Naples Letter Carriers Fight Back Against Attacks on Retirement Benefits
The NALC philosophy of “Give me $5”; $5 towards PAC, is a decent concept but it’s separating the membership from their own struggle and it’s not a winning strategy. A labor union isn’t a 3rd party agency. The NALC needs to get back to the roots of the labor Movement. Donating to Letter Carrier Political Fund(LCPF) has to be paired with collective actions. The era of telling the membership to sit back and trust the suits and ties has passed. The rank-and-file can walk and chew gum at the same time.
By the middle of May coworkers inside the East Naples, Florida post office were talking about how we can mobilize against the advancement of the drastic proposals regarding federal workers inside the House of Representatives, H.R. 1. From the Branch level to the National level, ‘Fight Like Hell’ was just rhetoric. NALC was quiet on this serious concern.
National NALC didn’t have anything on their website regarding H.R. 1, in terms of call-in scripts or prewritten emails. The rank-and-file members took it upon themselves to call and email their Congresspersons and Senators, coming to the conclusion that the members needed to apply pressure using collective actions.
On Thursday, May 15th, 10 coworkers picked a date, time, and action. Friday, May 16th, everyone was still committed. We decided to rally outside the office of Congressman Byron Donalds and Senator Rick Scott on Wednesday, June 4th at 4:30pm. Wednesdays are the lightest mail day for our office. We decided to push forward with not just encouraging all our coworkers to write letters to our politicians, but to sign onto a petition that we will hand deliver to their office on June 4th.
Saturday, May 17th; sent an email to the Branch President to make our union aware that the members are mobilizing and that we will bring a formal motion to the upcoming union meeting to get our Branch to formally endorse the day of action and to help mobilize for it.
Sunday, May 18th; sent emails out to various labor unions, AFL-CIO Labor Council, and various community groups to help build a broad based coalition of solidarity on June 4th. Quickly got emails back from the Southwest Florida Labor Council and the NOW Southwest Florida chapter that they’ll be fully on board and help mobilize their members.
May 22nd 6am, H.R. 1 passed the House of Representatives. Proposal to eliminate the FERS Annuity Supplement made it through. No need to focus on the House of Representatives anymore. Focus solely on the Senators.
Thursday, May 22nd; we started collecting signatures from coworkers for the petition to Senator Rick Scott urging him to stand with federal workers and oppose terminating the FERS Annuity Supplement; and to endorse S.R. 147(Keep USPS Public).
Our office covers 3 zip codes(zones), we broke the organizing and mobilizing of the membership down to a few people per zip code. Pedro Garcia and Chrissy Martin took the 4-zone; James Hall and Matt Paulins took the 12-zone, I took the 16-zone. We started to talk to our coworkers about the need to bring our struggle to the public(voters), signing the petition to maximize a low-effort/low-stress action, and directly delivering a petition to the office of Senator Rick Scott.
As we talked to coworkers it became evident that a lot of coworkers didn’t fully understand what the FERS Annuity Supplement is and a lot either thought the draconian reforms were needed or just remained in denial. We didn’t attack their political views, we just pressed forward with the reality that: if we continue to erode federal workers benefits soon USPS will be no different than working at Walmart, it’ll be impossible to get new, young hires to maintain the workforce. Once lost will never be regained.
June 4th; Naples, Florida saw around 3 inches of rain during the workday. Coworkers were texting and calling each other if we should cancel the rally; in case the storm doesn’t subside. Rally was scheduled at 4:30pm, a lot of the coworkers were clocked out at 3:30pm soaking wet so they went home.
At 4:15pm; Christie Martin, Pedro Garcia, Juan Carlos, Pablo Martinez, and myself meet outside the building where Senator Rick Scott has his office. We walked into the building and the security told us that the staffers of Rick Scott left at 5pm. Christie was quick to say “It’s only 4:15!”. We laughed, took a selfie, and made our way towards the intersection; we huddled under a tree and quickly the 5 of us were joined by 3 community members and 2 other coworkers.
The rain started to ease. We moved to an open area and more postal workers showed up and quickly went from 5 people to 20+ people holding signs, banners, and a bullhorn. A Rural Letter Carrier was on the bullhorn with various chants. Cars were honking in support and in disapproval. A good amount while stopped at the red light asked how they can help save USPS.
The following day various coworkers inside the office were apologizing that they couldn’t make it because of being soaked, replying with “It’s not just my benefits being attacked.” Others wondered if any of our Branch union Leaders were in attendance. “Not one” was the reply. We decided Friday June 6th to hold a parking lot rally, for the folks that didn’t make it to the rally but wanted to be seen. We gathered together, took a small group photo, and mailed the photos and our petition to Senator Rick Scott’s office in Washington D.C.
Great, you held a rally outside the office of a Senator that doesn’t care about workers, big deal. - It is a big deal because the rank and file acted as a collective and at the end asked: “What else can we do?” / “How can we get more workers interested?” / “What can we do differently next time?”. Having that one-on-one conversation, directly with your coworkers, not through email or texting. Face to face builds the rapport that is needed to put the movement back into Labor. It helps bring forward new leaders that feel they have a real ownership of their union, the NALC.
