It Could Happen Here - The Decline and Fall of the American Post Office

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

Mia talks with Bad Mouth, a letter carrier and organizer, and Tommy Espinoza, a former union steward, about the new awful Post Office union contract and the campaign to privatize the Post Office through sabotaging service. Sources: https://www.nalc.org https://www.fightingnalc.com https://concernedlettercarriers.com https://www.nalc.org/member-benefits/nalc-disaster-relief-foundation See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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we talked about the collapse of the U.S. Postal Service and the absolute horror show that's been inflicted on postal workers. When we last left our intrepid heroes, things were not great. They have continued to be not great. And with us to talk about this entire shit show is Bad mouth is a letter carrier in Fort Worth and Tommy Espinoza who is a former letter carrier and former union steward for The post office union that one. Yeah, look it's like I got up at 7 a.m. This morning It's not been that long since I got up. You're getting you're getting tired Mia

But both of you two, welcome to the show and I'm excited to talk to you both. Yeah, it's great to be back. Yeah, thanks for having us. Yeah. So, all right, let's start in a place where many things start, which is to say the 1970s, the full chrome upon which history pivoted. So one of the things and we talked about this in our last episode, is that post office workers are not legally allowed to go on strike.

This is sort of nonsense, but it also doesn't mean that it's never happened. Oh, by the way, I was just about to talk about a wildcat strike. Disclaimers, no one here represents a union. They're speaking in their individual capacity, et cetera, et cetera. None of this is legal advice. Do I do I have any more caveats that we usually say for these things? That's roughly all of them. Yeah, but do you want to talk about sort of the last time that things kind of looked like

this and what happened? Yeah, Tommy, you want to take that one? Yeah, so just going back to the 1970s, the working conditions for letter carriers were so bad that most of them couldn't afford the cost of living. They found themselves in a position where they are working for a quasi-federal position and are finding themselves on welfare, struggling just to find the means to get to work. Oftentimes having to work a second job if they even have time for a second job because the post office has and still is very good at skipping around a lot of labor laws. I think

nowadays people probably work around 60 hour weeks. I think probably at a minimal around 50 hour, especially around the holidays. And it's not just letter carriers. This is people inside of the distribution centers, inside of the warehouses. Things were not good. And on top of the actual working conditions themselves, the environment was incredibly toxic.

There was a long history of abuse. You're dangling people's livelihood over their head. Like you're like holding a carrot over them, you know? And it really pushed people to an edge. You saw a lot of violence on the workroom floor, not only from supervisors, but from carriers that just snapped. Yeah. It was a time of great disparity.

Yeah. The thing with the post office is, like Tom was mentioning, they dangle the carrot, but there's never any goddamn carrot. It's all stick. It's supposed to be carrot and stick. It's all stick. There's no carrot there. Management in the post office is just trying to get you to move as fast as possible and cut corners. And that erodes safety, it erodes service, and it just a toxic, horrible, horrible environment. And so back in the seventies, before the wildcats strike, it was illegal then, just like it's illegal now. The NELC, National Association of Letter Carriers, Congress called all the shots. Like we had some collective bargaining rights,

but not full collective bargaining rights. But like back then, adjusted for inflation starting wage was 50,000 a year, roundabout. And it topped out at about $68,000 adjusted for inflation. And that took 21 years to get to that point. Jesus. Yeah. So it's, it's pretty wild and like very similar to today. Now starting wage adjusted for inflation is just over $40,000 before taxes. So it's we're making even less money now than we were before that wildcat strike. Right. Yeah. And

a couple other real familiar things like, you know, unpopular wars, rampant inflation. Every time you turn on the radio or TV, there's some lunatic politician that you can't stand hearing about. Time is a flat circle. But Vince Abrado, who was an organizer out of New York City, the NLC didn't strike all over the country. It was New York and Chicago and San Francisco It was some major hubs, right and Vince Abrado came out of that and we won in that strike one Collective bargaining rights now the thing we gave up and it was a trade-off. So we have a no layoff clause

So they can't lay us off But we gave up the right to strike, making sure that there wouldn't be another wildcat strike. Right? So that's kind of why our hands are tied in that sense. Now if we have an impasse with our negotiation and like we get a tentative agreement and we during the ratification process vote that down, now we can either try and go back to the bargaining table or it gets brought in front of an arbiter,

basically an impartial judge, and they'll have a panel. The post office will pick two and the NLC will pick two. And then I think there's one impartial that's supposed to be impartial between that. I believe that's how the arbitration process works. We got to prove our case in front of impartial arbiters instead of going on strike. Yeah, and so as we sort of mentioned before, one of the things about the post office, it's similar, if people remember the rail strike that didn't happen where there's all of these hoops you have to jump to be able to go on strike.

And that's because again, like rail workers, postal workers don't operate under the normal sort of national labor relations board framework, right? Now, admittedly, there was a very good chance that in like seven months we don't even have that. No one has that anymore. But, you know, as we are right now, yeah, things are going good. But as things are going right now, let's get into the current tentative agreement.

