{"id":5376,"date":"2015-05-07T09:47:20","date_gmt":"2015-05-07T14:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5376"},"modified":"2015-05-06T21:41:31","modified_gmt":"2015-05-07T02:41:31","slug":"stamping-out-hunger-with-unionized-government-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=5376","title":{"rendered":"Stamping Out Hunger — With Unionized Government Employees?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got a card in my mailbox a few days ago telling me about an upcoming food drive being held by the postal carrier’s union. It’s called “Stamp Out Hunger<\/a>” (mail delivery people, stamps . . . get it?), and its taking place this coming Saturday, May 9 (in 2015, for anyone tripping across this post some years from now). The idea is that you, the American citizen, can buy some non-perishable foods and put them in a bag, as to be left by your residential mailbox this Saturday. During the day, the merry mail-person will come by on her or his usual rounds, but in addition to delivering your mail, they will pick up that food bag and take it somewhere such that it eventually winds up available to people in need. The National Association of Letter Carriers web site suggests that all food contributed will be donated to a local food bank or pantry program, where it will be distributed.<\/p>\n

OK, sounds like a nice idea. It’s probably not the most efficient way to provide food for the needy, but it allows local participation and engenders the “community spirit”. So I’m going to give it a go. I went to the supermarket today and picked up some basics like cereal, rice, pasta, sauce, beans and juice, and filled three bags. On Saturday AM I will set them out on the porch in front of my apartment building, right under the mailboxes. Just to make my intentions crystal clear to the local carrier-person, I will staple the “Stamp Out Hunger” announcement card to one of the bags. And from there, I will just wait and see.<\/p>\n

Obviously, I’m just a tad skeptical about this. Postal carriers are government employees, and let’s face it, government employees are not looked at as kindly as they once were by the public. Especially unionized government employees, which the postal carriers are (again, their union is sponsoring this event). Most of the postal carriers we’ve had here seem OK, but there are a few who just don’t do their job very well; they mis-sort letters such that I get my neighbors’ mail and vice versa, or everyone gets a random mix of mail belonging variously to other tenants. And if you leave a stamped letter out at the box hoping that the carrier will pick it up, there’s roughly a 50-50 chance that it will be ignored. <\/p>\n

Conservative politicians and pundits have villainized government unions<\/a> in recent years, making the case that their members get paid too much money and get plush benefits relative to the work they actually do. In tough economic times, this does attract a certain level of concordance from people out of work or holding jobs that don’t pay too well or have lousy or non-existent benefits. So, the letter carriers’ union is doing something pretty smart here; Stamp Out Hunger will no doubt benefit many needy people, and it may also help improve the public image of postal workers and their union. Hosting this program on a Saturday is also pretty savvy given all the moves in Congress to eliminate Saturday postal delivery so as to help control Postal Service losses. The obvious uptake of that would be to reduce the overall need for postal carriers.<\/p>\n

But will SOH come off as planned? The union web site itself is not offering any guarantees — in the Question and Answer page<\/a>, it warns that not every postal carrier is going to participate. Basically, it’s a voluntary thing; so if the carrier just doesn’t feel like lugging bags of food down your steps and out to his or her truck, your food bag is going to stay just where you put it. <\/p>\n

In a nutshell, this isn’t Amazon — no promises that what they say will happen will actually happen. This is a government program, a unionized one at that. But as I said, I’m going to give it a try this Saturday. It’s an interesting experiment, if nothing else; and since the food is non-perishable, I can get it to a pantry or shelter somewhere in the area at a later date; the food will eventually be used as intended. It’s just that I may have to do it myself, and not expect help from a government union. <\/p>\n

But if my bag in fact is picked up, I will take my hat off to the NALC and its members. They seem to be aware that public workers have an image problem, the public just isn’t very sympathetic anymore (and this extends to all government employees, even non-union ones like myself). Stamp Out Hunger is a nice idea; but we shall see in two days if the postal workers of America are fully up to it, if a communitarian venture like this can be pulled off in hard-bitten New Jersey. Stay tuned, as I will file an update to this blog over the weekend!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got a card in my mailbox a few days ago telling me about an upcoming food drive being held by the postal carrier’s union. It’s called “Stamp Out Hunger” (mail delivery people, stamps . . . get it?), and its taking place this coming Saturday, May 9 (in 2015, for anyone tripping across this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5376"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5377,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5376\/revisions\/5377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}