There's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality

Epilogue

epilogue ‘‘We were working six, seven days a week—ten, twelve hours [a day]. . . . Conditions were very rough. The place was a powderkeg. The day after the contract expiration, it actually didn’t take much to pull people out, it was so hot and oppressive.’’∞ Je√ Perry, a retired npmhu activist and o≈cial, was describing the July 21, 1978, wildcat strike at the New York Bulk & Foreign Mail Center (nyb&fmc) in Jersey City, New Jersey. It came four years after the one-day 1974 wildcat at that same bulk mail center (bmc) over an arbitrary work shift change that postal management had tried to impose. But the 1978 wildcat by npmhu and apwu members lasted four days, and came just a day after 6,000 nalc and apwu members picketed usps Headquarters in D.C. in protest of lagging contract negotiations. Wildcat strikes quickly hit the bmc in Kearney, New Jersey, and the San Francisco Bulk and Foreign Mail Facility (sfb&fmc) in Richmond, California, with reports of small walkouts at other bmcs. bmc pickets even went into Manhattan and marched around the gpo (now called the James A. Farley Building). Between five and six thousand clerks, mail handlers, maintenance, and other postal workers struck over safety issues, mandatory overtime, and what many postal workers regarded as an unsatisfactory contract. Several hundred were fired. An amnesty movement within the unions was only partially successful in getting full union backing to restore jobs to all those who had been terminated. But Perry cautioned against a ‘‘romanticized view’’ of the wildcat. In fact, what he called ‘‘our main base’’—npmhu Local 300 members on Tour 3 (approximately 3:30 p.m. until midnight)—had voted not to strike the night before because of the obvious tactical risks. Striking was still illegal for federal employees, as it remains today.≤ Unlike the 1970 strike, workers did not formally vote to strike before wildcatting , although this time nalc Branch 36 letter carriers voted to strike if the apwu went out. Many of those striking these mail facilities were black, although blacks were still a minority at these industrial facilities built in suburban areas to attract what postal o≈cials thought would be a whiter, more docile workforce. And many strikers were skeptical, like Je√ Perry and Monroe Head—veteran activist of the 1968 United Black Brothers caucus and wildcat at the Mahwah, New Jersey, Ford plant. So how did the limited postal wildcat 276 | epilogue happen this time? Overheated contract rhetoric by management and union o≈cials created a situation where spontaneous anger could start a wildcat. This time postal management seemed well prepared, with postal inspectors videotaping strikers and news media already on the scene when the day shift (Tour 2) started. The acrimony from the inability (or as some charge, unwillingness ) of the apwu and npmhu to get all the 1978 wildcat firings rescinded lingers to this day. On the other hand, sfb&fmc workers caught management o√-guard by voting overwhelmingly to set up picket lines on July 22, disrupting operations until the following Saturday in defiance of a court order.≥ Broader questions remain as well, including maintenance of a black and white di√erential in job and union opportunities. For example, how did two industrial civil rights postal unions lose their seats at the collective bargaining table after the 1970 strike (the National Postal Union [npu] deciding to merge into the apwu while the National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees [napfe] chose to remain independent), while the smaller npmhu found itself at that same table? The latter, predominantly black and increasingly militant, had also essentially been taken over in 1968 by the reputedly mob-influenced liuna, and in 1988 temporarily lost its autonomy to a trusteeship imposed by liuna’s white male leadership.∂ And a decade after the 1970 postal strike, whether in Jersey City or Charlotte, there was evidence of whites fast-tracked into supervisory positions (often via temporary ‘‘details’’ that became permanent ), while blacks with more education and seniority were routinely disquali fied. The black experience at the post o≈ce always was, and still remains, fundamentally a fight for justice for themselves as well as all postal workers. The post-1970 strike era saw a mixture of management accommodation and retaliation in dealing with its workers and unions, which in turn inspired more militant rank-and-file activity—up to a point. Postal workers had proven their ability with no o≈cial organization to shut down the largest federal...