Anthony Camerano/AP Photo
Postal workers picket the General Post Office in New York City, in defiance of federal anti-strike laws, March 18, 1970.
On March 18, 1970—50 years ago today—the largest strike ever conducted against the United States government began. The day before, at a meeting of the Manhattan-Bronx branch of the National Association of Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO, its members voted by a margin of 1,559 to 1,055 to walk off the job, over the objections of their leaders, who told them that a strike against the Postal Service was a federal crime punishable by immediate discharge and prosecution. (It still is.) Undaunted, the members responded in favor of the motion from rank-and-file activist Vincent Sombrotto to strike. Their pay was so low, and living expenses in New York so high, that many members with families qualified for, and were receiving, welfare payments. For at least a year leading up to that meeting, postal workers had been talking strike, especially because New York’s unionized public employees had won pay increases that raised their wages well above the postal workers’.
When Branch 36 struck, other unionized postal workers in New York City joined the strike and picket lines. Moe Biller, president of the powerful Manhattan-Bronx Postal Workers Union, an independent industrial postal workers union in New York, extended support to the strikers. In the next few days, well over 200,000 postal workers across the country followed suit, and the largest strike against the federal government in its history was under way. By March 21, the strike had spread to more than 200 cities and towns, including Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. Mail processing and delivery were at a standstill.
President Richard Nixon threatened harsh consequences for the strikers if they did not end their strike. He declared a national emergency and sent 25,000 troops into New York City, where they were assigned to “move the mail” so that the stock market, commerce, banking, and Social Security payments would not be paralyzed. However, the soldiers were unsuccessful since postal work involved skills that required specialized training and knowledge.
The strike’s immediate provocation was legislation the Nixon administration was seeking that would turn the Postal Service into a “businesslike” self-sustaining enterprise, rather than continuing to depend upon federal subsidies. Postal reform, which had bipartisan support, promised greater efficiency and rationality, turning the Postal Service—if it was done right—into an independent TVA-like government-owned enterprise. However, postal-pay legislation was being held hostage until a reform package had been agreed upon.
Because postal unions had no bargaining rights regarding wages and benefits, they were limited mostly to lobbying Congress for pay and benefit increases. When the 1970 strike erupted, the leaders of the several existing national postal unions, all headquartered in Washington, D.C., where they had long been skillful in lobbying Congress, were at a loss over how to respond, and were unsuccessful in efforts to persuade their members to return to work.
During the months that pre-strike efforts by the postal unions to achieve congressional pay increases were under way, there were hardly any serious concerns about the possibility of a strike, principally because postal employees risked their jobs if they struck. Postal employees had a reputation, deserved or not, of non-militancy and complacency. So when the reports of the strike vote and picketing in New York City reached Washington, the postal union leaders there, including the unions’ lawyers, were in shock.
As counsel to the Mail Handlers Union, then newly affiliated with the Laborers’ International Union, I was too. But with the draconian response from the Nixon administration, it became clear that if disaster was to be averted, cooler heads in the government needed to become involved. I contacted Bill Usery, a friend who had been an organizer for the International Association of Machinists and was then an assistant secretary of labor. I urged Bill to see whether Secretary of Labor George Shultz would agree to mediate between the Postal Service and the unions.
The idea of the Postal Service as an agency designed to advance the public good has been under assault from conservative political forces for many years.
Shultz was reluctant to do it at first because he would be interfering in the affairs of another Cabinet agency, but Usery persuaded Shultz to at least meet with the union leaders and their counsel. Shultz then quickly obtained agreement within the administration to have the postmaster general, Winton Blount, or his representative meet with the unions. I attended that gathering held at Laborers’ headquarters. As the late-evening meeting proceeded, I was called by a security guard at the building entrance and advised that a man named Morris Biller was seeking to gain entrance to the meeting. I left the meeting, and as I stepped into the hall, Moe Biller got off the elevator, with his lawyer, John O’Donnell (whom I knew), and shouted at me, “My name is Morris Biller, I’m president of the Manhattan-Bronx Postal Union, and I’m entitled to be in that meeting!” I told Biller that I would ask Bill Usery to come out and talk with him, which Usery did in a private room, where he succeeded in calming Biller, without giving him entrée to the meeting. The problem was that the unions represented in the meeting had received national recognition from the Postal Service, but Biller’s large but unaffiliated union had not.
At a later point in the negotiations, the unions were at loggerheads with the government and among themselves over a number of issues. It occurred to me that they needed the support of the entire labor movement in their struggle, and its help in resolving their internecine differences. I proposed that the unions seek the support and intervention of the AFL-CIO, and its president, George Meany, who agreed and became their spokesperson in dealing with the Postal Service and the White House, as well as mediating the inter-union differences.
