Private-Sector Organizing

In April, 1999, APWU President Moe Biller established the APWU National Organizing Committee to better respond to the union’s convention mandates.

The committee’s creation followed the union’s first successful private-sector organizing campaign at East Coast Leasing in Greensboro, NC.

On April 15, 1999, The National Organizing Committee adopted a strategic plan [PDF] to organize postal workers in various sectors within the privatized postal industry, including: pre-sort houses, call centers, information service centers, mail-haul trucking, and mail-transport equipment service centers. The plan includes organizer training and guidelines for evaluating organizing opportunities.

The Committee placed special emphasis on merging the APWU’s internal organizing efforts with the new private-sector (external) organizing campaign. The committee held a National Organizing Conference in Denver, CO, to provide the direction for the synthesis of these organizing efforts.

At the Denver conference (November 1999), more than 200 APWU local officers and members joined national union leaders and organizing professionals from other AFL-CIO unions and the federation itself to map out the union’s organizing strategy.

The APWU leaders in attendance in Denver gave their unanimous and enthusiastic support of the union’s bold new emphasis on organizing workers in the private-sector postal industry. APWU national conventions in 2000 and 2002 voted to extend financial support to the effort.

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