HUFFINGTON
07.22.12
JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES
GOINGPOSTAL
paign money from postal unions,
receiving $41,000 during the
2010 election cycle, according to
the Center for Responsive Politics.
But Issa cast postal employees
and their unions as a primary obstacle to financial stability in an
op-ed he wrote for the Washington
Times in 2010. “[T]housands have
less than a full day’s work, and
some are even paid to sit in empty
rooms,” he wrote of workers.
That rhetoric has angered and
baffled employees like Robert
Williams, 62, of Washington, D.C.
Williams is a 39-year postal veteran who serves as president of
his union local, the National Association of Letter Carriers 142.
The local has about 1,800 mem-
bers and covers around 90 percent of D.C.-area carriers, Williams says. Like Williams himself,
the majority of the local’s members are African-American.
On a recent morning, Williams
gave a reporter a tour of the
neighborhood he grew up in, Anacostia, a mostly African-American area of Washington with a
high poverty rate. Perhaps aware
of a lack of sympathy among the
general public for postal employees, Williams instead spoke about
how cuts to the postal service
would impact poorer residents of
neglected neighborhoods in cities
like Washington.
But when it comes to the antilabor sentiment, Williams can’t
hide his frustration. He draws a
line between the predicament facing postal unions and the rollback
Dozens
of old
mailboxes fill
the parking
lot outside
the U.S.
Post Office
sorting
center in San
Francisco,
Calif.