After many days of negotiations, an immediate retroactive wage increase and other improvements were agreed upon once the strikers had returned to work. These were signed into law, and negotiations over postal reform commenced.
After negotiations among the national postal unions, the White House, and both houses of Congress, the Postal Reorganization Act (PRA) was enacted on August 12, 1970. Its provisions declared the newly created United States Postal Service to be “an independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government.” It further stipulated “that no small post office shall be closed solely for operating at a deficit,” and that “the Postal Service shall achieve and maintain compensation for its officers and employees comparable to the rates and types of compensation paid in the private sector of the economy.” The USPS was required to “place particular emphasis upon opportunities for career advancement … and the achievement of worthwhile and satisfying careers” for its employees.
The new law also ordered recognition and bargaining rights for the unions representing its employees, subjected the Postal Service and the unions to the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board on issues involving employee organizing rights and unfair labor practices, and provided that in the event the parties were unable to reach agreement over contracts through bargaining and mediation, they were entitled to obtain final and binding neutral-third-party interest arbitration of their disputes.
For a number of years following the enactment of the PRA, the postal unions negotiated jointly and even succeeded in negotiating no-layoff provisions for regular employees. In 1980, Moe Biller became the president of the newly consolidated American Postal Workers Union, serving until 2001. Vincent Sombrotto led the National Association of Letter Carriers between 1978 and 2002.
Nixon’s course of action in settling with the strikers did not set a precedent, unfortunately, for his successors. In 1981, President Ronald Reagan fired all 11,345 striking air traffic controllers. Reagan’s action became a major turning point in American labor relations, encouraging Republicans to go after unions and corporations to engage in anti-union and de-unionization efforts over the next almost four decades.
AP Photo
On President Nixon’s orders, soldiers attempt to sort mail at the General Post Office in New York City during the postal workers strike, March 24, 1970.
FROM ITS BEGINNINGS—which predate the American Revolution—Americans have viewed the Postal Service as a vital public service. Like the military, it has existed to advance national policies and purposes and was not expected to return a profit like a business enterprise. In fact, almost immediately after the ratification of the Constitution, it subsidized the delivery of newspapers to the hinterlands to encourage public knowledge of political affairs. As early as 1863, during the Civil War, the principle of a single uniform rate for mail was adopted so that a letter traveling coast to coast, and to and from rural areas, cost postal customers the same amount as one being delivered within a single city or hamlet. Indeed, today in the U.S. a first-class stamp costs 55 cents, whereas in Italy the cost (in U.S. dollars) is $3.40; in Denmark, $3.22; in Norway, $1.20; in the U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands, $0.89; and in Canada, $0.75.
By 2018, the Postal Service was delivering 146 billion pieces of mail to 159 million delivery points, or an average of over 900 pieces to each point each year. Forty-three million of these delivery points (27 percent) were on rural carrier routes. Eighty-three percent of letter mail and packages go to and from households. However, first-class mail volume declined from 104 billion pieces in 2001 to 57 billion pieces in 2018, a reduction of 44 percent, due chiefly to electronic bill paying and banking, as well as email and other electronic communication methods. This has resulted in a huge decline in postal revenue. On the other hand, USPS package delivery has increased dramatically because of the growth of e-commerce.
Despite this, the idea of the Postal Service as an agency designed to advance the public good has been under assault from conservative political forces for many years, and the Trump administration has attacked the Postal Service as if it simply was a struggling business. Discussions of postal privatization have frequently been conducted within and outside of government, especially by right-wing think tanks.
On January 17 of this year, in response to congressional requests, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a comprehensive report on current postal employee compensation. Among its findings were that in separate collective bargaining with the four major postal unions, the USPS had greatly reduced its wage costs over the last ten years by winning the right to a second-tier wage scale for newly hired career employees, as well as the right to employ large numbers of noncareer employees (casuals). Employees hired after a certain date would receive starting pay substantially below that of previously hired career employees.
According to the GAO, “a city carrier hired in January 2016 would make about $37,640 a year compared to $48,406 a year if hired before the new starting pay agreement.” The USPS claims to have saved approximately $2.3 billion between fiscal years 2016 and 2018 by this change. But adjusted for inflation, the new second-tier annual wage is about the same as the $6,176 per year that was the starting pay for career employees in 1970, the year of the strike.
Moreover, about ten years ago, the Postal Service negotiated agreements with the unions authorizing it to hire between 15 percent and 20 percent of its workforce as noncareer, or casual, employees. The prior limit had been 10 percent for most employee categories. These casual employees have lower hourly pay rates than regulars, and have few fringe benefits. In 2018, the Postal Service had 497,157 career employees and 137,290 noncareer employees.