And I guess we should actually, we should roll this back a little tiny bit. For people who haven't listened to these episodes before, can you explain what a tentative agreement and I guess we should actually we should roll this back a little tiny bit for people who haven't listened to these episodes before Can you explain what a tentative agreement is? Right, so a tentative agreement is effectively the first draft when you are going through and Negotiating you will reach a contract where management and the union Kind of agree and they put it before their union members. And the idea is that your union members are able to vote on whether or not this tentative agreement passes. And again, like AdMalf was saying, if it gets rejected or if it gets

turned down, then it goes back to the drawing board or we get an arbitrator and it goes through a lengthy process. Our specific contract has been under negotiation since before I was in the post office. The amount of back pay that they're going to have to pay on some of these raises is kind of insane. And I imagine that a lot of people won't see it for a long time. But yeah, that's what a tentative agreement is. A lot of people think that it's a bad thing to go back to the drawing board or a bad thing to renegotiate or be put before an arbitrator. I largely think that is a myth. If you think about any sort of negotiation, the first offer is never the best one. I think a lot of people are just afraid that somehow you would end up giving more than

you're getting. And I think that's just the way that the rhetoric has gone for unions lately. And I guess I need to adjust that a little bit because the Teamsters, even like the Service Workers Union, they're all really doing well. The Communications Union, they're in a little bit of a different age, but a lot of the post offices, old heads, military veterans, that kind of sort, who just come from a little bit of an earlier time when the labor movement was really starting to plant their feet on the ground. Yeah, a lot of them are still dealing with, like most of us are, the hangover from the

Reagan years. Yeah. Right? So they're all terrified of union stuff. Even though they love the union and they're in the union, they're very distrustful of it and they don't think that we can ask for what we deserve. They think we need to ask for what they think we can get based on the shit that management is saying,

because they're, again, still shell shocked from the Reagan years and all the anti-labor stuff. And that's had a profound impact on most of the unions that survived that period. And a lot of them didn't, right? Which is part of why you get people who behave like this. But on the downside is it of why you get people who behave like this but on The downside is it means that you get handed a lot of deals that

Absolutely suck, but do you know what else absolutely sucks? I don't know. Experiencing the news each day can feel like a journey. With Up First from NPR though, it doesn't have to be. Welcome to 15 easy minutes of breaking news, clarity on international and national affairs, and a casual tone that you can take in with breakfast. Begin your day informed, ready, and refreshed. Begin your day with Up First. Subscribe to Up First from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Snakes, zombies, sharks, heights, speaking in public,

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We make it this big pie in the sky thing, and then of course we're all frustrated because no one knows how to get there. Struggling with tough emotions? We have a how-to guide. Worried that you're not enough? We got you. Self-obsessed and want to get over yourself? There's a guide

for that too. The ability to approach somebody and make them experience desire for you in minutes or even hours is a rare and rather unnecessary skill, historically speaking. The Happiest Lab's how-to season starts January 1st. Listen on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. companion to stay on top of what's happening now. Plus, you'll get special content just for podcast listeners, like in-depth interviews and a roundup of the week's top headlines. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. So let's talk about what the tentative agreements that y'all are being asked to sign is right now. Yeah, yeah.

So it's been, I think we're coming up on 600 days since our last contract expired. Geez. Yeah, yeah. There's people that just want their back pay. So even if the back pay is dog shit, they're desperate because inflation is 8% across the country in some places. Right. And like people are just desperate for that chunk of money. That delaying process feels very, very intentional. Yeah. So the tentative agreement comes out around 500 days after

Negotiations were supposed to have started and there's all sorts of nonsense going on during then but we're getting promises like it's gonna be a historic Agreement we're gonna get significant raises. We're going to go to an all-career workforce, which by the way, we don't have right now Hey, can you explain what that is by the way? Yeah, okay So in every other trade you have an apprenticeship program, right? So when you get on the job, you're wet behind the ears, you're brand new. You are automatically career. You are automatically paying into your retirement. You're automatically getting the regular benefits. Everyone else is in most trades, you're paying half the dues that

the journeymen are paying and you, you are considered a full employee. You're the new Jack, you're getting all the shit jobs, but you are a full employee, the post office has a position called the city carrier assistant, which on paper and how they'll tell you sounds like an apprenticeship program, but it's really more like they took an apprenticeship program and an unpaid internship and jammed them together because these kids are coming in and I'm not even kids, I'm 40 years old, I started as a CCA at 40 years old. They're coming in making less than $20 an hour.

They're not considered a career. So they're not paying into the retirement. You don't got all the same union protections, your benefits are super low. You get five days of annual leave a year and no sick time. Like it's, it's, yeah, it's a year and no sick time. Jeez. Like it's, it's yeah, it's a meat, it's a meat grinder. So that was a big thing and it creates a whole third tier because we already have two different, two different tiered wage system, which sucks enough.

And you, anyone that pays attention to labor that drives a huge wedge between workers and it crushes solidarity and kneecaps a union. And now with the CCA position and this non-career workforce, it's created a whole third tier. This is one of the things that the UAW was fighting for is like, is eliminating tiering systems altogether. Because if you're actually trying to get a functional union and make people's jobs better,

that's the thing that you do and having a, having a third tier, yeah, not good. Extremely bad. Yeah, no good. Extremely bad. Yeah, exactly. And it's because they've adopted sort of this Amazon model of doing things where they just have this burn insurance situation where like Amazon, what is it? Bezos said that he doesn't want anyone working for Amazon for more than like two years. Yeah. If they have these people constantly and they're constantly burning through them and they never have to pay full benefits, they never have to pay into their retirement. They never have to pay them more than $20 an hour. And they can just get you to work your ass off and burn out and quit within two

