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Filipino Postal Workers Protest Cuts
US postal worker on a San Francisco route
Filipinos form the largest Asian group among postal clerks in San Francisco. The American Postal Workers Union (APWU) estimates that 40 percent of the 1,600 clerks in San Francisco are Filipino.
The demonstrators were condemning USPS management for drastically cutting work hours — even with the holiday season approaching. The American Postal Workers Union said that in the last three years, 100,000 jobs have been eliminated by the USPS.
The union said that 200 workers have been affected this month in San Francisco alone. It said some of these workers’ hours were cut from 40 hours a week to four hours a week, causing them to lose at least $4,000 a month.
Alfredo Datangel, director of the APWU-San Francisco Chapter, told Espinosa that the cuts to work hours are “violating employees’ rights.” James Wigdel, spokesperson for the USPS, blamed the cuts on a drastic drop in mail volume.
“The last few years, we’ve had a depletion in our mail volume from 213 billion pieces of mail in 2006 to 170 billion pieces last year,” said Wigdel.
Wigdel explained that management chose to hire part-time employees during the holiday season — when mail volume increases — because their schedules are more flexible.
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Lester Yee
President Clinton, and subsequently Bush, signed an executive order to improve the status of Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) in Federal Sector. There was a commission formed by USPS Hqtrs to represent the USPS but they subsequently disbanned the group. The Pacific Area AAPI had a representation of over 30% of the workforce, yet their executive ranks (PCES) was less than 10%, in fact there were only 2 at the time this commission was formed. The Pacific Area chose not to do anything, as well as Hqtrs, to increase their participation in senior level positions. You actually had filipinos claiming they were Hispanics because that's were the focus was and is, so very little development of AAPI was going on.
However, the decline in mail volume is across the board nationally and it stands to reason that there would be a workforce reduction or realignment. Race had nothing to do with downsizing but if senior management had better representation of AAPI in senior level positions, they could have more effectively began working with the employee groups, communicating better and perhaps develop a better understanding of the cultural impacts that affect the downsizing.