For those who know who I am, I have been at the top levels of two state associations, have served on National Committees both standing and convention committees. I helped put together the Steward Task Force in forcing National to appoint it and served as one of the first members.
I have advised and counseled progressive elements for more than 20 years and the way that locals, states and national are set up and the convention rules preclude any serious effort to make constructive change from the inside. The entire union structure is set up to keep and insulate the existing power structure from either change, threat or danger of losing their position unless they step out of line.
The structure is perfectly built to punish progressives, critics or dissidents ensuring that no substantial changes will ever be made. I talked about these things twenty five years ago when it was no secret that USPS was going to do what they have been doing up to now and what they plan in the future. I even published this in an article that was sent statewide in Pennsylvania in 1987.
Many of the things I've written about over the last twnety five years have come to pass. I remember USPS telling people that having delivery employees spend 60-70% of their time in the office was a waste of time, resources and manpower and that the ratio kept heading the wrong way. I wrote about ever expanding routes, consolidating routes, working toward delivery hubs where delivery route mail would arrive at the Post Office and carriers would spend 85% of their time on the road.
The Union has never done any effective preparation for changes. They never had a five year plan, a ten year plan or a twenty year plan. They never bothered to monitor USPS R & D to get a heads up on what was coming. Until the last ten years, there was no organized approach to planning for conract negotiations and almost no effort is spent on contractual monitoring when the Union has access to USPS reports that could easily be programmed to raise flags where obvious anomalies are taking place.
Every thing USPS does in their business model is driven by stats and records. With an upgraded "geek" team, we could take advantage of those reports for purposes of contract prep, contract monitoring and to discover where union resources need to go. National teams could be utilized to blitz trouble spots instead of leaving everything to the states and hoping that they can make a case or trip over some problem.
The Union structure has not significantly changed since they created state stewards in 1972 while USPS has transformed itself many times. We used to have a good chance in arbitrations and negotiations when each post office or old SCF or MSC made their own defenses and when there was not a conventrated effort by USPS in negotiations. Those days are over. We cannot count on USPS making really dumb mistakes anymore and we sure don't do ourselves any favors by going into arbitrations with a half assed case presented by a bumpkin lawyer who we inherited. Each arbitration we lose creates precedents for future losng arbitrations which we are increasingly more likely to lose. The lesson here is not to avoid going to arbitration, it is simply to prepare for everything, to war game everything and then to go to WAR.
We've been doing the exact sme thing with a little wrinkle here and there for narly forth years. I think USPS knows our script. We either change or we hang it all up. If we don't change, we only make the day we are contract employees at minimum wage that much more likely and that much more quickly. IT WOULD BE NICE IF OUR UNION WOULD STOP HELPING THEM TO DO IT!
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has..
