The Great Postal Strike of 1970: Lessons For Today
During the 1970 wildcat postal workers strike letter carriers across the country were met with legal injunctions ordering them to go back to work. In Chicago a back to work court order was declared, and met with a vote of carriers on the picket to defy the order, and stay on strike. Local media interviewed the strikers about their decision.
A Newsreporter asks: “Well what if what you’re doing is illegal?”
“I don’t care. Now, I know it's against the law. That's in the constitution. It’s in my contract. If they want to put me in jail, put me in jail. But they haven’t got a jail big enough to put all of us in!”1 –Chicago Letter Carrier George Boyles
Before the Great Postal Strike of 1970 postal workers had no rights to collectively bargain with the federal government. On the shop floor, management ruled with impunity; there was no grievance procedure through which a worker might fight back against mistreatment. Many letter carriers had second or third jobs, and some had to rely on government welfare payments just to ensure they could feed their families.
NALC carriers working today need to both examine and recapture the spirit of 1970. We share the same task that faced our sisters and brothers in 1970; turning the NALC into a militant, worker led union, a weapon we can proudly call our own, that can not just win raises and protect our benefits, but that can be a shining example to the labor movement as a whole.
Broader Economic and Political Background to the Strike
Before the 1970 strike, letter carriers worked for the USPOD, but could not appeal to the USPOD directly to raise wages and benefits. We were completely at the mercy of Congress to pass legislation to obtain increases. As a result, there were no postal raises from 1925 to 1943.
Unprecedented economic growth post World War II raised standards and expectations of workers everywhere. Huge social changes also took place. The Civil Rights and then Black Power movements destroyed Jim Crow segregation and challenged racism in every sphere of American life. The anti Vietnam war movement brought hundreds of thousands into the streets in a direct confrontation with the US government. A new feminist wave crested with the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade to make the right to an abortion the law of the land. Workers who demonstrated then took that radicalization into their workplace, seeking more rights and better pay. Labor’s demands began to merge with the rising movements for change.
Those workers who were organized and could defend their standard of living, did so. They utilized the weapon of the strike. In 1970 alone, 66 million work days were lost during 5,716 walkouts. One in six union members, around 17 percent, went on strike in that year alone.2 The strike weapon was being exercised all around postal workers, and they took notice.
Besides strikes, there were movements of unionized workers to oust their leaders who failed to fight for them. The United Mine Workers, Teamsters, and United Auto Workers all saw rank and file opposition movements emerge within them. These movements sought to replace union leaderships that supported business friendly unionism and worked to sideline rank and file members from defining the course of their unions.
Postal workers, as federal workers, were prevented from striking. They didn’t even have the right to collectively bargain. But the combination of mass social movements and strikes raised the expectations of postal workers about what was possible. Thousands of rank and file postal workers across the country were about to win over and organize their coworkers into striking against the most powerful government in the world, in what became the largest wildcat strike in US history.
Postal Workers Wages before the Strike
No matter where they worked, in 1970, a letter carrier’s minimum salary was $6,176 a year and topped out after a long 21 years at $8,442 (approximately $50,000 and $68,000 today, adjusted for inflation). Letter carriers and mail handlers worked in outdated buildings, many with no air conditioning. Without a formal process to file and argue grievances, authoritarian postal managers ran roughshod over postal workers on the workroom floor. It’s been estimated that in New York City, 20 percent of letter carriers had a second or third job and 10 percent received food stamps and other welfare payments.3
In the 1960s postal unions came together across crafts to organize pay-raise rallies. In 1968 the NALC, NPU, and UFPC all voted to abolish the “no strike” clauses from their respective constitutions at their national union conventions. In June 1969, over 2,000 postal workers marched on the General Post Office (GPO) in New York City, in protest of President Nixon’s Executive Order denying them their expected 4 percent raise while inflation was running at 5%. This at the same time Congress had voted themselves a raise!
While all this rank and file anger was being transformed into collective action on the part of postal workers, where was the union leadership? NALC President James Rademacher was one of the few union leaders to endorse Nixon. With no open bargaining, Rademacher met secretly with Nixon to concede on a deal. The two agreed on only a 5.4% wage increase in exchange for postal “corporatization” – further privatizing the USPOD, maintaining the ban on striking, while introducing full collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions. His privatization dirty deal was all done in secret, at his own discretion.
