federal workers

  • No Relief in Sight as Postal Service Pushes Ahead with Cuts
    Theresa Moran
    May 24 2012 - 12:48pm
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    When the Senate passed a bill on April 25 meant to provide relief to the financially struggling post office, postal activists shrugged.

    Neither chamber of Congress is adequately addressing the root cause of the Postal Service budget crisis, they say. Absent a fix, Postmaster General Patrick Donohoe’s plans for massive cuts to jobs and services soon will be underway for postal workers and communities nationwide.

  • Labor Overlooks Bipartisan Attack on Federal Workers

    It’s a strange disconnect: what union leaders expect from their political allies and what they actually get. The latest example comes from the largest federal workers union, which Democrats just forced to take a pension hit estimated to cost workers $15 billion.

  • What’s Behind Postal Crisis? Privatization.

    The push to dismantle the U.S. Postal Service’s distribution and delivery network is a scheme by corporate privatizers to crush the largest organized workforce in federal employment, pick apart a trusted government service, and grab the most profitable parts of the business for their own enrichment.

  • The PATCO Syndrome

    Coming at the beginning of the Reagan-era conservative ascendancy, the 1981 PATCO strike is often cited as the defining labor struggle of our time. Yet the union's intense solidarity, insularity, and ultimate miscalculations are little understood today. A new book, Collision Course, explains much about this important chapter in labor history.

  • Airport Screeners Election Kicks Off
    Jenny Brown
    Mar 9 2011 - 7:51am

    The much-maligned airport security workforce will finally have a chance to vote on a union and bargain collectively. The election starts today and runs through April 19. A February decision by TSA administrator John Pistole set the stage.

  • Obama’s Federal Wage Freeze Will Become Model
    Dan La Botz
    Dec 16 2010 - 9:52pm

    They’re calling it Obama’s PATCO—his proposal for a two-year wage freeze for two million federal workers. When Ronald Reagan fired 13,000 striking PATCO members, the air traffic controllers, in August 1981, he sent a signal to other employers that it was open season on unions—and the era of concessions began.

  • Labor History: Solidarity Begins with PATCO
    Labor Notes staff
    Aug 17 2009 - 3:30pm

    The sign carried by a sympathizer on the Professional Air Traffic Controllers picket line at Detroit’s Metropolitan Airport read: “Polish Solidarity American Style.” With American unionists being fired and thrown in jail simply for exercising the right to strike, the comparison with Poland was inevitable.