In August of 2015 teachers were getting ready to head back to their classrooms and were thinking about school supply lists and what they had to purchase for their students out of their own pockets.
In case you didn’t know, out of pocket spending by teachers is a major source of school funding.
You maybe thought it was the legislature?
Think again.
My friend Dennis O’Neal is a postal union activist – has been for years – and was organizing against the proposal to put United States’ post offices in Staples stores and staff them with non-union employees.
I posted what would become one of the most popular posts I have ever run. Over 15,000 hits just that August. And more as school started in 2016. It was reposted again and again and again on Facebook and Twitter.
Union teachers supported their postal worker union brothers and sisters.
A couple of months ago Dennis called and asked it I could provide a drawing for the campaign’s Facebook page.
No problem.
That must have been the straw the broke the camel’s back. Along with non-stop organizing by Dennis and his American Postal Worker Union cohorts. And the support of union teachers across the country.
The Boston Globe is reporting:
The US Postal Service is pulling the plug on a partnership with Staples Inc. that sparked years of union protests because it allowed about 500 of the company’s stores to ship packages like a post office.
The American Postal Workers Union had sharply criticized the deal, arguing that the Postal Service’s goal was to privatize a government function by shifting work to employees of retailers such as Framingham-based Staples. Workers protested and demonstrated outside stores, and the union successfully argued its case in front of the National Labor Relations Board.
The union said it received a letter from the Postal Service just before Christmas declaring that the Staples shipping program would end by March. Its president, Mark Dimondstein, planned to share the news with union members Thursday afternoon.
“It’s been a three-year battle and we feel good,” Dimondstein said. “We think we stood up against a wrong and won.”
Fred Klonsky 
A great victory (went way out of my way to pick up office supplies for my husband yesterday, although Staples is less than a mile from our house.)
Another New Year ReVolution, resulting in good result!
Wow, talk about the Department of Redundancy Department.
I need to go back to teaching middle school English again!
Hooray!!