years. As people retire, their labor costs go down. It's evil. It's absolute. It's some Jack Welch hateful, hateful bullshit. So touching on that, if people are really quitting before they reach a point in their career where they're educated and can stand up for themselves or stand up for each other on the workroom floor

that's uh... one of the the major reasons that our union is failing and they said that he is the exact example that i would have the amazon model is working really well if you can just make it so that people are so miserable they quit their job before they understand what their rights are, how they can protect each other, what even the contract says on the basics of when can you call out, when are you

required to come in, can they send you home early without your your pay, that's massive. And then what we were talking about the conditions of the 1970s and how long it takes you to get to the top of the pay scale, this third tier actually increases that time by sometimes three or four years. I've known people who have been CCAs for three or four years. I don't think I've seen beyond that, but it wouldn't surprise me. What this does is it means that before you go career, you're spending all this time. You're effectively a fully trained, full employee, completely capable of doing everything that's

required of you. You're just not getting any of the career benefits, making a minimum wage. And on top of that, the way our benefits work is it does come out of your paycheck. It's not like other jobs where it might be a separate package or already calculated in, for instance, a lot of the trades, they'll say, hey, you get 23 an hour, but the reality is you're making around 29 or 30 because you're not paying into your health insurance or your retirement or anything like that. You're effectively making less than the minimum wage. You're almost paying to go to work as a CCA. And just to be yelled at and told that you're not going fast enough even though there's no street standard. But that's that's getting into a little

bit of nitpicky contracts and stuff. So yeah, that's one thing that they were promising was to get rid of that non-career workforce. So this TA comes out and after hearing that we're getting rid of the non-career significant raises, it's going to be historic for us. What they offered us was 1.3%. Jesus Christ. Yeah.

I mean, there's something for it. If you are in a union and you hear your leadership say the words historic contract, you are screwed. That agreement is going to suck. I remember on this show, literally live and recording, right before there was supposed to be the Teamsters UPS strike, right? Like I'm literally on the episode with two of the union people and we get the text of the contract in the middle

of recording and we get the thing with it is this is a historic contract and we're like reading in the middle the episode like wait this fucking sucks shit that's that's how you know you are do when you get this story when they start pulling out the historic contract thing yeah you think if you're making six figures a year you could understand how to buy a used car and know that you promise low and deliver high like I I don't understand how making six figures a year, they haven't figured that out. But yeah. So in this contract, 1.3% and that's enough to piss anyone off. Cause that drops about the same time that we all see the, the

longshoremen getting, going back to the table cause they didn't get 60%. You know what I mean? I'm surprised more people just didn't call in sick because we all got this news on the workroom floor and I was like, did you see this shit? I know people that quit that day. You know what I mean? Like, yeah, it's wild. So 1.3% they're keeping the city carrier assistance, the non-career workforce, they're removing some of our union protections, right? Like it used to be you have 1260 hour rule, you don't have to work more than 12 hours in a day or 60 hours in a week. You can say, I can't do this, I'm going home, and the union could protect you. Now, if you are a CCA or if you have signed

up to do overtime and they tell you to stay 16 hours, you have no choice. Jesus Christ. So you gave up things for a 1.3% raise is like, that's the kind of thing that you get if like, I don't know, say like you got like some unbelievable concession package somewhere else, maybe conceivably you would take that. Or maybe it's the thing where like you're you're you're like a nurse and your problem Isn't pay your problem is you're working like two million hours a week But like that's that's a that's a you got concessions somewhere else

Yeah, kind of thing not a we gave up stuff for like the worst raise you've ever seen Yeah, I mean it makes you think about like what was there. What was their first offer like I mind you it's been fun It's been for over 500 their, what was their first offer? Like, I remind you, it's been five, it's been over 500 days of negotiations. What was the first offer? We got to put the fuel in the mail trucks ourselves. Like what, you know what I mean? Tom, do you want, do you want to talk about what the tentative agreement doesn't address?

So the tentative agreement, we spoke about the post office's strategy for, uh, dealing with our grievances or how to combat the union last episode. And so for the people that didn't listen to it or just need a refresher, the post office has found this extremely effective strategy that if they just don't agree at any point in our grievance procedure, which is if they violate the contract and we want to be made whole, whatever that may look like, they can just keep on saying no and push it up to arbitration because there is a grievance procedure that ends up with a third party intervening as well.

And if they push enough of those grievances up, we have a major backlog on this process because our final resort is now just the standard of operation. And what that means is that there's nothing to force the post office to comply with the contract. If someone wasn't paid correctly or was missing a whole day of pay, got sent home, or was put on emergency placement, which is a process where they say you did something dangerous and so they can take you off the clock. It could be months or even a year before your case is even looked at. They do have a process, of course, where they try and prioritize it, but it's obviously

not working. The other thing that the contract doesn't really touch on is our uniform situation where the companies that make and manufacture the uniforms for our letter carriers and actually for all the positions in the post office are effectively trying to sell you a shirt for like $80. Jesus Christ. The most egregious one. It is like your winter parka is close to $400 and your allowance that you're you're given is I think 380 FM. I don't know. It's been more.

