Friday, October 15, 2010

Getting close!

We are down to the last three weeks of this election cycle and each day seems to just blur into the next. I am blessed to have our people spread out all over the state, and next week I get to add 2 more!
Gerard Henke, an old hand at doing this release staff thing, will be joining the group working in St Louis. His addition will help free Kevin Holmes to focus on the suburbs, and Tony Jasper to concentrate on the South City. Tom Bolen, an up-and-comer from my old branch in Cape Girardeau, joins us as a first timer. He and Ron Lewis will cover all of Southern Missouri. Most importantly, Tom will be able to hopefully make some good contacts that he can use in 2012 (as we are sure to once again be a battleground state). I hope that Tom finds this experience, though short, to be richly rewarding and he can remain enthusiastic about helping his fellow carriers.
In addition to these two guys (which brings us up to 10 full-time NALC members), President Rolando has informed me that NBA Mike Weir and Senior RAA Danny Pittman will be released to me starting Oct. 29th. Mike will stay in St Louis area, and Danny will work with Anthoney Mitchell in the Kansas City area. Junior RAA Mike Birkett has been assigned to Iowa. Also in addition, on Oct. 29th Assistant Secretary Nicole Rhine will join the guys in Kansas City to work through Election Day on GOTV.
Every branch in Missouri still has time to do a mailing to your members and you can still phone all your members to help them make the right choice FOR YOUR JOB.
If you know any of these Release Staff, and would like to help, talk to them or feel free to contact me- as always- (573)268-6346 or monalcpres@yahoo.com

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Labor Day Weekend

It almost seems a misnomer; Labor Day Weekend. A time to celebrate the working men and women of this country, and to celebrate the Labor movement. So, how do we celebrate? We work! That's right, from Kansas City on Sunday with a labor walk and kick-off campaign, to parades in St Louis, Kansas City, and Springfield. There was a GREAT turnout for the campaign kick-off in Kansas City on Sunday. Emmanuel Cleaver (MO-5) and Senate candidate Robin Carnahan both came to speak. There was a Labor Walk that followed, with the candidates themselves taking part. For those people that had a 3 day weekend, to get them to come out in the middle of it and take part was great for our movement. Who says the excitement isn't there this year? Anthoney Mitchell and Ramon Bullard deserve kudos for a job well done.
Certainly the excitement level was high in St Louis on Labor Day itself; there were more than 100 letter carriers (and the St Louis Letter Carrier Band) in the St Louis Labor Day parade. There were union activists and members in all directions and quite a good crowd of on-lookers. Letter Carriers were well represented and well received- many parade goers gave us the thumbs-up, or shouted their support to us. Some of us had our 5 Day is the Wrong Way shirts on, and we were led in chants along the route saying exactly that! Hopefully this excitement can carry over and we can use these activists all the way until Nov.2! My congratulations to Billy Lister and the good folks from Branch 343 for a job well done.
Though I did not attend the Springfield parade, word is that they had a great crowd and the Letter Carriers were well represented. We will be down in that area this weekend, as the Southwest District meeting is Saturday night in Joplin. Come find out what you can do to help us, and in turn, help yourselves.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Release Staff for Missouri

We are always blessed in the state of Missouri to be a battleground/bellwether/toss-up, pick your favorite, state. As Missouri goes, so does America. Well, not really. For whatever reason you can pick, we fell off our bellwether status last election by picking a Democrat for Governor by 19%, but picking a Republican for President by .oo1%, or fewer than 4000 votes out of 3.2 million cast. But, once again, we find ourselves right in the thick of things this election cycle. Missourians have a chance to pick up a Senate seat, as Christopher "Kit" Bond rides off into the sunset. Not to say he has never done anything for us, but the closest thing I can find was his efforts with Senator Dodd from Connecticut to get FMLA passed- no small feat, but I'm sure if there is an anti-Union clause anywhere in it, Bond put it there.

The Democrats have put forth a great candidate in Robin Carnahan, our current Secretary-of-State, and the holder of the dubious distinction of being the office holder elected with the largest vote total of any candidate EVER in Missouri. To say she is popular would be an understatement. So, how's she doing in the polls? 47-45, 48-46, 44-41- depends on who you are reading. The main point is that neither candidate has more than 50%, so that leaves a lot of people who just plain old cannot make up their minds.

Robin needs us, and Robin needs Labor as a whole, to get where she wants to be. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 70-72% of Labor households will vote for Robin, I am confident. What we must insure is that we exercise our right to vote in greater numbers than the general public. Maybe there is something to this anti-incumbent fervor going on, and those people will not support Blunt. Or maybe they will retreat to where they usually vote from, and we shall have a real fight on our hands.