The Dress Rehearsal: Branch 36 Rank and File Get Organized
In New York City, the local affiliate of the NPU was the Manhattan Bronx Postal Union (MBPU). It represented 26,000 postal workers from all crafts, mostly clerks, and was the largest local in the NPU. At their 1968 Convention, if negotiations had produced no results, the NPU set July 1st, 1969 as a deadline to go on strike. As a compromise between those who wanted to strike, and those who felt it was premature, MBPU postal workers voted to sick-out. On July 1st, 1969, 56 letter carriers and 16 clerks collectively sicked-out at the Kingsbridge station in the Bronx. When they came into work the next day they were denied the ability to clock in. On that same day, another 16 letter carriers at another Bronx station called in sick. In clear retaliation, they along with the clerks were placed in a “non-pay” status, and suspended indefinitely.
The NALC and MBPU immediately protested the suspensions. While a few workers were allowed to return to work, most were suspended for three weeks without pay. Later, future NALC president Vincent Sombrotto would recall that this was the event that got him involved in the union for the first time –fighting to save postal worker’s jobs. He referred to it as the “dress rehearsal” for the 1970 strike.
While the MBPU voted to reimburse those who had sicked out 2/3rds of their pay while they awaited to be reinstated, there was a fight to win the same at NALC Branch 36. The leadership of Branch 36, led by President Gus Johnson, refused to use union funds to reimburse the letter carriers.
Out of this fight a rank and file group emerged within Branch 36. The group was composed mostly of rank and file letter carriers as well as some delegates (shop stewards) who were angry at their leadership for failing to support those who had sicked out, and shared an opposition to the undemocratic practices of the union generally.
The Rank and File Organize
As outrage over the lack of a pay raise, and failure to support their fellow letter carriers grew, so too did the general membership meetings of Branch 36. Angry after learning about Rademacher’s secret negotiations with Nixon to peg a pay rise to postal “corporatization,” the rank and file of Branch 36 put forward and passed their own postal reform plan. The right to strike was always front and center. They were able to outvote the elected leadership and compensate those carriers who had been suspended for the July 1969 Bronx sickout. For the first time, the organized rank and file of Branch 36 won a victory and had exercised real control over their own union. This boosted their confidence, and created a virtuous cycle of increased rank and file participation in the life of Branch 36 that would prove crucial to the success of the strike.
In his annual Federal Budget press conference, citing the need to combat inflation, Nixon announced a freeze on postal wages until January 1971. The promises made between the Presidents, Nixon and Rademacher, had evaporated. In response, at the February 12th general membership, led by the rank and file grouping, over 400 letter carriers debated and voted to strike by March 15th. Losing the vote, Branch 36 President Gus Johnson tried a delaying tactic. Attempting to negate the democratic decision of the members, he instead ordered a “strike survey” to take place amongst the whole membership, to be revealed on March 12th.
On March 12th, 800 Branch 36 letter carriers flooded the hotel meeting room that accommodated only 360, for the meeting that would decide the issue. As Johnson began to read out the results of the strike survey, he was shouted down by letter carriers, who quickly took over the proceedings. The rank and file voted unanimously for a motion calling on Branch 36 to convene a citywide meeting of all postal workers. When Johnson cited the lack of space, carriers shouted back “Use Central Park!”
The night of March 17th, 1970, over 4,000 letter carriers of Branch 36 held a secret ballot on whether or not to strike. After several long hours of debate, at 10:30pm the results were announced: 1555-1055 in favor of going on strike. Johnson declared Branch 36 would be on strike as of 12:01am March 18th, and retired, never to be seen in public during the length of the strike.
The rank and file of Branch 36 understood that in order to be successful a strike would require cross craft collaboration. The same night they were voting to strike, Brooklyn NALC Branch 41 President Jack Leventhal was pressured to commit his branch’s full support of a strike of Branch 36. MBPU President Moe Biller promised his members would not cross picket lines and would vote to strike later that week.
On March 17th, 1970, postal workers did something never before seen in United States history. Over the opposition of their own union leaders, they would strike together against the Federal Government. They were fully aware of the potential consequences: Striking the USPOD could result in immediate termination, $1000 fines, and felony charge jail sentences up to one year if convicted.
The Strike Begins
The first pickets went up at 1 a.m., Wednesday March 18th outside the Grand Central Station Post Office (GSCPO), which employed roughly 5,000 workers. Around 30 strikers moved police barricades, used during the previous day’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, onto the sidewalk in front of the post office there. At the General Post Office (GPO), which employed 10,000 workers, by 8am only 300 carriers had gone to work. 20 percent of clerks crossed the line for the morning shift. Strike veterans described picket lines at the main post offices numbering in the hundreds. Picket lines shot up and spread outside post offices in all five boroughs of New York City. As news of the Branch 36 strike moved across the country, so too did the strike itself.
Reports began to come in that their fellow letter carriers and clerks were answering the call. At all these and other branches individuals and groups of postal workers had to decide on the spot whether to join Branch 36 on strike or not. At every one of these branches it was militant rank and file members who made the difference, answering the concerns of their coworkers and pushing them on to join the strike.
