A working class hero is something to be

author : WIP News Service topic : Unjustly fired | Postal Service

by WIP News Service

Unjustly fired by the Postal Service, Clint Burelson continues the struggle for workers’ rights

Longtime local labor and media activist, Clint Burelson, has for a second time been fired from his position at the Postal Service for executing his duties as an American Postal Workers Union representative. Burelson is the president of the APWU Olympia local and has a long record of fierce advocacy, not only in defense of workers rights at the Postal Service, but also on behalf of all of us as citizens of a democracy who depend on the US Postal Service as a means of sharing information.

Early in 2006, Burelson began a campaign to publicize and resist a USPS plan to consolidate operations nationwide in a manner which would transfer good union Postal Service jobs to private corporations paying minimum wage, and essentially subsidize services to large corporate mailers like AOL/Time Warner, while reducing service and increasing costs for the rest of us.

Burelson did the research, wrote the press releases, and organized the pickets, which eventually fueled a nationwide resistance to consolidation plans. The USPS ra-tionale for consolidation was cost savings, but Burelson and others argued at the outset and now present evidence demonstrating that the plan has in fact increased opera-tion costs.

Despite the efforts of Burelson, his coworkers, and local citizens to prevent consolidation here in Olympia, processing of outgoing mail was transferred to Tacoma in Sept. 2006. Olympia no longer has its own postmark.

But the movement Burelson spearheaded in 2006 eventually forced the USPS to put consolidations on hold nationally. Of the 147 facilities initially targeted for consolida-tion, only four have been implemented. And the struggle continues locally as postal workers fight to bring Burelson back to work and to bring mail processing operations back on line here in Olympia.

How long have you worked for the US Postal Service and when did you first take on a role as a representative in the American Postal Workers Union?

I started with the Post Office in October of 1985. Fred Porter, one of the most dedicated union activists at the time, asked me to come to a union meeting. I didn’t even know what to expect, or who was going to be there. It turned out that everyone there was a coworker. Fred asked me if I wanted to get my feet wet, to help out. I’d had plenty of jobs before my postal service job that were processing jobs, kind of like factory work—I processed pineapple, fish, and paper (print shop). Now I was processing the mail, but this was by far the best paying job I’d had. So I felt an obligation to contribute.

So you felt that the Postal Service job was a good job because of the work of the union?

Yes. And I felt I should do my part, that I should give back. So I became a shop steward in 1986.

What was the reason given by the Postal Service managers for firing you this November?

Failure to follow instructions. They said I wasn’t leaving a room right away when told to do so. I was trying to discuss labor management issues with the managers and they abruptly told me to leave and later said I didn’t leave the room fast enough. They also charged that I was talking to employees on the work floor.

Do you believe that there is more behind the charges than what has been stated on the record?

Yes. It is my job to represent workers and enforce the contract. Management does not want me to do that. I am routinely harassed and discriminated against for doing my job as a union representative. There are many grievance settlements in which management has agreed to stop discriminating against me, but they continue because the labors laws are weak. If I get my job back, which is likely, the remedy is simply back pay. There is usually no additional penalty.

The Postal Service is currently paying me for doing union work eight hours a day. At this point, the Postal Service can pay me to be an effective union advocate or they could pay me to stay at home. Obviously, they’d rather just pay me to stay at home. Since the penalty is weak for firing me, it is more beneficial for them to take a shot at me, and hope that they’ll win. From their perspective, if I’m gone, I’m not going to be in their hair as much.

I am trying to do things though to make my firing less tempting. Just this week, the Post Office had to post a notice on the bulletin boards stating they would not delay or deny information requested by the union as result of an unfair labor practice charge I filed with the National Labor Relations Board. Management routinely delays or denies information to make it difficult for the union to handle grievances, so management’s admission of guilt and promise to comply may help things.

This isn’t the first time the Postal Service has fired you for carrying out your duties as a union representative. Briefly describe the events which led to your fir-ing back in 1994, and what happened when you challenged it in court.

I was fired for more than 3 years. The situation was similar. It all has to do with representing workers. They don’t want me to represent workers in an effective manner. In 1994, it was about fighting to get time on the clock to handle grievances, which was contractually guaranteed. Prior to me, stewards in Olympia worked off the clock han-dling grievances, which limited both the quality and number of grievances. I made it a priority to get steward time on the clock and got fired for it. However, the struggle was worthwhile because I eventually won 8 hours of steward time a day and other significant improvements for the union.

