by Glenn Littrell
The attacks didn’t start with state workers across the country. The campaign has been ongoing for years. Facing a potential stalemate in a divided Congress the emphasis shifted from Postal Workers and large private sector unions to waging war on the middle class working family by attacking public service employees. This shift however is not a change in the anti-working family agenda of right-wing conservatives it is just a broadening of the frontal assault that was brought on by inflated Tea Party victories of the 2010 elections.
The Republican members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have focused their sites, as promised, on attacking the biggest public service workforce of them all, Postal Workers. [see links and video below]
It is estimated that about 40% of APWU members are more conservative than liberal [the figure is higher when you factor in non-members [free-loaders]]. It is this group that is slowest to acknowledge the threat to their jobs and tend to ignore the right-wing attacks on their jobs. They tend to feel that those attacks are directed towards their co-workers, not them, or they feel comfortable that their seniority will protect them. What they fail to realize is that Wisconsin working families also didn’t think the right-wing attacks were directed at them individually and they also felt their seniority would protect them too. Now they know better.
Wisconsin workers now realize that they have been voting against their best interest by supporting candidates who only give lip service to family values issues every election, but give true service to a pro-corporate agenda that finances their political campaigns. In several of the states that worker rights are under attack there have been some type of pro-corporate tax cut or tax subsidies for high income individuals or corporation. How did they go from their ‘create jobs’ campaign during the election to their ‘job destruction’ agenda across the country? The events of the last six months in Wisconsin has highlighted that working class America, middle class America, family values America, union families and unemployed working families are not distinct groups, but are overlapping, entwined and inseparable from the fabric of our society. These realizations should not be lost on Postal Workers, liberal and conservative, because the fight against the working class is not going to be limited to your liberal co-worker or state employees.
The attacks on postal workers continue with House hearings attacking our recently negotiated contract. Even with its flaws the first reaction of most Postal Workers was to wipe the sweat from their forehead and breath a sigh of relief that there weren’t facing give backs or pending arbitration.
During World War II it was the working class that fought the war and built the war machines. Following the war it was the working families that expanded our infrastructure and fought the Korean War. This working class, the working families, their unions and the GI Bill is what built the American middle class following the depression. It wasn’t the middle class that caused the Great Depression anymore than it was the middle class that caused the current ‘Great Recession’. It was Wall Street and Corporate greed that caused both. It is time that we realize that the pro-corporate mantra that ‘What is good for business is good for America’ is a fallacies and adopt the more proven observation that what is good for the working family is good for America. Business has and will always take care of itself.
GlennDL
As we see the attacks on and the damage done to state level workers play out, Postal Workers should consider the words of Pastor Martin Neilmoller:
 | They’ve attacked everyone who disagrees with them as ‘socialist’, now their attacking state public servants and unions, and we’ve heard their plans for postal & federal workers. When will you realize that you are not exempt from their list of transgressors just because you think you’re one of them. |
| They aren’t Nazi’s or Fascist and this isn’t pre-war Germany, but the tactics are similar and proven. Divide and conquer use fear and hate to push their anti-worker agenda. Stand-up speak-out before its too late. |