Oh my it's up to 499 but the rain trench coat just the raincoat is $465 and you have to get it through a vendor so you can't even pay them money to do that like a pair of polyester pants That's gonna fall apart in two months 95 dollars. Oh my god. Oh, yeah No, it's it's wild It's wild price gouging and they they were gonna address that and what they did was they increased our they increased our uniform allowance by $35 right which is like three pairs of socks from those magazines great Incredible stuff. Yeah, it's it's it's why 35 dollars right which is like three pairs of socks from those magazines Great Incredible stuff. Yeah, it's it's it's why

Someone should dig into who's running that company and like who they're working with to get those contracts because Probably a fun story there. I think it's like four out of five of the approved Manufacturers or the distributors are owned by the same people. So oh great. Okay. Yeah, I'm bequeathing this as a gift to it. I know there's a bunch of journalists who listen to this. Go do that story.

I guarantee you'll find some unbelievably unhinged stuff. And a quick shout out to any letter carriers that are listening to this. If you don't use your entire allowance, look out for the CCAs, look out for the PTFs, the non-career and the fresh faces on there. If you don't use the entirety of your uniform allowance to the way that they view it is, that they can give us less money.

So use all of it, don't protest by not spending that money. It's not even yours, so spend it, give it to someone, do something, you know? Yeah, get the new jacket in your office. A fucking raincoat. Cause like I tried to do the math on it for winter gear for a place like Minnesota to get all the winter gear and your summer gear. It's going to take you four years of uniform allowances to get all that gear. Right? It's ridiculous. Yeah. And like it's Minnesota, right? Like I'm from Chicago. So like it is, it is slightly warmer in Chicago and you get wind chills and negative 40 here

And like Minnesota is much worse. So like that is that that is not like optional stuff. That is the difference between you having hypothermia and You not have Yeah, no exactly and and God forbid you want to buy a pair of shorts as well, because Minnesota summers get over a hundred heat index. Yep, yep, yep. But yeah, speaking of ways to not die in Minnesota summers, here are some products and services that will probably not help you with that, but maybe they will.

not help you with that, but maybe they will. affairs and a casual tone that you can take in with breakfast. Begin your day informed, ready and refreshed. Begin your day with Up First. Subscribe to Up First from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Snakes, zombies, sharks, heights. Speaking in public, the list of fears is endless. But while you're clutching your blanket in the dark, wondering if that sound in the hall was actually a footstep, the real danger is in your hand when you're behind the wheel. And while you might think a great white shark is scary, what's really terrifying and even deadly is distracted driving. Eyes forward, don't drive distracted.

Brought to you by NHTSA and the Ad Council. I'm Dr. Lari Santos, and to welcome the new year, my podcast, The Happiness Lab, is releasing a series of happiness how-to guides to help you in 2025. I'll distill the wisdom of world-class experts into easy to digest actionable tips. It's about never feeling good enough.

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Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are back. One of the other things that Tom touched on that this agreement doesn't address is he talked about the non-compliance and the grievance backlog, but also just the toxic work environment, which we've talked about. And it's so bad. The whole reason we have the trope of someone going postal is usually because someone's bullied to a point where violence occurs. They either take it out on management or my own manager in my first year got in a fist

fight with one of the clerks. The post office has lost grievances because management was threatening to shoot an employee. Any letter carrier would have been fired for that immediately. That manager got a letter of warning. Yeah we have a joint statement on violence in the workplace which I think you were about to get into. It's like, yeah, they're just not complying. It's a very one-sided thing. Effectively management has qualified immunity. Great, great. Your managers are also cops. It could attack you incredible incredible stuff from the post office Yeah, and then and then there's a bunch of wage theft too

I mean personally I caught my own manager putting in all the CCA's For two-hour lunches because the CCA's are new and don't know what they're doing and they don't know to check their time All the time putting us all in for two-hour lunches and then told me tried to pretend to me, Oh, that was just an automatic computer error. Whereas if we take a 31 minute lunch, I have my phone blowing up being asked why I'm not moving and delivering the mail, but you guys managed to accidentally miss a two hour lunch. Come on. You don't gotta lie. You don't gotta lie to be my friend. Like, come on. And then, and then there's other places around the country where we, the NALC is one grievances where management was making CCAs work in the dark, delivering mail till like 7 30 PM and clocking them out at four o'clock in the afternoon. All right. So they got people out there working

for free. It's it's and we have to catch it. We have to catch them doing that. Yeah. They're never going to own up to it. They all watch their payroll. The management structure at, uh, at the post office, it's like the T-MU version of game of Thrones. They're all nasty. They're all backstabbing each other. And like the nastier you are and the more willing you are to screw people, the higher up you go in management at the post office.

Like it's, it's disgusting. So there's even more convoluted ways that the management finds to effectively steal from the employees. And one of them huge problem is changing the metrics on what a route looks like. And so they can alter the times of, hey, how long you were

in the office packing your truck when you got back to the office and started unloading and cleaning and so what they do is they make it look like the street time took you let's call it five hours and you were in the office for four hours that way they can make a route look smaller than it actually is and have an excuse not to hire another person, which makes it so that this poor carrier who is assigned to this route now has a 10-hour day, 11-hour day, just by default on a light day, on a regular day. This is a really big problem for the rural carriers.

