[Go Gordon]

Without digging up a paystub (we're moving around and it's all in boxes), I pay over $500 per check? For everything. Somewhere in that neighborhood. and don't call me a union worker.

$500 a check is alot. I saw where the retirement fund is over-financed by $60 billion. Anyway, are you saying you aren't in a union? I thought postal workers were unionized?

[Big Giant Head]

I refuse to join. I’m everything a union worker isn’t supposed to be. I go out of my way to serve my peeps to the best of my ability. I break the stupid rules if I have to to serve a mailbox. I dismount for folks that I’m not “authorized” to dismount my vehicle for. My customers are MY responsibility, and I don’t go all “union” on them. They are the ones paying for stamps, I service them. Not the union.

[rlmorel]

To be fair to Big Giant Head, it is a mixed bag. apparently, one doesn't HAVE to be a member of APWU...but I don't know if there is only this mixed bag in the right to work states or not.

And if Big Giant Head ISN'T a union employee, THIS is most likely what he has to put up with each day (from comments on site dedicated to postal worker issues):

"...It is about time! Damm time of NON UNION MEMBERS aka SCABS RIDING OFF UNION MEMBERS BACKS AND GETTING THE SAME FRINGE BENEFITS OF UNION PAYING MEMBERS. NO OTHER UNION WOULD EVEN BLINK TO A NON PAYING MEMBER. ONLY THE A.P.W.U. WHO FEELS OBLIGATED TO FILE GRIEVENCES AND DEFEND NON UNION WORKERS IN ANTICIPATION THAT MAYBE THEY WILL JOIN. AROUND, WHERE I COME FROM IF YOUR NOT IN THE CLUB, YOU CAN NOT PLAY! THATS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE WITH THE A.PW.U. AND NON UNION MEMBERS aka SCABS..."

There is some talk there about having to become an APWU associate member to get the same benefits, but it is my suspicion that is like being a little bit pregnant.