Update: Dec. 13, 4:05 p.m.: Douglas Lape has been added as a guest to the panel.
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A Center for Public Integrity investigation revealed that U.S. Postal Service workers across the country have been cheated out of their pay. Senior reporter Alexia Fernández Campbell examined private arbitration records and found that from 2010 to 2019, at least 250 managers in 60 post offices were caught changing mail carriers’ time cards, resulting in unpaid wages. Since publishing the investigation, we’ve heard from dozens of postal workers who reached out with their stories of wage theft and to ask questions.
Join us for a live panel with a legal expert, a workers’ rights advocate and a retired postal worker. They will discuss wage and hour violations and what workers can do if they suspect they have been cheated at work. We will also answer questions from postal workers.
Join us on Facebook Live at 8 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, Dec. 15.
The Panel
Kim Bobo
Executive Director
Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy
Bobo founded and served as the executive director of Interfaith Worker Justice, the nation’s largest network of people of faith engaging in local and national actions to improve wages, benefits and conditions for workers, especially those in the low-wage economy. As executive director from 1996 to 2015, she helped build interfaith groups and worker centers around the nation. Bobo is now executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, a non-partisan advocacy coalition based in Richmond, Virginia.
Stephen Burr
Retired USPS Clerk
Burr worked for the USPS for 35 years and retired in February 2021. He started his career as a letter carrier in the Santa Ana division in California. Burr says he pursued a career with the Postal Service for stability. While working at the USPS in Kansas City, Missouri, Burr says he was cheated out of wages he earned and is still fighting to get them back.
Paul M. Falabella
Attorney
Butler Curwood
Falabella is an employment lawyer based in Richmond, Virginia. His legal focuses include employment discrimination, wage and hour law, employment and business torts, and employment contracts. Falabella has been named to Super Lawyers’ Virginia Rising Stars list in the field of employment and labor.
Douglas Lape
Assistant to the President for City Delivery
National Association of Letter Carriers
Lape has been a postal employee since 1996. He started his career as a clerk and became a letter carrier in 1998. He began his National Association of Letter Carriers career as a shop steward in 1999 and has handled grievances at all steps of the grievance procedure. Lape served as the vice president of Branch 43 in Cincinnati, OH from 2011 until being appointed to his current position in 2017.
Moderated by
Alexia Fernández Campbell
Senior Reporter
The Center for Public Integrity
Read Alexia’s latest reporting on wage theft and the USPS