postal retirees breakfast

[TimHall]

This is not a strike post but I could not find a way to create a new topic under workers' movement, so here it is:

Discussion at Detroit APWU Retirees' Breakfast, 11/16/2024

We had our monthly APWU retirees' breakfast today.

The main discussion, taking almost the whole meeting, was on the change in the health care plans. Health care plans for postal workers and retirees have now been severed from the Federal Health Benefits Plan, creating a separate set of plans with their own rules and requirements. This separation has already taken place and what was at issue in the meeting was how to transition into it successfully as individual participants. Most of the individual plans, such s Blue Care/Blue Shield, have been carried over without change into the new Plan. However, some have not.

This resulted in complicated discussion. The chair of the meeting is the president of the Retirees group and she does a good job of getting things clear. However it takes a lot of time. What is at issue is preserving the health plans of these retirees, at a time when everything seems to be, or is about to be, under attack, and the retirees are good at discussing and grappling with this. Some of them make sure to help me, as at times I have problems keeping up with it all. At any rate, I see it as a battle of the retired workers to defend their health and their rights.

The meting was quite large, the largest I can remember, overflowing the room, about 50 workers. Toward the very end Pat Chornoby, former Detroit local vice-president, launched into political statement, much of which was not bad. (He plays a better role among the retirees than in the union itself, where he has attached himself to a new faction led by a returning ex-president, Chris Ulmer, in the present local elections.)

The main problem I saw with Chornoby's speech was that he could not accept that Harris lost and held out hopes that somehow, somewhere, votes would be found by the Democratic leadership before this was “over” (January 6, I guess) and Harris would be made the winner. There was little time left and I did not want to be stretching out the meeting, but I said I could not see any possibility of the election being reversed and therefore that we ought to be preparing for fight-back against the Republicans, who were appointing some of the worst MAGA fanatics to cabinet positions such as Gaetz as Attorney-General, so that severe attacks are coming. I said we should be ready for marches, rallies, strikes, all kinds of mass struggles. Regina Favors, legislative director of the local union up till the present, undecided, election, backed me up and and said there would be big fights coming.

There will soon be a Christmas dinner of the chapter as well as a December meeting. The chapter is growing and getting more active-minded. This has been going on for some time. It is more lively than the local union meetings. I get a good listening there when I speak and a lot of support. There is a lively spirit in this group.

I talked with Chornoby after the meeting and said I could not see how there could be a reversal of the election, since the process was heavily over-seen by the Dems and there were no such gaps in the figures or abnormalities that would be there if millions of votes were stolen or changed. He could not answer this but remained on cordial terms with me. I told him that he could not believe that a majority of the popular vote could possibly have gone to Trump, but I said that in fact the situation is actually worse than he believes, and they did.

Next I will work on exposing the Dems to him and others. I did not want to tackle all questions at once. I was surprised that he did not even accept losing and thought I had to tackle that immediately.

[TimHall]

also coming:

report on vote-no movement among NALC members in the present union negotiations

report on the participation of some of the Labor Notes postal organizing group in a zoom meeting with Palestinian postal union workers.

up-to-date hotel strike movement article

[pete]

Tim, you did well to oppose Chornoby's dreaming of more Democratic votes appearing out of nowhere. It's important for workers and retirees to recognize the situation we're dealing with, where Trump and his right-wing gang won a majority of the popular vote. And aside from the fightback against the Republicans, workers will have to fight against the suppression of opposition political movements by Democratic politicians --- e.g., suppression of pro-Palestinian demonstrations. And fight against the suppression of workers' economic struggles by the pro-Democrat union officialdom. The Democrats did nothing under Biden to shield the working class from inflation, for example by passing a national COLA escalator, and they sabotaged the railway workers' struggle.

[Frank]

Talk about dreaming, Bill Weinberg usually has his head on his shoulders, but on Facebook and CounterVortex he's started a “Demand Electoral Nullification” campaign which is utterly nuts. There, he writes as follows:

“the Insurrection Clause of the 14th Amendment, under which Trump was impeached, should be invoked to bar him from office. There is still time to stop the fascist takeover of the United States through the Electoral College or in the certification process. Despite the Supreme Court decision upholding state laws against 'faithless electors' who refuse to vote for the candidate they pledged for, this is by no means equivalent to the 'fake electors' contrived by Trump’s team to try to throw the 2020 election. On the contrary, it is a constitutional mechanism, as outlined by Hamilton in the Federalist Papers—and not explicitly barred (at least) in Article II, Section 1.” [Electors in the Electoral College who cast a vote for someone other than their party’s presidential and vice presidential nominees are called “faithless electors,” and this has only happened in a tiny number of instances in U.S. history.]

Although Weinberg also says the protests against Trump since Election Day are a good start, and that a mass movement on the scale of the post-electoral protests now seen in the Republic of Georgia and Ecuador is urgently mandated, he's here grasping at straws.

[Frank]

I recently had a brief exchange with Bill Weinberg over his pushing of the electoral nullification demand, but what I said went nowhere. Now John Reimann has opposed him at greater length in the article at https://oaklandsocialist.com/2024/11/21 ... -machines/, and this has also gotten nowhere with Bill. Also, John and I have had a brief private exchange about the issue because we both hold Weinberg in high regard and appreciate most of his work. We shall see if he changes his mind over time.

[TimHall]

reimann is very interesting.

but what is trump's "“three inch” head turn."?

and when reimann speaks, toward the end, of "us" he includes union leaders. ??

it does question how much we can do in public.

[philwest44]

Trump's "three-inch" head turn refers to the first assassination attempt in Butler, PA, when the assassin was lining up a clean shot at Trump's head and could have killed him outright had Trump not turned his head to look at the big immigration sign next to the stage at the last second. This last-second twist of Trump's head saved his life and kept him on track for the election.