Start Building Now To Be Movement Ready

(This article appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine)

Working with other leaders and organizations inside and outside of our labor movement will build a more powerful and unified movement.

We need to unite with organizations that advocate for fairness, justice and peace for all workers and all people, despite race, gender, immigrant status, sexual orientation, and other differences that might divide us. It is important to grow a more adaptive, inclusive, and powerful organization so that we better represent our members now and into the future.

Each day we find ourselves surrounded by actions of hate. Instances of attacks on our benefits and rights that we have fought for over many years. We are fighting back against the attack on our public Postal Service. The Postal Service benefits a majority of people around our country, many organizations, businesses, and communities depend on our services, as well as our workers, and retirees. History has shown again and again that dictatorships and acts of hate can be stopped by large movements of people, often led by labor unions.

Surveys have shown that our communities support and love the Postal Service, we cannot let wealthy corporations take us over and destroy the Universal Service Obligations that we provide around the country.

Start now, build your local and state movements for the battles ahead by working with your members to empower their activism in the union, to meet the critical challenges we face in saving our public services and our country. Educate them, meet with them, and coach them about how important they are in our fight. Ask them to stand with us and help build the community fight by building a strong movement so we can transform our country so that it works for workers, not for the billionaires in a society of the rich versus the poor.

If a general strike were called today, would your local be ready to join? It is time to build our movement in every local and state. Since January, I have been providing a toolkit to help you take steps to mobilize the fight against privatization. The power you build now can also benefit our fight over the many issues we have within the Postal Service, like the destruction of our mail service network and service standards, toxic work environment, short staffing, job training, and contract non-compliance. Let’s take our power back!

Need a copy of the toolkit? Send an email to dszeredy@apwu.org. All members please stand with APWU now and volunteer to help within your local and state union. ■