and we are ready to take our fight to the Senate! Once again, we will be asking our APWU members to participate on a national call-in day of action on Tuesday, February 25.
APWU members, along with our allies, will flood the phones in their Senators’ offices and ask them to become a cosponsor of S. 2965. Thousands of APWU members called in during our last call in day of action, resulting in every member of the House of Representatives being contacted and numerous Representatives signing onto the bill. We are confident we can duplicate that success and achieve suppo rt for S. 2965, but we need your help!
On Feb. 25, postal workers and the communities we serve are standing up for our public Postal Service. It's time to protect America's most cherished institution.
The House of Representatives has overwhelmingly passed the USPS Fairness Act. Now let's get it through the Senate. We are telling our Senators to pass the Senate companion bill, S.2965.
In 2006, Congress saddled our public Postal Service with an unfair and unsustainable burden of pre-funding retiree health care benefits for the next 75 years! That means paying now for USPS workers who aren't even born yet.
The USPS Fairness Act will start to put that right by removing the unfair burden. By repealing the prefunding mandate, the Postal Service would then be able to focus on investing and innovating services in order to better meet its mission to service every American household and business.
By
Eli Rosenberg
Feb. 6, 2020 at 8:21 p.m. CST One of the most significant bills to strengthen workers’ abilities to organize in the past 80 years passed the House on Thursday, the latest sign of momentum for the labor movement.
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, known as the PRO Act, would amend some of the country’s decades-old labor laws to give workers more power during disputes at work, add penalties for companies that retaliate against workers who organize and grant some hundreds of thousands of workers collective-bargaining rights they don’t currently have. It would also weaken “right-to-work” laws in 27 states that allow employees to forgo participating in and paying dues to unions.
The House passed the bill with a vote of 224 to 194, mostly along party lines.
The bill is unlikely to be taken up by the GOP-controlled Senate, as Republicans and business groups have argued forcefully against it, saying it would hurt employers, violate privacy rights and be a major boon for national unions.
Congress’s most ambitious attempt to strengthen unions in years is set for a House vote next week
Whatever the bill’s fate, it highlights the growing push to reexamine the country’s decades-old labor laws.
The National Labor Relations Board, which is charged with upholding workers’ rights to unionize or work together to improve their workplaces, has no ability to levy fines when it finds companies have broken the law, like firing a worker for starting a union campaign, for example.
This bill would give the NLRB, which enforces federal labor law, the power to fine companies up to $50,000 per violation. It would also award workers’ compensation for the damages they experience when they are retaliated against, not just back pay and reinstatement, as they are currently entitled to.
Workers are fired up. But union participation is still on the decline, new statistics show.
The bill would also allow more people currently classified as contractors to be given the status of employees for the purposes of union organizing, potentially paving the way for gig workers at companies like Lyft, Uber and DoorDash to organize with unions or among themselves.
The bill would also weaken right-to-work laws, passed in predominantly red states, which allow employees to be exempt from paying fees to unions that represent them.
A business and industry organization formed to oppose the bill, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, has sharply criticized a provision in the bill that requires employers to provide a list of their employees’ information, including jobs, shift information, cellphone numbers and addresses, to union leadership as an NLRB-sanctioned election nears.
The staff of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has said that the committee will not consider the legislation this session.
Eli Rosenberg
Feb. 6, 2020 at 8:21 p.m. CST One of the most significant bills to strengthen workers’ abilities to organize in the past 80 years passed the House on Thursday, the latest sign of momentum for the labor movement.
The Protecting the Right to Organize Act, known as the PRO Act, would amend some of the country’s decades-old labor laws to give workers more power during disputes at work, add penalties for companies that retaliate against workers who organize and grant some hundreds of thousands of workers collective-bargaining rights they don’t currently have. It would also weaken “right-to-work” laws in 27 states that allow employees to forgo participating in and paying dues to unions.
The House passed the bill with a vote of 224 to 194, mostly along party lines.
The bill is unlikely to be taken up by the GOP-controlled Senate, as Republicans and business groups have argued forcefully against it, saying it would hurt employers, violate privacy rights and be a major boon for national unions.
Congress’s most ambitious attempt to strengthen unions in years is set for a House vote next week
Whatever the bill’s fate, it highlights the growing push to reexamine the country’s decades-old labor laws.
The National Labor Relations Board, which is charged with upholding workers’ rights to unionize or work together to improve their workplaces, has no ability to levy fines when it finds companies have broken the law, like firing a worker for starting a union campaign, for example.
