Unions are the latest victims of California crime
Conn Carroll
“This never used to happen,” United States Postal Service letter carrier Edward Fletcher told SFGate at a National Association of Letter Carriers rally in San Francisco. “I did carry mail for over 15 years, and it was unheard of that a letter carrier would get robbed.”
And it’s not just San Francisco’s mailmen that are being assaulted. Letter carriers in Oakland, Antioch, San Ramon, Pittsburg, Vallejo, and Walnut Creek all report similar incidents.
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“There’s eight stations in the city of Oakland and I don’t know of one of them that has not been robbed,” Fletcher said. Sometimes armed thugs will approach a letter carrier and simply demand the packages in their truck. Other times they will be attacked with knives or pepper spray while the criminals grab their “master keys” which can be used to open clusters of blue mailboxes. Thieves will then rifle through those mailboxes looking for unopened checks they can then fraudulently alter.
“These brazen crimes, once rare but now growing more frequent and more violent here, elsewhere in California and beyond, are hurting letter carriers, leading to stolen mail, and damaging our community,” an NALC press release claimed.
“It is very traumatic for our carriers,” Fletcher said. “They deserve more protection.”
The USPS is doing more to harden letter carriers as targets. They are replacing master keys with electronic locks so that mailboxes are harder to break into. But Fletcher realizes there is only so much the Postal Service can do. At some point the government has to hold criminals accountable. But will they?
California is a one-party state controlled by a Democratic Party beholden to social justice activists who believe criminals need social workers, not jail time. Until the NALC is ready to endorse Republicans, or primary soft-on-crime Democrats, their members will not be safe.
And the NALC is not alone. On Black Friday, the members of United Food & Commercial Workers Local 3000 staged a walkout of Seattle area Macy’s stores over Macy’s failures to replace front-line workers who, like the postal carriers, have suffered from more frequent violent and aggressive attacks from thieves.
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But again, there is only so much Macy’s can do to harden their stores. At some point the government, not private business, is responsible for providing law and order.
If unions in Democratic jurisdictions want safe working conditions for their members, they are either going to have to start voting for Republicans or confronting the social justice warriors in their own party.