New Hawkeye Labor Council director to boost involvement

Rick Moyle, the new executive director of the Hawkeye Labor Council, is sending e-mails and writing letters against the proposal to close the Cedar Rapids postal processing center.

He thinks you should too.

The U.S. Postal Service is bleeding red ink and looking to cut potentially consolidate hundreds of processing locations and thousands of post office branches and offices in a politically charged atmosphere.

Moyle believes labor's role is to see that workers are protected. Even if all or most of the postal workers are relocated, he sees a heavy price in disruption of personal lives and careers.

"When you start talking about decent, living-wage jobs leaving any of our communities, it's got to be on the front burner," Moyle says.

Moyle came to his new position at the labor council last month with a personal perspective on job dislocation. He worked for 16 years at heavy equipment manufacturer Terex Cedarapids before Terex Corp. shut down production here and consolidated it at other locations in 2010. Moyle was one of about 170 employees affected, and he saw firsthand the personal turmoil it caused as former co-workers struggled to regain a livelihood.

Moyle went from being a union steward at the plant to holding leadership roles on the union's bargaining committee, and serving as executive director of  Machinists Local 831, which represented plant workers.  He was hired by the executive board of the 7,000-member Hawkeye Labor Council as its United Way liaison later in 2010, and last month as executive director.

The labor council is the local AFL-CIO umbrella organization for 40 labor unions with about 7,000 members in Linn County and seven surrounding counties. The council works to secure legislation to promote and protect collective bargaining rights. It also works to encourage union membership, union-made goods, political involvement by union members, and on community service.

Moyle says a big part of his preparation for the job was growing up in a union household. His father was a union leader before him at Terex Cedarapids, which was Iowa Manufacturing in its earlier years.

"You learn the importance of organized labor, and what we do not only for union workers, but for people all over the world," Moyle said. "Everybody's way of life is better because somebody collectively bargained for those rights."

Moyle is passionate about his union beliefs, but watches his words carefully.

"The biggest gun we have is the fact that we know we're right and the passion," Moyle said. "That motivates people."

Hawkeye Labor Council President Shelley Parbs had made the hiring of a new executive director to fill a long vacancy one of her goals during her second term as president.

Moyle, 38, said he's excited about the opportunity. He expects the addition of a full-time director to enable the labor council to reach out on a daily basis to other organizations to build strong relationships that will make the communities in the council region more prosperous.

Political action will be a big part of the job. Moyle said the recent efforts in Ohio and Wisconsin to strip away collective bargaining rights from some public sector workers show that the collective bargaining rights of Americans are at risk. At the same time, Moyle said the Ohio and Wisconsin examples show that when Americans who've never been involved in a union come to understand what's at stake, they will often support collective bargaining.

The position had not been filled since the 2008 dismissal of Alan Bernard. The council cooperated with investigators, and he was convicted of fraud last year  for taking council funds.