This bill would give the NLRB, which enforces federal labor law, the power to fine companies up to $50,000 per violation. It would also award workers’ compensation for the damages they experience when they are retaliated against, not just back pay and reinstatement, as they are currently entitled to.
Workers are fired up. But union participation is still on the decline, new statistics show.
The bill would also allow more people currently classified as contractors to be given the status of employees for the purposes of union organizing, potentially paving the way for gig workers at companies like Lyft, Uber and DoorDash to organize with unions or among themselves.
The bill would also weaken right-to-work laws, passed in predominantly red states, which allow employees to be exempt from paying fees to unions that represent them.
A business and industry organization formed to oppose the bill, the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, has sharply criticized a provision in the bill that requires employers to provide a list of their employees’ information, including jobs, shift information, cellphone numbers and addresses, to union leadership as an NLRB-sanctioned election nears.
The staff of Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, has said that the committee will not consider the legislation this session.
The PRO Act would allow employees to sue their bosses if their ability to organize is violated.
Fighting Trump’s Anti-Worker PoliciesThe PRO Act would allow employees to sue their bosses if their ability to organize is violated.
While organized labor has seen strikes and work stoppages increase, unions have also endured over two years of pro-employer policies from the Donald Trump administration. In March 2019, the Labor Department rolled back an Obama-era overtime policy which would have raised wages for more than 8 million workers. In April, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released an advice memo declaring that Uber drivers are contractors not employees, which means they aren’t legally entitled to a number of benefits. This all comes in the wake of last year’s momentous Janus v. AFSCME decision, in which the conservative-controlled Supreme Court upended over 40 years of precedent by ruling that public sector union fees violate employees’ First Amendment rights.
In addition to enduring the anti-worker policies of the Trump administration, organized labor also had to endure eight years of being frequently snubbed by moderate Democrats and the Obama administration. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was a landmark piece of legislation developed a decade ago that also aimed to make organizing workplaces easier. The EFCA was pushed vociferously by labor leaders and progressives, but moderate Democrats ended up killing the bill’s most important provision, and Obama ultimately abandoned the bill over fears that it was too politically risky.
On a local level, 27 states now have “right to work” laws on the books which prohibit unions from collecting mandatory fees from employees thus making it more difficult to organize and fight back against workplace abuses. According to an EPI study, wages in states with “right to work” laws are 3.1 percent lower than those in states without such laws, even when controlling for other factors. The PRO Act would reverse portions of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act that allow “right to work” laws to remain legal, requiring unionized workers in every state to contribute a fair-share fee toward the cost of collective bargaining. It would also be a huge boon for rideshare drivers and other “independent contractors” working in the gig economy, as they would be granted the same employee protections as other professions.
The PRO Act has broad support from Democrats, but its passage remains an uphill battle.
A recent unionization effort in Michigan, a “right to work” state, demonstrates the need for more robust worker protections. In 2018, Nya Njee quit her job as a barista at an Ann Arbor-based coffee shop called Mighty Good Coffee. Njee accused the company’s management of racial discrimination in a Facebook post, claiming that she was denied raises as a result of being Black. Njee’s accusations inspired the store’s employees to form a union, fight for changes at the workplace, and reach out to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for guidance throughout the process. The company’s managers initially accepted the union, but during their first contract negotiation they suddenly closed all their cafes and laid off their staff. A letter to the workers from the company’s attorney claimed that the managers had “concluded that they are not well suited to operate a retail operation” and had “found the experience to be overly stressful.”
The cafe’s baristas were eventually able to secure a severance agreement, but it contains an anti-disparagement clause that prohibits the union from speaking about the situation. Truthout was able to speak with two former employees that left the company prior to the layoffs and are not speaking on behalf of the union. Stephanie Bland, who worked as a barista at the cafe, said workers there experienced “a lot of intimidation” and that the company installed cameras that were perceived by many as a way to surveil employees. She also said workers were required to make up the difference with their own money if the cash register till didn’t line up with the day’s receipts — a practice that is illegal. Despite the statement from the company’s attorney, Bland said she thought the layoffs and store closings were a “direct result of the bargaining process.” Former barista Kat Finch told Truthout that the company seemingly didn’t know what unionization entailed when they agreed to accept it and pointed out that the layoffs occurred shortly after the union began to move against “right to work” language in the contract. “I like being a barista,” said Finch. “There are not a lot of coffee shops here. We had our regular customers and got to know them really well. We wouldn’t have started a union if we wanted the cafe to fail.”
