By The PA. AFL-CIO
– This year, Staples and the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) cut a deal called the “Approved Shipper” program, which is essentially a cloaked attempt at privatization of postal retail operations. The program sets up “mini post offices” inside of 82 Staples office supply stores, staffs them with low-wage Staples employees and eliminates the need for highly-trained USPS workers who get paid a living wage.
Staples and the USPS intend to expand the program to 1,500 locations throughout the country. This further threatens the jobs of well-trained, well-paid, uniformed post office workers who take an oath to safeguard Americans’ mail. There have already been cutbacks in service hours at dozens of post offices around San Francisco, which is one of the test areas for the program.
Due to Staples and USPS’s continued efforts to move this program forward, the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Randi Weingarten recently wrote a letter to Staples’ CEO Ronald Sargent to notify him that the 1.6 million member AFT will no longer shop at Staples for school supplies until further notice.
“As you know, teachers are critical to your profits. Last year, educators spent over $1.6 billion of their own money on school supplies and a lion’s share of that money was spent at Staples stores all across the country. Some of our local affiliates have even entered into partnerships with Staples to offer discounts to teachers and other school-related staff with a goal of reducing costs to benefit the communities and families we serve,” Weingarten wrote.
On July 21, 2014, the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO has also sent a letter to the CEO of Staples regarding this outsourcing attempt and our endorsement of the boycott. We urge our affiliates and their members to write similar letters and let it be known that we will not stand for this attack on good union jobs. If you do write a letter, please copy us when you do so.
It has recently been revealed that the USPS has extended the “Approved Shipper” program to 44 additional Staples locations mainly in Connecticut, as well as New York and Massachusetts. This shows that they are charging ahead with the destructive program, which means labor and all the people who care about the integrity of the USPS must fight back harder.
The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) have been devout to pushing the Staples boycott. The boycott has already won the endorsement of the AFT, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and Service Employees International Union (SEIU). The letter from Weingarten is another stand against this outsourcing attempt, letting Staples and USPS management know that “we’re not buying it.“
Source: http://www.paaflcio.org/?p=4628
