Here's something we noticed while building CREA. Stewards come to us with incredibly detailed questions about the USPS contract — they know Article 8, they know Article 16, they can walk you through M-41 carrier duties without blinking. But when the question shifts to what happens inside the union — how elections work, what quorum means at a branch meeting, whether an officer can do X or Y — the confidence drops.

That gap bugged us. So we built something to close it.

What PTTP Does

PTTP — Power To The People — is a research tool focused on union governance. It works the same way CREA does for grievance research: you describe your situation in plain language, and it searches through governance documents to find the relevant provisions.

The difference is what it searches. Instead of arbitration cases and USPS manuals, PTTP digs through the NALC Constitution, Robert's Rules of Order, and related governance authorities.

The Kinds of Questions That Led Us Here

We kept hearing variations of the same questions from members across the country:

• Elections: "Can someone who just transferred into our branch run for president?" "How do nominations actually work?"
• Meetings: "Our president won't let people speak at meetings — can they do that?" "What even counts as a quorum for our branch size?"
• Money: "Can I see the branch's financial records?" "How is my dues amount calculated?"
• Steward issues: "Management is retaliating against me for filing grievances — what protections do I have within the union structure?"
• Internal disputes: "Someone filed charges against me for a Facebook post — is that actually allowed?"
• Officer questions: "Our secretary resigned mid-term. What's supposed to happen next?"

These are real questions from real members. The answers exist in governance documents, but finding them manually means reading through dense constitutional provisions and parliamentary procedure rules. Most people don't have time for that.

Why This Matters to Us

We're researchers at heart. And when we started looking into how accessible union governance information actually is for the average member, we were surprised at the gap. The NALC Constitution is a detailed document. Robert's Rules is a 700-page book. Most members have never read either one cover to cover, and there's no shame in that — they're reference documents, not beach reads.

But when something goes wrong at a branch meeting, or when an election feels off, members need answers fast. They shouldn't have to wait for a regional officer to call them back or spend an evening searching through a PDF. That's the problem PTTP is designed to solve.

How to Use It

PTTP is available to all active CREA subscribers through the navigation menu. It shares the same query balance as your main CREA account — no extra cost. Like everything in CREA, responses cite specific sources so you can verify the answers yourself.

The Name

We called it Power To The People because that's the point. Every member should have access to the information they need to participate fully in their union — not just the officers who've been doing this for decades, not just the people with law degrees. Everyone.