User:BeastMode4403/U.S. postal strike of 1970

Impact

The strike crippled the nation's mail system.

The stock market fell due to the strike's effect on trading volume. Some feared that the stock market would have to close entirely.

When the strike first kicked off, mail couriers were delivering more than 270 million pieces of mail a day. Due to couriers striking, this led to the lack of distribution of the mail and a massive buildup of important government and financial documents. The strike not only affected a normal citizens daily life, but also prohibited 18 year old men from being notified about them being drafted to go to war in Vietnam.

During 1970 the annual salary for a postal worker was $6,176 in comparison with sanitation workers who were making $7,870. After the postal workers conducted numerous pickets, they had finally won a 6% wage increase. President Nixon felt pressure from postal workers to collectively bargain for a better salary. With pressure applied, President Nixon signed the Postal Reorganization Act (PRA) to create the new U.S. Postal Service, in which postal workers would gain an additional 8% wage increase.

American Postal Workers Union
On July 1, 1971, five federal postal unions merged to form the American Postal Workers Union, the largest postal workers union in the world.

During the 1960s Jim Crow Era, Mississippi NAACP leadership rose as African American civil rights activists joined the postal workers union.

Surprisingly, Minneapolis and St. Paul had a history of labor unionism that included postal workers. This postal worker unionism within the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) was kept off media news due to the activism being in the Upper Midwest.

The NAPE’s origins from the “thirteen original colonies” compiled of college-educated African American railway mail service workers. NAPE, standing for National Alliance of Postal Employees, began in 1923 to unionize all African Americans in the United States Postal Service. Evolving into incorporating government workers outside the postal service, the name commonly used now is NAPFE, National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees.

NAPFE Goals and The Railway Mail Service
The goals of the NAPFE union was to protect the rights of African American postal workers. In the late 1800s to early 1900s, African American workers had been serving aboard in railroad cars for years while the cars were made of wood and the safety was marginal. This work beginning in 1864 was founded to be known as the Railway Mail Service (RMS). The RMS allowed African American railway mail-clerks to travel outside the Deep South. African American workers would be less likely hired as postal clerks in the North which gave them more "equal opportunity," comparable to whites opportunity.

While technology advanced to improve the safety of workers, the wooden railroad cars were replaced with steel cars. This resulted in the recruitment of dominantly white workers. The racial discrimination of black postal workers in the early to mid 1900s is the reason NAPE began and later the NAPFE formed.

Post Office Creation
The ending of the Civil War (1865) was the beginning of legal work for African Americans. Starting in 1865, the U.S. Post Office began to be a niche job for African American workers. Workers strived to maintain work as mail handlers in the 1860s and 1870s in spite of treats of assault and battery lynching's by white mobs. This led to the formation of the Colored National Labor Union and the Knights of Labor in 1869. These organizations welcomed blacks, women, and integrated unions. They collectively bargained for low-cost life insurance, better wages, and better working conditions.

Conclusion
The strike ended after eight days with not a single worker being fired, as the Nixon administration continued to negotiate with postal union leaders. With Nixon signing the Postal Reorganization Act, workers were given an additional 8% wage increase. Although the Postal Strike was "unlawful," it ended up being the largest strike against the Federal Government and the first walk-out against the Federal Government in U.S. history. Remedies from this strike included lower-cost life insurance, increased wages, and safer working conditions.


 * "The Great Postal Strike of 1970 | AFL-CIO"
 * Burns, Joe. 2014. For Inspiration, Look to the History of the Public Worker Strikes
 * Smithsonian National Postal Museum "The 1970 Postal Strike"
 * Rubio, Philip F. (2016-10-19). "Organizing a wildcat: the United States postal strike of 1970". Labor History. 57 (5): 565–587.
 * Rubio, Philip F. (2020) Undelivered: From the Great Postal Strike of 1970 to the Manufactured Crisis of the U.S. Postal Service. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
 * Grabowski, John (2023). "NATIONAL ALLIANCE OF POSTAL AND FEDERAL EMPLOYEES". Case Western Reserve University.