Back in New York City, on Thursday night, March 19th, the MBPU held a mass meeting to decide whether they would formally join the Branch 36 strike. Eleanor Bailey, an African American letter carrier had been involved in protests over pay and organizing against segregated branches in the 1960s. She described the mood: “It was fabulous! Everybody was on fire!” On that night 6,500 MBPU members – almost a quarter of the entire membership – met and voted to join the strike.
The Strike Spreads
On Thursday March 19th letter carriers in NALC Branch 157 voted to strike, and the Philadelphia Postal Union (PPU) which was an affiliate of the NPU announced they would refuse to cross their picket lines. This effectively shut down the delivery of mail in the Philadelphia area.
Federal employee unions were mandated by law to force members back to work in the event of a strike. They had to file daily reports on their progress. Union leaders largely did not cooperate, claiming, rightly, that the strike was out of their control. James Rademacher was the exception. He wanted to immediately suspend Branch 36 and recommended to the Executive Committee to expel them from the union. The opposition from Rademacher only strengthened the hand of Branch 36, which had assumed the role of de facto leadership of the strike.
As the strike was threatening to become truly national, the diary of White House counsel Harry Haldeman conveyed the mood of the President. On Friday March 20th, he wrote, “[Nixon’s] first reaction was for a really tough stand, examine the law, if people can be fired, fire them, if troops can be moved, move them. Wants to do something now, this morning, not going to tolerate Federal employees strike. Says suspend them if we can’t fire them, all-out attack, not worried about the mail, it’s the principle”.
While Nixon was fantasizing about firing striking postal workers, in Chicago NALC letter carriers voted over the opposition from their president to strike. Chicago’s participation was short but critical, starting Saturday March 21st and ending the following Tuesday March 24th. The city was a major mail distribution center, which stopped the delivery of mail throughout much of the country. Postal workers knew its strategic importance, and the news of their joining the strike only encouraged the optimism now being felt coast to coast. For the first time, postal workers were experiencing the true scope of their collective power.
Unevenness of the Strike
In the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast letter carriers met to organize strike votes. These areas were willing to wait for a lead from NALC president James Rademacher, who was pledging to lead a national walkout starting March 27th, if an agreement was not reached. At the same time, he was working tirelessly to pull letter carriers back from striking. In Miami, a letter carrier recalled how at their union meeting these union officials warned that “Everyone here will be getting fired. The leaders will go to jail.”
The spread of the wildcat strike emboldened postal workers and simultaneously bound national NALC union leaders, postal management, and the Nixon administration tightly together. When forced to answer the question, “Which side are you on?”, the official leaders of the union chose to side with management, with the USPOD, with Nixon.
Rademacher and many other union leaders had grown comfortable in their positions, with salaries many times higher than the workers they claimed to represent. On Sunday night, Rademacher announced in a press conference that the union had reached a tentative agreement with Secretary of Labor George Schultz – without any details as to its contents. This was an act of desperation, Rademacher hoped he could regain control of the situation and maintain the image of being on the side of postal workers. Nixon had other plans.
Nixon Sends in the Troops
If Rademacher couldn’t threaten the postal workers into returning to work, Nixon was ready to force them back to work, by breaking the strike with troops in New York City. The plan was to try and crush the strike where it had begun, and if that didn’t work the Department of Defense would move troops to move the mail in thirty-six additional cities. While Nixon hoped this would communicate strength, it was actually an action taken out of fear and weakness. The strike was clearly winning, and if it wasn’t ended soon, it had the potential to rally other public sector workers, and perhaps the entire working class itself behind it. This is what he feared more than anything, that the example of the rank and file postal workers would inspire workers across the country to take similar action.
Branch 36 strike veteran Barry Weiner would later recall, “I was there when the military vehicles first showed up. And it was very eerie. Because in those days you would see those things happening in South American countries where there were soldiers in military vehicles lining the streets of the main post office. And soldiers in uniform walking up the steps of the main post office to go in per Nixon’s order. But we all knew they wouldn’t have much success.” This action was taken at the height of the Vietnam war. Many of the postal workers in New York City were themselves veterans. Even though the national guard were acting as ordered, many strikers found that many soldiers were reluctant to act against the postal workers.
Whatever their feelings, the soldiers quickly found the job of sorting and delivering the mail to be much more complicated than they had been led to believe. Jeffrey Chester, a national guardsman recalled, “The plastic containers of letter mail would come down in front of you, and you would pull out a handful, and one by one you’d put ‘em in the pigeonhole [case] by zip code. And it was like, ‘You gotta be kiddin’ me!’” Philip Seligman related in an oral-history interview years after the strike, “My son-in-law happened to be in the National Guard…He was telling people to mis-box a lot of mail.” Mail began piling up on the floors, as the attempt to use soldiers as strikebreakers created a farcical scene.
