The 1970 Postal Workers’ Strike

For two decades, the wages of the nation’s 750,000 postal workers had fallen further and further behind those of other workers, as Congress sometimes failed to authorize raises, or presidents vetoed them. Twenty percent were working second jobs, and many more than that in urban areas where the cost of living was higher. In New York City, annual turnover was running at 30 percent, and hundreds of jobs went unfilled. The previous fall, several dozen postal workers there had made news when they successfully applied for welfare benefits.

Then in February 1970, President Richard Nixon announced that, with inflation running at 7 percent, the government could not afford to give letter carriers, clerks, and mail handlers an already scheduled 4 percent raise, even as Congress received a 41 percent pay raise and the president’s own salary was doubled.

There were other grievances too. Health benefits were shoddy. Relations between newer workers — especially Vietnam vets — and managers were increasingly combative. They “were disillusioned with the government,” recollected Milton Rosner, an officer of the Manhattan Bronx Postal Union (MBPU), which represented clerks and some mail handlers. “They were super militant and very impatient with normal channels of expression, protest and dissent. . . . They really didn’t want to hear, ‘Well, you know, we’re fighting for it, we’re waiting for Congress to make a decision.’” And senior workers were fearful that plans Congress was considering for a “corporatization” of the post office would terminate the civil service rights protecting them from arbitrary firing and layoffs, and their pension plan.

Anger might have been national, but turmoil was particularly concentrated in the New York City area, where postal workers saw municipal employees successfully defying anti-strike laws and winning higher pay. There were regular pickets outside larger post offices, with the president of the MBPU warning at one about possible wildcat strikes.

Just a few weeks later, some eighty workers at the Kingsbridge post office in the Bronx staged a one-day sick-out. Union officers rushed to get them back to work, but MBPU voted to recompense its clerks for their subsequent suspensions out of union funds.

Carriers weren’t so fortunate at first. Their local union, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Branch 36, said funds weren’t available. Then a new and inexperienced president angered carriers by instead splurging on a Christmas party and hiring a PR firm. Activists began to mobilize larger and larger numbers for monthly union meetings. Leaders in both locals were “sitting atop a live volcano,” said Charles Salk, a letter carrier with Branch 36. At the Grand Central post office, the largest carrier site in the country, “you could see the mood building up day by day by day, it was just as though someone was stoking a fire.” Rosner added, “It was like a contagion. . . . We kept giving each other courage and strength.”

What happened next is often called a “wildcat” strike because it was opposed by the leaders of all nine national postal unions. But unlike in many wildcat strikes, most of the workers who struck did so only after organized voting by their city or locality branch.

The strike began with a vote by Bronx and Manhattan letter carriers, spread quickly to carriers, clerks, and mail handlers throughout the tristate region, and then over the next few days throughout the nation. That gradual expansion reflected a quick emergence of new informal leaders who demanded, then organized, emergency meetings, and workers’ willingness to repudiate local union officers who urged them to stay on the job. Most workers in the South — where racial tensions still split the workforce — and rural areas — where the cost of living was lower — continued to work, but virtually all cities were out for at least a couple of days. The New York Times decried it as “postal anarchy.”

Victory for Postal Workers

With polls showing that most Americans supported the postal workers, Nixon backed off initial reprisal threats. Charles Colson and H. R. Haldeman — top aides who are now remembered as Watergate conspirators — met repeatedly with national union leaders, trying to craft the outlines of an agreement that would get strikers back to work before it spread to other workforces. That was a real possibility. Haldeman wrote in his diary, “Threat now is of radicalization, a national strike, other walkouts, i.e., Teamsters, Air Traffic Controllers [who were about to start a sick-out], etc. to cripple whole country at once.”

Other federal workers pressed to join the strike. The head of the National Federation of Federal Employees told the Washington Star that “locals throughout the country had indicated that they wanted to strike in support of the postal workers. There’s no doubt that our members are in complete sympathy with the postal workers. The strike definitely could spread throughout the Federal service.” In a radio interview, a vice president of the National Association of Government Employees reported that

“tremendous pressure” was being put on the union to authorize strikes. . . .“We have been receiving phone calls from our various local presidents and various agencies throughout the government and throughout the country. They have watched events of the past days and have seen postal workers, striking with a degree of impunity, and their question to us is, if they can do it why can’t we?”

Eight days after the New York carriers and clerks were the first to go out, they were the last to return to work, after promises from national leaders that a deal had been struck. Although the strikers did not get everything they wanted, by the time the Department of the Post Office became the US Postal Service (USPS) fifteen months later, top pay had increased by 30 percent and the time to top pay was reduced from twenty-one to eight years. Postal workers had won a full seniority system, a formal grievance process to contest contract violations or unfair treatment, and the right to collective bargaining. And, of course, amnesty from any penalties for striking.

The successful strike, wrote Local 36 militant Tom Germano, was the result of the repeated insults to workers’ dignity, the support of local communities, confidence in the legitimacy of their demands, and the belief that postal workers could win relief through collective action. Also crucial was the solidarity that prevailed, as hundreds of thousands of workers across the country followed New York workers out.

Today Ronald Reagan’s firing of 13,000 air controllers in 1981 is a living memory that haunts labor, while the dramatic success of 250,000 postal workers a decade before seems largely forgotten. After fifty years of the neoliberal offensive, “to think and contemplate any action of a strike” might indeed be “a very revolutionary act, psychologically, emotionally, and economically,” as postal worker Max Epstein described his experience of the 1970 strike.

Yet many of the conditions that led to postal success have echoes today: The insults to federal workers’ dignity when Trump says most of them hardly work. The growing likelihood of support from at least significant sections of the American public, as manifested in the “Hands Off!” demonstrations across the United States earlier this month. At least the glimmer of possibility of real solidarity, through work stoppages and other job actions from other unions that see the target on their backs, including the 600,000 postal workers who are facing calls for USPS privatization. Above all, the legitimacy of workers’ demands to maintain their livelihoods and their union contracts.

Still, to take this step will require bravery. Unlike in 1970, when postal strikers — particularly in New York — were part of a widespread upsurge of labor militancy, today federal workers will have to lead the way in striking, as many workers are plenty angry but not yet in motion. Yet they can take heart that the votes of just 1,500 carriers, part of just one 6,000-worker local union — and in defiance of their own national union leadership, who demanded they stay on the job — were all the spark that was needed to set off an inferno and ultimately produce a historic victory. A similar action might well seed the popular alliance needed to defeat Trump’s policies.

Perhaps some federal union leaders will understand the necessity of fighting sooner, before they are further weakened by the administration’s attacks. Or perhaps locals, branches, or sections of the federal workforce will seize the day and trigger a larger walkout. One crucial advantage they have over postal workers in 1970 is the speed with which ideas can spread, bonds can form, and worker-to-worker organizing can take place across the country via social media.

This is a defining moment in American trade union history. While history may not repeat itself, it can rhyme. American workers can acquiesce in the face of Trump’s assault, or we can take heart from the example of the postal workers’ strike and other inspiring labor struggles from our past and try to take control of our future.