Yesterday, PostalReporter reported that NALC Branch #256 located in Swartz Creek, MI had filed an unfair labor charge against USPS in 2015. NALC claimed that a Supervisor Customer Service “threatened its employees with more vigorous enforcement of rules if they choose to be represented by a union steward or seek support and/or assistance from a union.” Now a rural carrier in Cranberry Township, PA has filed an unfair labor charge claiming USPS is trying to restrain employees for their union activity.In the NLRB case posted yesterday, the administrative law judge noted that USPS is a repeat violator of the NLRA in Michigan and other parts of the United States but limited the remedy to only the Swartz Creek facility. The NLRB General Counsel pointed out that NLRB orders apply to USPS, their officers, agents, successors, and assigns and not to specific postal facilities or management officials. NALC pointed out that “managers in the Detroit District transfer frequently within the district. Given the transfers within the district and the evidence of multiple violations of the Act, around the U.S., within the State of Michigan, within this postal district, and with this Union.” NALC also presented evidence of seventeen (17) 6th Circuit Court judgments involving USPS’s two districts within Region Seven’s territory addressing violations of NLRA–approximately ten (10) occurred in the past two years.
Is USP trying to break the union?
What the hell are we dealing with? This reminds me of the old industrial age days when unions first started up and (eventually) forced Homestead Steel Mill in Pittsburgh, owned by Andrew Carnegie, who was a hater of all working people despite his so called philanthropy. That ended with the deaths of several strikers, who were making unreasonable demands like not using child labor, reducing 12 hour days and days off. How greedy. How ungrateful.
The unions had other fatal battles against coal mining owners, a riot in Chicago at a Sunday gathering where the mayor had promised the union people they could assemble in a park by the workplace they were protesting against, only to have police open fire without provocation and killing some of them, too.
We forget postal workers were paid poverty wages all the way through the ’50’s, and barely minimum wage until the Postal Reform Act of 1971. But management is trying to bust up organized unions, even during contract negotiations where they expect the unions to believe they’re honest and want to work with the union officials. I guarantee you that in Michigan as well as Pennsylvania there are district and Area honchos pushing these buttons, breaking the law, and abusing union workers. It wouldn’t surprise me one damn bit to learn PMG Brennan and her henchmen in L’ Infant Plaza are behind it, either.
The USPS is always a day late and a dollar short and are trying to mimic the anti-union crap Scott Walker of Wisconsin tried with the teachers’ unions. Management no doubt admires union haters like those reptilian Koch brothers, and wants a minimum wage non-career workforce any way they can get it. They are also trying to act like Wal-Mart and create a hostile union atmosphere but these idiots fail to understand the unions are already there, and will not go away.
President Rolando, as my mouthpiece at NALC negotiations, I hope you are paying close attention to this behavior. If I were you, I’d be going public every which way. I’d scream and holler loud enough so the AFL-CIO would get involved. I would contact all national TV, internet and print media of the harassment and abuse the USPS is getting away with, and I would not agree to one fucking item during negotiations with these slimeballs. Use their dishonesty, undercover activities, the intent to use spyware on employees’ home computers, tablets and laptops, and repeat offenses wherever they occur.
Do you have the guts to do this? You know damn good and well, Mr. Rolando that management will sign anything, ignore it and get away with violations as long as the quagmire allows. We must have a much swifter, more severe and determined way to make those crooked jerks abide by the rules they sign off on. They are incompetent, arrogant, overpaid and not anywhere near the indispensable super heroes they would like us to think they are.
It’s time to lower the boom.