While the mail remained unmoved in New York City, in other parts of the country postal workers were beginning to return to work while others walked out. By Monday March 23rd, postal workers in Boston and Philadelphia heeded James Rademacher’s call and returned to work to await the details of the tentative agreement that had been reached. At the same time, letter carriers and clerks began walking off the job in Los Angeles. Letter carriers in LA Branch 1100 set up pickets without a vote.
The Strike Ends
By Wednesday March 25th, New York City was the last major city out on strike. The details of the tentative agreement seemed promising. At mass meetings of thousands of strikers, the leaders of NALC Branch 36 and MBPU Branch 41 conveyed that Rademacher had secured an agreement that included a 12 percent pay raise retroactive to October 1969, paid health benefits, compressing the time it took to reach top pay from 21 to 8 years, an “area” wage calculation based on local cost of living, full collective bargaining rights for postal unions, and amnesty for all strikers.
On Thursday March 26th, the strike came to an end, the last holdouts returned to work with their heads held high. It would take an additional five months for negotiations to conclude the final agreement. In the end, postal workers won a 14 percent pay increase. The US Post Office Department was converted into the United States Postal Service, with full collective bargaining over all future contracts guaranteed, coupled with an interest-binding arbitration mechanism intended to prevent postal workers from ever going on strike again if negotiations stalled.
Over 200,000 postal workers, out of a total workforce of 739,000, had gone on strike across 671 post offices in major cities and small towns alike. Divisions amongst the crafts melted away. The strikers’ success lay in large part to their ability to shutdown key “nodes” (cities) in the nationwide mail distribution network. Combined with widespread and solid public support, their courage and determination overcame the power of the USPOD and the Nixon administration. They acted over the heads of their own union leaders, every day risking their livelihoods to stand with their brothers and sisters in one of the most dramatic strikes in the history of the US labor movement. It was mass collective action which made mass terminations virtually impossible. Solidarity was the force that protected postal workers, not the agreements from negotiators in Washington.
The strike is often said to have spread “spontaneously”. This captures only a part of what happened. The fact that 200,000 letter carriers and clerks all decided to walk out misses the critical role played by the thousands of rank and file postal workers organizing for the strike. Without the courageous initiative of thousands of rank and file militants, the strike would never have spread and won as it did.
In the minds of postal workers at the time, the strike was directed just as much against the official postal union leadership as it was against the federal government. The Great Postal Strike consolidated a new generation of postal workers, most notably Vincent Sombrotto for NALC, and Moe Biller for what became the APWU, which continued to organize to transform their respective unions into democratic, fighting organizations. They would ultimately capture the leadership of their respective unions in 1980.
Lessons for NALC Workers Today
The general impression given by official union articles, and many union leaders, on the Great Postal Strike of 1970 is that it was a great thing in its time, but that it is something that can never be repeated, because it would inevitably “break” the postal unions.
The recent fightback against the entrenched NALC national leadership at the August 2024 Convention was a sign of the huge tremors developing in our union. The deep anger and disillusionment at what the union has become and what we need in our union is beginning to materialize with the rank and file movements forming within the NALC such as BFN (Build a Fighting NALC).
Unions are more popular today than in forty years and once again seen as a part of the solution to the economic and other problems workers face. Disgust at the elites, the billionaires and the government establishment is widespread. In the context of a world of wars, inflation and escalating inequality, the rise of the rank and file in our union is almost an inevitability.
The fundamental lessons of the strike still apply today. The power needed to recapture the lost gains in previous contract cycles ultimately lies with the hundreds of thousands of rank and file members taking collective action up to and including strikes. All union activity should be judged from this standpoint: to what degree does it organize, energize, and mobilize this force to actively take up the fight for its future, to regenerate a broad layer of militant union activists. This is the task which BFN has set itself. It is a long term goal, of which winning the right to strike is one, critical part.
Build a Fighting NALC is organized around a five point program:
Open Bargaining Now
$30 Starting Wage
End Mandatory Overtime
Union Leaders on a Workers’ Wage
The Right to Strike
If you agree with this program and are inspired by the strike of 1970, get involved with BFN today!
Notes
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T31WdPav3qk
2. Brenner, Aaron, et al., editors. Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s. Verso Books, 2010.
3. Rubio, Philip F. Undelivered: From the Great Postal Strike of 1970 to the Manufactured Crisis of the U.S. Postal Service. University of North Carolina Press, 2020.
