2025 BMC Conference
Will take place in Las Vegas, NV after the All Craft Conference. More information is forthcoming.
October 9, 2025 – 8:45AMLas Vegas, NVNationalNoYes2025-01-22 00:00:002025 BMC Conference10
Western Area New USPS Division 1-21-25
Tuesday, January 21, 2025Western AreaWestern western_area_new_usps_division_1-21-25.pdfWestern Area New USPS Division 1-21-25
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This is a ‘Code Red Alert’ to APWU Veterans
January 21, 2025In the last Home Front article, we warned veterans about “Project 2025” and how a second Trump term would destroy the VA, and VA healthcare benefits. Unfortunately for our APWU veteran family, his Project 2025 plan to destroy VA healthcare could begin the minute he enters the White House.
magazineHomefrontVeteransHomefront – Veterans Resources
The APWU launched our “Hands Off Our Veterans’ Healthcare and Disability Benefits” initiative in January 2024. Now, with the re-election of Donald Trump as President, 2025 could spell the end of the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) healthcare.
In the last Home Front article, we warned veterans about “Project 2025” and how a second Trump term would destroy the VA, and VA healthcare benefits. Unfortunately for our APWU veteran family, Trump won, and his Project 2025 plan to destroy VA healthcare could begin the minute he enters the White House.
So, what can we do to stop this attack that would totally privatize VA healthcare and leave millions of veterans without access to medical and mental healthcare services? Well, we could start by fighting back against this attack to cut or destroy the VA healthcare benefits for 22 million living veterans. Fighting back means thanking President Biden for signing the Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics (PACT) Act into law, and asking VA Secretary Denis McDonough to accelerate the implementation process that began over two years ago.
In a Letter to All Veterans, Dated Oct. 29, 2024, President Biden Stated the Following:
“As a nation we have many obligations, but only one truly sacred obligation: to train and equip those we send into harm’s way, and care for them and their families when they return home, and when they don’t. Our veterans and military families represent the best of America. We owe them. We owe you. May God bless the United States of America, and may God protect our troops. Signed Joe Biden.”
Fighting back means protecting PACT Act laws and protesting any attempt to restrict, reduce, or eliminate them. If President-elect Trump implements even a portion of the Project 2025 recommendations, the VA healthcare system could collapse entirely. By privatizing more government programs, the VA will foolishly and expensively outsource the healthcare and benefits to for-profit companies with little experience dealing with veterans, with a clear incentive to enhance their bottom line.
By cutting back on disability compensation, countless veterans will lose their jobs and homes, plunging many into poverty and causing them to experience more mental health problems. VA disability claims, which determine the severity and rating of a veteran’s disability, will be turned over to private, for-profit healthcare providers, thus overhauling and reducing compensation percentage rates and payment amounts for the veteran’s disability.
Fighting back means protesting Project 2025’s plan to reduce or eliminate the VA Mental and Medical benefits that veterans with service-connected conditions receive. Currently, once veterans prove they have a service-related condition, they can receive healthcare through the VA for that condition along with their non-service-connected conditions. Project 2025’s plan would potentially exclude a long list of supplementary VA healthcare services not directly related to the veteran’s time in active duty, that developed after leaving the military. A prime example of this would be living Vietnam War-era veterans, who until the PACT Act, had been denied military service-connected claims for cancer or diabetes for over 50 years.
The VA was established in 1930 with 54 Hospitals. In 1946, after another major war, it expanded to include healthcare benefits, establishing the current system, fully staffed with VA Federal Government workers. Today it has 1,600 healthcare facilities, including 144 medical centers and 1,232 outpatient clinics. The resources, need, and intent for VA healthcare facilities was to provide veterans with high quality healthcare and benefits, and all that was required to receive same-day basic healthcare was an honorable DD-214.
So, this is a Code Red Alert to our entire APWU veterans’ family. It’s time to wake up and fight for the VA healthcare benefits that all veterans deserve before Project 2025 takes them all away.
The Struggle Continues! ■
This is a ‘Code Red Alert’ to APWU Veterans0
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Deadline Approaching! 2025 IAM Scholarship Competition Application Deadline is February 3, 2025
The 2025 IAM Scholarship Competition will be accepting applications until Monday, Feb. 3 at 11:59 p.m. ET. Entries are accepted online. The competition is open to members of the IAM with two years continuous service and their children that are current high school seniors throughout the United States and Canada. Interested parties can find a link to the online applications, rules, and
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Service & Solidarity Spotlight: Nurses March to Demand Patient Protections Against AI
Service & Solidarity Spotlight: Nurses March to Demand Patient Protections Against AI
Working people across the United States regularly step up to help out our friends, neighbors and communities during these trying times. In our Service & Solidarity Spotlight series, we’ll showcase one of these stories every day. Here’s today’s story.
Thousands of nurses represented by National Nurses United (NNU) took part in rallies last week calling for the hospitals to prioritize safe staffing and patient protections against growing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.These nationwide demonstrations were aimed at uplifting the broad shared concern among nurses over the current implementation of AI by hospital employers and policy regulators. In a survey released last year, NNU found that 50% of responders have seen their employer implement algorithmic systems to assess things like how ill the patient is and predict the number of hours of nursing care they will need. Of those nurses, 69% said the computer-generated measurements did not match their informed assessments and lacked consideration of important, complex social factors that were at play.“[N]urses across the country are taking to the streets to let our communities know that in 2025, as in all years past, we are committed to providing the highest quality of care for every patient,” said Nancy Hagans, RN and a president of NNU, in a press release. “We will fight fearlessly against the profit-driven hospital industry, which seeks to undermine nursing care through unconscionable understaffing and reckless automation.”
Kenneth Quinnell
Tue, 01/21/2025 – 10:28
Join IAM CREST for the Upcoming Chemical Emergency Response Course
The deadline for the 2025 IAM CREST Chemical Emergency Response Course, which will be held March 23, 2025, at the William W. Winpisinger Education and Technology Center in Hollywood, Md., is Monday, Jan. 27. The class will cover an understanding of health and safety controls required by Appendix E of 29 CFR 1910.120 and the
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Heather Hildebrand Appointed as IAM Automotive Special Representative
International President Brian Bryant announced the appointment of Heather Hildebrand, formerly a District 60 Business Representative, to the position of Special Representative in the IAM Automotive Department. The appointment was effective Jan. 13, 2025. “Heather’s journey from the shop floor to leadership exemplifies the power of dedication and relentless advocacy,” said IAM International President Brian
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IAM, Labor Coalition Welcome USTR’S Comprehensive Indictment of China’s Unfair Shipbuilding Trade Practices
The IAM Union and its labor partners welcomed the comprehensive report from the United States Trade Representative (USTR) on its investigation on commercial shipbuilding and its findings that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) engaged in a broad range of tactics designed to dominate and control the maritime, shipbuilding and logistics sectors. The USTR’s report illustrates
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IAM Union Members at IKEA Perryville Ratify New Contract, End Strike
PERRYVILLE, MD, Jan. 18, 2025— Approximately 320 members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Local I460, District 4, employed at the IKEA Distribution Center in Perryville, Maryland, have ratified a new contract to end a strike that began on Friday, Nov. 15, 2024. Statement from IAM Union Eastern Territory General Vice President David
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Reflection and Action: How the IAM Honors the Legacy of Dr. King
Dear IAM Family, This weekend, we honor the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a civil rights icon and a champion of organized labor. Reflecting on his work, we remember his fight and call for racial equality, social justice, and economic parity. Following in his footsteps, the IAM Union has worked to
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