Their contract is a little bit different. Effectively, they get paid by the job, not necessarily hourly, or that's the case for a lot of them. And so if you're adjusting their times, they're going to be paid out for an eight-hour day. But you know, the route has just been stretched out through this method of just dishonest scanning and dishonest entries. And they get free labor. And I'm not even well versed on the RCA contract

That's a whole nother. You know, there's only nine unions that go into the post office Which means there's probably nine different contracts Yeah, and in every single one of these contracts they're inventing new different and unique ways to do wage theft They just steal people's money, which to do wage theft, just steal people's money, which... And it's worth noting again, like, if a post carrier broke into an office and stole the amount of money that is being stolen from them, they would go to prison forever, right? But because it's your boss doing this, like, the worst thing that happens to them is they have to go through a grievance procedure, even though they are just literally robbing

you. Yeah, yeah, and yeah, you do not fuck with the male cops, but the male cops, the postal inspectors work for management. Yeah. So, uh, yeah. And management does nothing but sit in their chair all day, sniffing their own farts, watching tech talks and trying to figure out how to screw people through the virtue of spreadsheets while we are all out working our asses off.

It's a very demoralizing and abusive situation. So we were hoping that shit would get addressed in the tentative agreement and none of it was. So there was all sorts of problems with that. I'm with Building and Fighting NALC and we are basically basically a bottom up more of a radical reform caucus. I am out of Fort Worth, but like it started in Minneapolis and you got people in Chicago and New York and Naples, Florida and San Antonio, Hawaii, all over the country, where basically we are tired of, uh, we, we are tired of our leadership being in bed with management or at

least doing things where they look like they're in bed with management We've been putting on vote no rallies all over the country You've probably seen some on the news and this is vote no for the tentative Yes, this is this is this is a vote to send your bargaining reps back to the table with the demand that we can't take a deal That sucks this much. That's what a vote. No thing is Yeah, so yeah, we've been trying to get letter carriers to vote no on it That's so we've been doing the vote no campaigns So we can vote this shit down and get it in front of a judge because once it goes into arbitration

There's a lot of fear-mongering things. Oh, we could lose this. Oh, we could lose that. Oh, we could lose this But like Mia you said it yourself. These are all concessions We're not getting anything for giving up all these things 1.3 percent is what we're getting like up all these things. 1.3% is what we're getting. Like, yeah, like 1.3% is, is the kind of raise that like in a normal functioning union is like that. That's like a company's opening agreements that both you and the company knows you're not going to take. Yeah. Like that's a joke. Like that in and of itself would be a major concession to get something else, but we're doing all these concessions to get that. Yeah.

That's the win quote unquote. Yeah. So the thing is the postal reform act says that we are supposed to get paid comparatively to a comparable company in the private sector. So an arbiter is going to look at that and try and look at UPS, UPS or Amazon. And the post office is really trying to push it towards Amazon, which is why I try to talk to every letter carrier I know to support and get some cross craft solidarity with Amazon because without going on too much of a rabbit trail, the whole, uh, you know, a rising tide

lifts all ships and, and one union in another industry helps everyone in every other industry and trying to get people to understand that. But like you compare our contract to UPS and UPS, they top out with, I think their, their benefits package tops out 124,000 a year. And it's about, you know, five or eight years to reach top scale, ours tops out with this tentative agreement at 93,000 a year. And it still takes us 13 years to get to top steps. Christ. That's not comparable, right? Yeah. Yeah. No, not at all. So I'm not afraid of arbitration. I'm hoping we get this in front of an arbiter because unless that arbiter is completely crooked, I can't see him saying, well, you guys deserve 1.3%.

Yeah. Yeah. So when I first saw bad mouth talking, uh, and, uh, what his posts were on Reddit and stuff like that, I got really excited because I remember when I was speaking to her, to my local president and talking to the stewards in my area across like a couple of different stations, the kind of big question was, what do you do when the union breaks your heart? And I guess the answer is everything that Bad Mouth has just talked about. You build a better one.

You remind people that there is an alternative. Everything started somewhere. And if you go to his first episode on the From A to Arbitration podcast, he has something called the CCA Corner where he's educating the newcomers, the fresh faces. He's just talking about horizontal power. And I was listening to that episode before we had spoken. I got so excited just to hear what this person was up to. I tried to sneak in as many anarchist shit without saying I'm an anarchist.

I try and sneak as much of that shit in as I can. I get old heads who have a Trump hat on talking about anarchist talking points. It's funny as fuck to me. You know who won't break your heart? The products and services that support this podcast. If you don't buy them and therefore cannot be heartbroken. Experiencing the news each day can feel like a journey. With Up First from NPR though, it doesn't have to be.

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Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Is there anything else you want to talk about with arbitration or should we move on to the impending doom of the postal service? Yeah, I think arbitration, there's a whole lot of fearmongering and shit. I think anyone paying attention to things, we can't get a worse deal is the main point there. And that's the whole point of the vote no campaign is to just tell people, hey, dude, we might as well go down swinging.

Like we're not going to get a worse deal than this. But that's pretty much it for arbitration. Yeah, so let's move on to the future of the post office, which I want to take a second to mention that like, okay, look, like I am not someone who has any respect for the people who built the US government. However, if you want the US government to like, exist, right, the Postal Service is something that was deemed so important that it is like establishing the Postal Service is in the main body of the Constitution. Now, freedom of speech, right? And like the right to free association, that is not in the main body of the Constitution.