What’s more, the USPS has worked its casual and second-tier employees more than its more senior (and more adequately paid) workers. In its study, regarding hours of postal compensation, GAO also found, “on average,” that a noncareer [casual postal] employee worked 30 more straight hours, 73 more overtime hours, and 23 more night and Sunday hours per year than a career employee, and a lower-paid career employee worked a higher number of straight-time hours and, depending on the craft, also may work more overtime, night work, and Sunday hours than a higher-paid career employee.
Based upon anticipated retirements of older Tier I employees within the next ten years, postal wages might revert significantly to inflation-adjusted pre-1970 strike levels, based upon current wage and employment projections.
And the Postal Service has been increasingly relying not just on more hours for its lower-paid workers, but on more of those workers than it’s supposed to have. On January 22, 2020, the USPS settled a national grievance with the Letter Carriers union over having exceeded the contractually agreed-upon caps on the hiring of noncareer letter carrier assistants. The settlement requires the Postal Service to convert 5,000 noncareer carriers to career status.
The fact that postal employees visit every residence in the country six days each week makes postal workers the human face of the federal government.
None of this has been enough, apparently, for President Trump, who has railed publicly and privately about his claim that the USPS was subsidizing Amazon in connection with a contract for so-called “last mile” delivery of Amazon parcels by USPS. On April 3, 2018, he tweeted that “Amazon [is] costing [USPS] massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy.”
On April 12, 2018, Trump issued an executive order creating a Task Force on the United States Postal System, charging it with investigating postal operations and recommending improvements. The task force’s report was delivered to President Trump by its chair, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, on December 4, 2018. Among its labor-related recommendations, it proposed that “USPS compensation [should be removed from] collective bargaining” on the ground that USPS employees should not be afforded protections and rights not enjoyed by other federal employees.” Of course, at the same time, the Trump administration has been engaged in removing the few labor rights enjoyed by those other federal employees. In further support of its recommendation, the task force asserted that applying “private sector collective bargaining law [to USPS] creates unsustainable labor costs.” Similarly, while the task force acknowledged that “[p]ostal workers are more likely to be injured on the job due to the physical and outdoor nature of their work” than other federal employees, it supported reductions in their workers’ compensation entitlements. At the same time these recommendations were released, there was a case pending in which the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claimed that the Postal Service wrongfully fired or pressured about 44,000 of its employees to quit during a five-year period because they had work-related injuries. The Postal Service is still contesting these claims.
A number of progressive leaders, along with the postal workers unions, have advanced very different ideas about broadening the scope of USPS services, and revenues. In 2018, Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed several reforms that he believed would make USPS thrive, and better serve the public for years to come. Among these were allowing the Postal Service to provide basic banking and financial services in post offices—a service that post offices had offered until 1966. Sanders asserted that this would help the 57 million Americans who have no bank accounts and must rely on “rip-off” storefront check-cashing and payday lenders. However, proposals for postal banking were expressly rejected by the president’s task force report. Sanders also urged other changes, including permitting post offices to provide copying and notarial services, transport wine and beer, and restore overnight delivery. Suggestions from others, including the GAO, have included providing check-in services for the elderly living alone and others needing it, and collecting data on mobile wireless coverage and air quality.
THE 1970 POSTAL strike provided a powerful lesson for the country and its government: There is a limit on how much abuse postal employees will tolerate before they are forced to resort to self-help to correct the wrongs inflicted upon them at work. The right to withhold one’s labor in protest is as fundamental a human right as the right to breathe clean air, drink clean water, or to think and be heard. Trying to legislate fundamental human rights out of existence has always been a fool’s errand (even if sometimes successful).
Nonetheless, today the Postal Service and the Trump administration are seeking to place on the shoulders of postal workers the cost of social changes caused by changing technology by reducing their compensation and turning them into disposable parts. As for the administration’s desire to “privatize” the Postal Service, it makes no more sense than contracting out the military. The idea that any commercial firm would decide to provide the services provided to every corner of the country by the Postal Service is ludicrous.
It’s not as if the public is clamoring to scale back the Postal Service. According to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, the Postal Service is the American public’s favorite federal agency, with an 88 percent approval rating. The fact that postal employees visit every residence in the country six days each week makes postal workers the human face of the federal government. (A personal memory: When I was nine years old, my Brooklyn neighborhood’s letter carrier, Joe Kaplan, drove me in his jalopy to Pitkin Avenue to see President Roosevelt, in a driving rain in an open car, pass by during his 51-mile re-election campaign caravan through New York City.)
To tear the Postal Service apart and victimize its employees even further would seem the height of political folly. But political folly, or much worse, has never been beyond the imagination of the current occupant of the White House.