Right now, along with myself, I have been able to get Anthoney Mitchell and Kevin Holmes released to work directly with the AFL-CIO for this election cycle. Anthoney, Branch President for 827 Independence, is also the Northwest District President, and was previously released for Labor campaigns. He is working with the Central Labor Council of Kansas City, and coordinates all their Labor Walks and Workplace Flyer Campaigns.

Kevin Holmes, Missouri State Vice-President, is also the State Legislative Liaison, and is President of Branch 5050, Ballwin (Charlie Cook Branch). Kevin works with the St Louis AFL-CIO office, and does a great amount of workplace, or jobsite, leafletting. He also coordinates all Labor Walks, Phone Banks, and is in charge of the Missouri E-Activist mailings. He was also release staff for Labor2008.

It is my hope that we will receive additional letter carriers to be released after Labor Day; I am hoping to get carriers in both out-state (think Springfield/Joplin area) as well as St Louis and Kansas City.

Come join your Union Brothers and Sisters in a Labor Day parade. We will be marching in the St Louis parade with the members of 343, as many of us as possible sporting our "5 Day is the Wrong Way" T-shirts. Come join us!

Friday, July 23, 2010

We are rolling now!

Well, we got through the mark-up on H.R. 5746 unscathed; it passed through with relative ease. We also already have 6 co-sponsors, including Missouri's own Lacey Clay. I spent some time today on the phone talking to Legislative aides in each of the House members' offices, and they all seemed very receptive. One of our great friends from Sam Graves office, Marco Calceri, says they are all over this bill and are very excited. Possibly a roll-in with their own "universal 6-day delivery" bill? I would like that!

So- now comes the fun part of hitting each of the members up at home if they don't co-sponsor before recess next Thursday night. I predict we will have 6 or 7 by then. And not to name names, but 7 is all I can EVER count on to support us. Because it is an election cycle, I don't think they will bring us to Washington in September. Unless we have a really good turnout of co-sponsors. Then, we should just fast-break this sucker all the way and get this whole mess behind us.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

People who are helping us

Committee Chairman Lynch (Massachusetts) comes from a family of Postal employees, so it is no small coincidence that he would take an interest in what we do and what should happen to us. Thankfully, it is usually good.

Tomorrow at 1:30 pm, he will bring forth H.R. 5746 for mark-up. Lynch introduced the bill last Thursday evening (July 15th). He, and we, are hoping the mark-up process will go smoothly and that no "bad" amendments are offered to it.

Long story short, the bill provides for two things: One, that we get back our $55 to $90 Billion dollars that we have overpaid into the CSRS accounts. Two, that the formula for calculating the money going into retirement and healthcare accounts be fixed. There is also a bunch of legalese and political mumbo-jumbo written in, but you get the gist of it.

August vacation starts next Thursday evening for Congress- we are actually hoping to hit hard and fast on trying to get co-sponsors. I am sure they will be bringing all the State Presidents to Washington after the Labor Day recess to get enough co-sponsors to vote on this before the end of the fiscal year (September 30). There will be a big push, and I am sure this will be a topic of great discussion at the National Convention.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Up and Running

It seems that the busier we get, the busier we make ourselves. All the technology available in the world certainly makes it easy for you to choose just how much information you can handle in a day. The internet has been a boon to me; once I was just satisfied with reading the 2 Columbia papers, the St Louis Post-Dispatch, the Kansas City Star, and on occasion, the USA Today. I have the ability to read the best newspapers the world-over now, and I take advantage to read the Washington Post and New York Times as often as possible. In truth, nothing beats actually holding the paper in my hands and reading, but the internet does save some time. And at $2 a copy (locally) for the New York Times, some money.

The blog aspect of this may take some time for me to get wholly used to; contrary to popular belief, I do still carry a route and my free time is probably no better than the time you may have. I am completely sure that I won't have anything of substance to say on every day. It involves me waiting until I am done for the day and at home- sometimes something I may have thought of talking about during the day becomes something I have talked myself out of by the time I sit down to type. So, it is a learning process. I am just glad we have decided to get involved. Stay tuned.

Monday, July 5, 2010

MDA Ride at Tan Tar A



The bike ride at the State Convention raised over $300 for MDA! The ride was about 100 miles. Everyone had a nice time and the food was great too!

NALC National Convention

The 67th Biennial Convention of the National Association of Letter Carriers is August 9-13 in Anaheim, California. More information can be found here.