My Day Job vs. My Passion

For over sixteen years now I've been throwing parcels, sorting flats, distributing accountables, boxing mail, working the window, dispatching the mail, clearing carriers, and other assorted tasks in my job as a clerk for the US Postal Service. It's a good job that pays me a living wage and affords me good benefits. For the most part, I love my co-workers, and my facility is less than a mile from my home.

I've met wonderful people through my job, customers who have shared their lives with me outside the Post Office. I've gone to see one customer's brand new baby goats. I went to another one's home to see her newest baby horses. I've helped another plan a wedding and I've had lunch with others. One customer brought her brand new rescue dog in to visit me at work. I could go on and on. Sure, there are customers and coworkers who sometimes get on my last nerve, but the good ones outnumber the more unpleasant ones.

I suppose I can consider myself lucky to have such a job, particularly in the recent years of tough economic times in our country. But no matter how much I appreciate my job, it's not my passion. I'm passionate about a number of causes, such as animal rescue, marriage equality, and organized labor.

It's only been in this last year that I have begun to figure out a way to mingle my job and my passion, and that's been through involvement in the American Postal Workers' Union, AFL-CIO. I was certified as a steward early in 2012, and then installed as a district representative in April. It's been challenging, exciting, frustrating, rewarding, overwhelming, fun and intense. I learn more every week, and my enthusiasm for my union grows all the time.

I'm getting involved in the Washington State Labor Relations Council Workers' Voice program, from now through the oh so critical election on November 7, 2012.

I urge you to get involved with the election as well. Wear a t-shirt or a button (not at work though, there's that pesky little thing called the Hatch Act), attend a rally, put a sign in your yard, volunteer at a phone bank, be part of informational pickets, talk to your family, friends and neighbors. Educate yourself and educate others about the issues that matter to all of us.

The USPS is at a critical juncture. Regardless of the other issues that are spiraling around us, we as postal workers must focus on saving our jobs. Whatever your feelings on abortion or guns or marriage equality, those are all things that aren't going away, regardless of who is elected. But if Romney is elected, the Postal Service as we know it will disappear, and it won't take long. The unions will be busted, service will be cut further and further, privatization will become a reality, and our jobs will all be on the line.

While we can't all make a living doing what we are passionate about, we can certainly engage in activities about which we feel passionate. Our jobs enable us to do that. Our jobs are the source of our income. Without the job, it's quite difficult to become involved in the causes that incite us to action. Without the job, there is no union.

Whatever your passion, whether it be organized labor, the environment, politics, animals, poverty, homelessness, marriage equality, education, or something else, please educate yourself on where the candidates stand on the issues that matter most to you, both the causes you feel passionately about, and your job.

Don't underestimate the importance of the results of this election. Get educated, and vote!

In solidarity,

Maria

PS - Is there a topic you'd like to see discussed here? Please share it with me and we can get the dialogue going.