e-Team Report, Sept. 3, 2012

21st Biennial APWU National Convention

Ahead of the upcoming November elections, there was a flurry of legislative and political activity at the APWU National Convention in Los Angeles.  There, delegates to the APWU’s 21st Biennial Convention voted unanimously on Wednesday, August 22nd to endorse President Barack Obama for a second term.  In President Obama’s recorded remarks to the delegates, he emphasized his strong support for the Postal Service and its employees.  “We want to build an economy that lasts,” the President said, “and that’s why we’re pushing back against the assault on unions, because the values you stand for — hard work, responsibility, looking out for one another — aren’t just union values.  They’re American values.”

Republican National Convention

At their national convention, held in Tampa, FL last week, Republicans took a drastically different position on workers’ rights, labor unions, and the future of the Postal Service.

Over the course of the 2012 Republican National Convention, many prominent Republicans took to the stage to bash the labor movement in America, including South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, who accused President Obama of sacrificing American jobs to appease “bullying union bosses.”

The Republican Party’s platform, which was adopted at the convention, fit right in line with the anti-union rhetoric on display in Tampa.  Amazingly, the Republican Party platform seemingly confuses the Postal Service with the Pony Express, wildly misjudges the state of Postal Service pensions, and then champions the privatization of the Postal Service!  

To read the text of the misguided GOP platform for USPS privatization, please click here.

To read more about the Republican’s plan to impose nationwide “right-to-work” laws and other anti-labor positions in their party platform, please click here.

Labor Day Proclamation

To read the text of President Obama's Proclamation declaring today, September 3, 2012 as Labor Day, which calls for Americans nationwide to " honor the contributions and resilience of working Americans," please click here.