That is a fucking amendment, right? The people who built the American system thought that the Postal Service was a more important thing to make sure to have in the main body of the Constitution that set up the modern version of the government, right? They thought that shit was more important than like your right to have freedom of assembly, like your right to not literally be grabbed off the street and tortured, which is like the fourth amendment, right? So like, you know, in the scale of priorities of like how important is the postal service? Like that's how important people who set it up thought it was and those people were

Not very smart and like a bunch of racist slave owners So I would argue it's actually more important than they thought it was because they're you know I mean like obviously their priorities are completely out of whack but like I am not a founding father Stan but the post office was actually invented by Benjamin Franklin who I don't believe owned any slaves and yeah He was really racist, but yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean like I know I know that like I know that part I'm I just I don't think he actually owned anybody but like that's it's a yeah. Yeah And it was started. I think 15 years before the Constitution was even written. Oh, no, he did He he did own a slave as a young man and I think freed him

You know, I was trying to get the racist bastard a little bit of a win but like we're finding this out live on this So yeah, he did for his early life and then became an abolitionist later Which is still bad Yeah, he did for his early life and then became an abolitionist later. Which is still bad. Yeah, yeah. That's, you know, glad you came around eventually, I guess. I don't know. Look, we're finding this out live on the show. Oh, my God, that was a lot of time of him owning slaves.

That absolutely sucks. I take I take back my critical support uncritical opposition To hell with why they didn't teach us that in school To hell with brent franklin too but yeah, um We're coming in as trump administration and stuff and let me tell you that the situation wasn't really great under Biden either, because we have a postmaster, Louis Dickhead DeJoy.

He was put into place by Donald Trump. And you've seen, they wanted to slow walk the post office into privatization since the Reagan years, right? And they're just slowly chipping away at service and quality. DeJoy was connected to XPO the giant logistics company he had stock and I can't remember what position he held he apparently detangled himself from that when he became postmaster but you know they all say that I don't know for sure I am not an accountant so I can't do that.

Well and like also I want to point out the president of the United States is issuing a cryptocurrency like that shit. That shit is that shit is so fake now. Like, oh, God. Yeah. So like, Detroit's also got a reputation as just being a massive job killer, besides looking like a low rent Spider-Man villain. So under his tenure, we've seen service take quality, take a nose dive. And I want to talk about this stuff and this might get my ass in trouble, but like I am tired as a, as a letter carrier who loves my job, loves saying hi to people in the neighborhood,

loves walking through yards and knowing the names of all the dogs on my route and being the face of the post office, it is so frustrating to have people blame the mailman and the letter carrier for the decline in service because we are out there being brutalized by the post office, doing our best and fighting against the degradation of service that is a top down problem with leadership in the post office. I wanted to outline some of the stuff that I have evidence of and have seen firsthand of management undercutting the service of the post office. They willfully delay the mail all the time.

Jesus Christ. There's pictures of racks and racks of DPS. It's assorted letters and they come in trays Just sitting in a warehouse somewhere and and management They will order you on a regular basis to prioritize delivering packages Over the mail if it's a big heavy day and they're looking at labor hours They will sometimes tell you to not deliver the mail and just deliver the packages Because the packages have a tracking number and their boss can get they can get can get in trouble for that, but they can lie and hide the mail for another day. Like that shit happens all the time. Yeah. So it's like, and just be like, they

can just be like hiding like your bills or like social security check. Yeah. Yeah. Also your junk mail. Have you ever, have you ever ordered something and it says it was delivered, but you didn't get it and then it shows up the next day or it says that oh there's a vacation hold i didn't put this on hold and then it shows up the next day or you gotta go down to the post office to get it or uh recently uh severe weather delay yeah well i mean the severe weather the severe weather delay can happen uh but i'm talking what i'm talking about is ones where the package didn't make it to the letter carrier who's out there delivering. Cause this has happened to me multiple times and it didn't make it to me before I left the station. But because they

want to make their numbers look good for their boss, they will scan it at the station as if it was delivered or as if it's a cheese. Yeah. So because they want their numbers to look good. Cause their entire job is life on a spreadsheet. And so then I have to, I have to talk to my customers the following day. We're like, it said it is delivered. I didn't, I saw you and you didn't drop it off. I was worried someone stole it. What happened?

I was like, I know exactly what happened. I know what their name is. That's some of the service degradation. We've had people in other areas catch management throwing away mail. Jesus Christ. Oh yeah. Management reprimanding carriers who follow the manual and provide good customer service. Like I've been on the phone where I've had my manager call me because I was standing in one place for five minutes because I was helping an elderly woman move her garbage

cans and helped her get some groceries out of her car to bring in, you know, all the stuff that you see, the good mailman, the reason why people love the post office, shit like that. I got told, no, you're not doing that. And I had another customer come up to say hi to me while I was on the phone. And I just stopped to just say hi as I'm walking by and my manager chewed me out for even talking to the person. They don't care about us. And they throw us under the bus all the time, because if I don't deliver a package, cause they never made it to me. And it says delivered, the customer will come and complain at the post office.

Management will tell them, Oh, I'll talk to the carrier. That carrier made a mistake. And it's no carriers do make mistakes, but like this intentional degradation of service to make the numbers that blame always goes on the letter carrier. And it is, I, we love our job. We love our jobs. We love our communities. We, I got like, I might start crying if I talk about this too much, like I love bringing

treats to dogs. Like I get Christmas cards from old folk on my route. Like I, I know, like I, I know when some people's birthdays are. And I had an old timer on my route, sat outside to say, ought to be every day. Suddenly he wasn't. And his wife was out in the garden. And I said, where is he? Oh, he passed last night and she starts crying. I start crying.