While employers don’t typically shut down entire stores in response to organizing efforts, the worker layoffs themselves are a common union-busting tactic. There are currently no laws to penalize employers who engage in this kind of action. The PRO Act has broad support from Democrats with 100 House cosponsors and 40 Senate cosponsors, but its passage remains an uphill battle: No Republican is expected to support it and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be in no rush for a vote. Nonetheless, its supporters have now effectively queued up a massive labor law overhaul that could become a reality if the GOP loses the Senate next election.
Fighting Trump’s Anti-Worker PoliciesThe PRO Act would allow employees to sue their bosses if their ability to organize is violated.
While organized labor has seen strikes and work stoppages increase, unions have also endured over two years of pro-employer policies from the Donald Trump administration. In March 2019, the Labor Department rolled back an Obama-era overtime policy which would have raised wages for more than 8 million workers. In April, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) released an advice memo declaring that Uber drivers are contractors not employees, which means they aren’t legally entitled to a number of benefits. This all comes in the wake of last year’s momentous Janus v. AFSCME decision, in which the conservative-controlled Supreme Court upended over 40 years of precedent by ruling that public sector union fees violate employees’ First Amendment rights.
In addition to enduring the anti-worker policies of the Trump administration, organized labor also had to endure eight years of being frequently snubbed by moderate Democrats and the Obama administration. The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was a landmark piece of legislation developed a decade ago that also aimed to make organizing workplaces easier. The EFCA was pushed vociferously by labor leaders and progressives, but moderate Democrats ended up killing the bill’s most important provision, and Obama ultimately abandoned the bill over fears that it was too politically risky.
On a local level, 27 states now have “right to work” laws on the books which prohibit unions from collecting mandatory fees from employees thus making it more difficult to organize and fight back against workplace abuses. According to an EPI study, wages in states with “right to work” laws are 3.1 percent lower than those in states without such laws, even when controlling for other factors. The PRO Act would reverse portions of the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act that allow “right to work” laws to remain legal, requiring unionized workers in every state to contribute a fair-share fee toward the cost of collective bargaining. It would also be a huge boon for rideshare drivers and other “independent contractors” working in the gig economy, as they would be granted the same employee protections as other professions.
The PRO Act has broad support from Democrats, but its passage remains an uphill battle.
A recent unionization effort in Michigan, a “right to work” state, demonstrates the need for more robust worker protections. In 2018, Nya Njee quit her job as a barista at an Ann Arbor-based coffee shop called Mighty Good Coffee. Njee accused the company’s management of racial discrimination in a Facebook post, claiming that she was denied raises as a result of being Black. Njee’s accusations inspired the store’s employees to form a union, fight for changes at the workplace, and reach out to the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for guidance throughout the process. The company’s managers initially accepted the union, but during their first contract negotiation they suddenly closed all their cafes and laid off their staff. A letter to the workers from the company’s attorney claimed that the managers had “concluded that they are not well suited to operate a retail operation” and had “found the experience to be overly stressful.”
The cafe’s baristas were eventually able to secure a severance agreement, but it contains an anti-disparagement clause that prohibits the union from speaking about the situation. Truthout was able to speak with two former employees that left the company prior to the layoffs and are not speaking on behalf of the union. Stephanie Bland, who worked as a barista at the cafe, said workers there experienced “a lot of intimidation” and that the company installed cameras that were perceived by many as a way to surveil employees. She also said workers were required to make up the difference with their own money if the cash register till didn’t line up with the day’s receipts — a practice that is illegal. Despite the statement from the company’s attorney, Bland said she thought the layoffs and store closings were a “direct result of the bargaining process.” Former barista Kat Finch told Truthout that the company seemingly didn’t know what unionization entailed when they agreed to accept it and pointed out that the layoffs occurred shortly after the union began to move against “right to work” language in the contract. “I like being a barista,” said Finch. “There are not a lot of coffee shops here. We had our regular customers and got to know them really well. We wouldn’t have started a union if we wanted the cafe to fail.”
While employers don’t typically shut down entire stores in response to organizing efforts, the worker layoffs themselves are a common union-busting tactic. There are currently no laws to penalize employers who engage in this kind of action. The PRO Act has broad support from Democrats with 100 House cosponsors and 40 Senate cosponsors, but its passage remains an uphill battle: No Republican is expected to support it and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell will be in no rush for a vote. Nonetheless, its supporters have now effectively queued up a massive labor law overhaul that could become a reality if the GOP loses the Senate next election.
