PAGE 8 | May 19, 2017 | NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
BUILDING COMMUNITY
Stamping out hunger
May 13 was the annual “Stamp Out Hunger”
food drive sponsored by the National Associa-
tion of Letter Carriers (NALC). The food drive
takes place in communities across the nation and
is the largest one-day food drive in America.
“We see a lot of people who do without, people
struggling. It’s an honor to spend the day col-
lecting food to help people,” said Billy Brink, a
member of NALC Branch 82 in Portland. Food
collected in Oregon and Southwest Washington
will be distributed by the Oregon Food Bank.
Last year letter carriers brought in over 1 million
pounds of food locally — and 80 million pounds
nationwide. This year marked the 25th year of
the food drive.
In the photo above, letter carrier Michael Bixel loads bags from his mail
truck into a bin at the Rose City Branch Post Office. More than a dozen
women from the neighborhood volunteered to help sort the food and
send it off to the Oregon Food Bank. Left, letter carrier Kathy Cassidy
drops off bags of food to the Rose City Branch Post Office, with help from
her husband, daughters, and granddaughter (who was in the car). The
letter carriers are members of the National Association of Letter Carriers
Branch 82.
... ‘Right to work’ coming
to the public sector
From Page 1
They could look to Jim
Falvey for tips. Falvey is presi-
dent of National Association of
Letter Carriers Branch 82, which
represents Portland-area postal
service letter carriers. U.S.
Postal Service unions already
operate in a “right-to-work” vol-
untary-dues environment. So do
all other federal employee
unions. Yet Branch 82 manages
to get over 96 percent of union-
represented workers to pay dues
voluntarily. How? First, by in-
sisting in contract negotiations
that the employer give the union
a chance to meet with new hires.
During new employee orienta-
tion, Falvey gets time to deliver
an energetic pitch about how im-
portant the union is to letter car-
riers. The few he fails convince
are later set upon by their
coworkers — who don’t want to
see their union weakened by
freeloaders. The union publishes
the names of non-members so
all members can see who’s not
paying their share. Branch 82
even offers a bounty to a mem-
ber who signs up a non-member.
“I don’t believe [right-to-
work] is the death knell that
everybody says it is,” Falvey
says.
For the union movement, it
UNION MEANS ‘EVERYBODY IN,
NOBODY OUT’ Jim Falvey, presi-
dent of National Association of Let-
ter Carriers Branch 82, says his union
takes great pride in maintaining
high voluntary membership rates.
matters a great deal how suc-
cessful public sector unions are
in maintaining support once fair
share goes away. Today approx-
imately 4.1 million local gov-
ernment workers and 2.1 mil-
lion state government workers
are union members, and they
make up about 42 percent of all
union members. If even one in
five drop their membership, that
would weaken the union move-
ment by over a million mem-
bers — at a time when unions
and the public sector are already
under attack.
PEOPLE
Karly Edwards stepped down
May 12 as state director of the
Oregon Working Families
Party, a union-backed minor
party. Edwards formerly
worked for the Service Em-
ployees International Union,
UNITE HERE, and Portland
Jobs with Justice. In June
she’ll begin a new job as labor
representative at Oregon
Nurses Association. Hers is
the third director-level depar-
ture for the Oregon Working
Families Party this year.
Deputy director Sami Alloy
left in January to work as an
Oregon campaign manager for
the nonprofit advocacy group
Forward Together. Field di-
rector David Neel also left in
January. Two staff remain at the
organization: operations man-
ager Hannah Taub and organ-
izer Ian Johnson.