And like, I get, I get in trouble for taking five minutes to give her a hug and talk things through for a second. Like it's, yeah, sorry. This is one of these areas where like delivering the mail is a social thing. But the thing is like sociality is the enemy of capital. And that's the people who are running the post office. That they don't give a shit about the actual social bonds and ties that are the thing that society is supposed to be composed of. They care about their metrics and them being able to make more money and them being able to advance higher in their career ladder.

It reminds me a lot of the campaign against the school system where you deliberately other fun things and then you blame the teachers for why the service is bad. It's like well it is not the teachers fault that there's like 48 kids in a classroom right like you know and there's also a very very similar privatization campaign run by a bunch of really powerful forces. Let's go back and talk a bit about like who the people are who who are doing this and what their sort of plans are. Yeah, so you have DeJoy, he's doing that. And we have all of these, they're starting to, some of the stuff they're building these,

I think they're called SDNCs. It's basically they take a bunch of post offices from a metro area and then they make one big distribution hub like Amazon. Well, that is adding an hour commute onto some of these letter carriers. They come in, they get to their mail truck and then they have to drive their mail truck for an hour to even start delivering. Right.

It's a huge mess and it's a huge fiasco and it feels very intentional because what's going to happen when they close those facilities built by the government down and it starts to privatize? Well, what do you know? Amazon just got a new hub or whoever ends up trying to step in. That's a little conspiracy brain, but like certain fiascos done by DeJoy's delivering for America plan seem tailor-made to fail for the post office, but work for someone

else. And then also you have Brian Renfro, who is the current president of the NALC. The one who was telling us that our tentative agreement was going to be historic when all it does is help management. He has gone on speaking tours, lying about this tentative agreement and everything he says sounds like management gave him a script and there's a whole lot of theories on that and how when he loses his position, people have running bets on what position he's going to take in the post office the

second he's voted out. Yep, yep, yep. He's the one who's negotiated this whole contract. He used his position as president. He iced out everyone from the union. He's the only one who talked to the post office. So this this tentative agreement is his baby. Wait, what? Yep, the executive council.

What? Yeah, he didn't tell the executive council. Wait, you didn't have like a bargaining team? No, but he had a bargaining team that were all of outside contractors. He had no one from the union with him. What? Yeah, because he wanted it to be his baby That's so unhinged That's like I need to stop here for a second because that's like if your union is doing that to you you need to understand

Like dear listener that is not how any of this shit is supposed to work Yep, like even even a normal corrupt union will have a bargaining team that is composed of like it will have a bargaining team That is announced like contractors There'll be people from inside the union who are like the stooges of like it will have a bargaining team that isn't outside contractors There'll be people from inside the union who are like the stooges of like whatever sort of management click is in power Like having them all be outside contractors is one of the most ludicrous things i've ever heard union Negotiation cutting out the that's so wild. Oh my god Oh, yeah

No, and the thing is we're coming up on 600 days without a con without a ratified contract. Like he has been the only one doing it this whole time and there was a bunch of shady shit. Okay. So he's struggled with alcoholism. I have dealt with addiction. I have lost friends to addiction. I have family members struggle with addiction.

I respect anybody who is going to take care of themselves. But he disappeared for something like 50 days or something. Jesus Christ. Didn't tell anybody. He ghosted everybody. He ghosted everybody. And this is early days of negotiation. People stepped in to start negotiating without him.

It turns out he had gone and checked himself into rehab. But the thing is, the NALC has two fucking vice presidents. I have all the respect in the world for someone to take care of themselves. But when you got 277,000 employees livelihood, you're responsible for and you got, I don't care if you got cancer, if you got, uh, an addiction problem or I don't care what it is. If you got to step away to take care of yourself, please do that. But put your vice, one of your two fucking vice presidents in charge. So what happens is someone steps in while he's gone, he comes back, gets mad that at them strips them of their responsibilities, blackballs them from the

union and goes back into negotiations all by himself. Which is why, getting to the next point on this, at the most generous, he is inept as hell. He is inept as hell and just the worst sort of person to be in there. At the worst, he is corrupt as hell and just dejoys stooge. And the thing is, we work for the federal government, whether it's malice or incompetence with the federal government, it's usually both. And it doesn't matter what, which one it is to me, whether he's corrupt or just an idiot. It's all the same to me because I can't make my fucking rent. So we expect DeJoy and the post office to do us dirty. That's their job as management, but to have the president of our own union doing this to us is unacceptable. And like, it's, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So on that note, that's one of the big pushes for the union recently has been to reach open bargaining where the membership is actually a part of it and that's what to my knowledge is one of the major issues that the building of fighting NILC or the building better union talks are Going towards. Yeah, can you can you talk about what open bargaining is? It's the thing that should be the standard for all unions, but Yeah, I mean open bargaining is effectively the bottom-up structure of having your members or even the representatives put forward motions that are open to the public and open to the membership so that you can effectively ask for more or get a different variety of opinions and strategies. You know, the duality of power kind of structure.

But what the Post Office currently has, it's not open bargaining, or what Postal Union has, it's not open bargaining. They have their own team that they send in, they don't talk to the membership. You kind of just elect your officials and then they come back with whatever they ended up with and they don't consult with any of their bottom line, which is problematic for obvious reasons, including this one where someone can go missing for 50 days and most of the membership has no idea. I've even talked to people, I think it was like two or three weeks ago, I went to a bar and I ran into a letter carrier from the next city over. I was like, Oh, did you vote? No No, and it's like what are you talking about?