Are you appealing this recent decision? If so, do you plan to represent yourself in court as you did back in 1994 ?

Yes. It is being appealed in a grievance procedure. Hopefully an arbitration will be scheduled by next year. Since there is no incentive for management to bring me back quickly, past president Louie Mackey and others have organized a picket to create some motivation for management to right their wrong. The picket is also about bringing the outgoing mail operations back to Olympia.

In 2006, you wrote: “The story of how large corporations are benefiting and the average citizen losing in the Postal Service consolidation plans is not being adequately covered by the corporate media, because many of the large mailers who will benefit from the consolidation plans are also the large media corpora-tions that provide most of the news to the country. AOL/Time Warner, which owns CNN and many other media sources of information, is the most obvious ex-ample. Newsweek, Reader’s Digest, and other large media mailers also support consolidation and cannot be expected to tell the story from the general public’s viewpoint.” Does that remain true today? Is the story getting out?

Corporate media still represent the interests of corporations, but the pickets at post offices, calls to Congress, and use of alternative media made an impact. In 2006, the Postal Service identified approximately 147 facilities for consolidation. Consolidation is the closing of facilities and/or transfer of mail operations (usually outgoing mail op-erations) to other facilities. The Postal Service wanted to implement consolidation on a large scale at the urging of large corporate mailers who wanted to take advantage of fewer drop off points and some of whom wanted to take over the sorting of the mail at consolidated locations. In general, mail service suffers more the further the mail is sorted from the community. Large mailers like Time Warner bypass outgoing operations and are generally not concerned with mail service the same way community mem-bers are.

As a result of our efforts in Olympia and of other unions and communities targeted early on, the rest of the union and the nation learned about consolidation, and through learning from each other we made enough of an impact that the Postal Service were forced to put the consolidations on hold. Of the 147 facilities targeted only 4 were im-plemented. Of those 4, one, in Marysville, California, has already been reversed.

How has Postal Service consolidation affected Olympia, and how have you fought back?

The Olympia facility was one of the first facilities targeted and one of the first to fight back. Our contribution was in: 1) demonstrating that consolidation was something the union could and should fight against, 2) providing the research on consolidation so that communities had the information to fight back with, 3) sharing our research, press releases, and stories through emails and non-profit web sites, and 4) making the fight a public one so that the fight was no longer behind closed doors. A couple of web sites run by postal workers from their homes posted all of the information and unions and communities in every part of the country learned from and improved upon our beginning efforts.

What is the status of the Olympia Consolidation?

In Olympia, the required postal review of the consolidation, which they not surprisingly delayed, revealed a loss of money due to the consolidation. After our picket on the matter, the Postal Service claimed they saved money, but have not provided the union with any information supporting any savings. As it stands, the documentation pro-vided from the Postal Service shows a financial loss for the Postal Service in moving the Olympia outgoing operations to Tacoma.

You have also been very involved in alternative media,—radio, TCTV. Could you talk a little bit about what you were trying to do and what alternative media such as WIP should be emphasizing at this time?

I think all alternative media should be emphasizing the fact that the mainstream media is corporate owned and therefore not reflective of the interests of majority of the people. The core media largely reflects the biases and the views of corporate business. That needs to be put out there first and foremost, so people understand where they’re getting their information and why it is so important to get information from somewhere else. People should encourage, create, and support media that is more com-munity based like WIP.

And there’s more to it than that. Historically, the Post Office was designed to provide a means of communicating back and forth at affordable, even subsidized rates, so that the public received the necessary information to make well informed decisions. However, over the years, the corporate domination of information has meant corporate-friendly decisions. The recent articles from WIP contributors about The Olympian coverage of the City Council contained excellent information regarding the influence of the corporate media in local politics. It’s very important to support alternative, non-profit media so that the public can make informed decisions that are for the common good.

How can the public support you and the postal union?

There will be a picket on Monday, January 12th, from 11 to 1, in front of the main post office in Olympia at 900 Jefferson St. It is important that people come out for this picket to show their support for the union movement and advocate for bringing the mail back to Olympia. It’s an opportunity for community members to stand up and be counted when it matters.

For more background on Postal Service consolidations, see the Works In Progress website (www.olywip.org) for articles authored in 2006 by Clint Burelson.