He doesn't know that there's a vote going on It's out there. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah Yeah, I guess I mean like the main objective we want to do I'm sure we're running out of time. Yeah Yeah, I could talk about this shit for days. I mean I do that's pretty. That's pretty much all I do anymore. But like Tom was saying, the, the building of fighting ALC and pushing for the vote, no thing. The main thing that we're wanting is coming onto the shows like this and getting the public perception of what the letter carrier deals with what's going on. Cause this Trump's coming in, they're going to be trying to privatize it. Like they always do. That's already been in the works. It's important that the public knows this degradation of service is the point of it.

And how can the public sort of support our fight so we can keep the post office? So I wanted to just share a couple of links. If you're a letter carrier and you want to get involved with reforming things from an electoral end, there's the Concern concern letter carriers and you can go to concernlettercarriers.com. They're going to be running in 2026 to get rid of Renfro. If you are impatient like me and you can't fucking wait that long. And if, even if you're not a letter carrier, you can see how we're fighting

with the building of fighting NALC, which is more of a radical bottom up reform caucus. If you want to get involved in that, or you just want to kind of get updates from people who aren't going to bullshit you, you can go to fighting NALC.com to check that out. Oh, Tom, did you want to talk about the NALC Legislative Action Center? Yeah. So we touched briefly on it last episode. The NALC actually can't really use a lot of the money and funds from the union itself to lobby or to push Congress or anything like that. So there are separate organizations, there are facets of our organization that do that. You can find that at nalc.org.

Specifically, they do have a link where you put in your zip code and it gives you the appropriate congress member to write a letter to and really push them on what to do there. You can also donate to their fund if you see so fit and are able to do so. Yeah and that legislative action thing is actually pretty cool because you don't even have to call. They'll have pre-filled out things that you can just click, enter your email and it'll do it for you. So it's a real quick snap. It's the easiest way to harass your congressperson aside from drunk dialing Ted Cruz, which is

my favorite. We'll have links to all that. We'll have links to all that in the description. There's one more plug I wanted to make because all the fires out in LA right now because you have letter carriers where the post office burned down and so did their house and now they're they're reporting to duty at another post office 20 minutes away to go and deliver deliver mail to a devastated neighborhood because the thing is when shit happens whether it's a hurricane or a fire or, you know, the first people who show up are your neighbors or the punks or the punks and mutual aid and your neighbors

show up. The first person you see from the government, we're federal employees. We're not federal is, but the first hint of normalcy that a lot of people get is trying to just hide out and be safe. And then they see their mailman walking through their fucking lawn and trying to deliver to their shit. You know what I mean? Like that's important. And we all love what we do. We love being a part of the community and we love helping. And sorry, I knew I was going to cry at some fucking point. Uh, okay. So the NLC has an NLC disaster relief fund. The public can donate to it.

It's usually letter carriers. We all donate to it. And what happens is if your house burns down like in LA right now, or if like you were deaf say and the fires in, in, in Hawaii or whatever, when that happens, a letter carrier can apply. And as soon as they're approved, which can happen within a day or two, they automatically get sent like a thousand dollars from the fund to just pay for their pay for their hotel or pay for their rent a car.

And then they get approved. It's not a fix all, but they'll get like, they'll get another check after a little bit to help with some of their damages after they make their claim. That's something that normally just, it's just letter carriers giving to letter carriers so we can all take care of each other. But like the public is allowed to donate to that too. I know there's a lot of you guys have already been talking about a lot of mutual aid stuff at the beginning of your episodes lately. I just want to plug that one is a mailman specific one. Yeah. I'm sorry for crying.

No, no. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's emotional. It's, yeah, this shit sucks, bro. Yeah, I mean it's emotional. Yeah, this shit sucks, bro. Yeah, it really does. Yeah, is there anything else that you want to make sure people know before we head off? If I have one thing, it's just help your coworkers. You don't have to be a steward. You don't have to be anything. Just find someone you don't think deserves it. Help them too. I guarantee you that they do. you don't think deserves it, help them too. I guarantee you that they do. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It

Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Begin your day informed, ready and refreshed. Begin your day with Up First. Subscribe to Up First from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. John Stewart is back at The Daily Show and he's bringing his signature wit and insight straight to your ears with The Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Dive into John's unique take on the biggest topics in politics, entertainment, sports, and more.

Joined by the sharp voices of the shows, correspondents, and contributors. And with extended interviews and exclusive weekly headline roundups, this podcast gives you content you won't find anywhere else. Ready to laugh and stay informed? Listen on the iHeartRad Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Dr. Lari Santos, and to welcome the new year, my podcast, The Happiness Lab,

is releasing a series of happiness how-to guides to help you in 2025. I'll distill the wisdom of world-class experts into easy to digest actionable tips. Struggling with of world-class experts into easy-to-digest actionable tips. Struggling with tough emotions? We have a how-to guide. Worried that you're not enough? We got you. Self-obsessed and want to get over yourself? There's a guide for that too. The Happiness Labs how-to season starts January 1st. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Decisions Decisions, the podcast where boundaries are pushed and conversations get candid. Join your favorite hosts, me, Weezy WTF. And me, Mandy B. As we dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships

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