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Title: Outlaw Unions, Illegal Strikes Author: Jon Bekken Date: June 28, 2020 Language: en Topics: trade unions, strike, Anarcho-Syndicalist Review Source: Retrieved on 28th January 2021 from https://syndicalist.us/2020/06/28/outlaw-unions-illegal-strikes/ Notes: From Anarcho-Syndicalist Review #79, Spring 2020
The 1970 wildcat postal strike quickly threatened to expand to other
federal government workers, forcing the federal government to seriously
negotiate with public workers for the first time.
Public sector workers had been organizing for more than 150 years,
fighting poverty wages, unsafe working conditions, shakedowns by party
bosses, and abusive treatment more generally. But even where their
unions were not outlawed, the right to strike almost always was – and
the government proved as vicious in fighting strikes as did any private
sector boss. Aside from building trades workers, who carried their
unions (and their working conditions) with them when they took public
sector jobs, most early public sector labor organizations might be
better described as associations than unions, offering insurance,
lobbying and other benefits.
There were exceptions, including the Boston policemen, who struck in
1919 after union officials were suspended and threatened with firing if
they did not dissolve the union. The largest teachers’ union was formed
as a loose federation that officially rejected strikes. More militant
teachers’ organizations, such as those in the Chicago Teachers
Federation, which began organizing in the 1890s, scared the Board of
Education so much that membership was made a fireable offense. Fed up
with low wages, no job security and enormous class sizes, and inspired
by a resurgent labor movement, teachers’ unions conducted dozens of
strikes in the 1940s, and have continued striking to the present day.
Most of these strikes were illegal and hundreds of union leaders and
strike activists were imprisoned, but by the 1970s most states were
forced to tolerate teacher (and other public sector) unions, and many
legalized strikes rather than suffer the indignity of workers
successfully thumbing their noses at the law.
By the 1950s a handful of states, including Wisconsin (which more
recently has imposed draconian restrictions) accepted collective
bargaining. But the absence of such rights did not stop workers from
organizing unions (California recognized public employee unions only in
1978, but rank-and-file unions had long had a strong presence) or from
striking. The famous 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike (Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. was assassinated while in Memphis to support the
workers) was illegal and local officials long refused to recognize or
negotiate with the union.
Even today, only 12 states recognize public employees’ right to strike –
just as many completely bar them from union recognition or collective
bargaining. But workers have organized in every state, whether or not
they have legal rights, and have won better conditions through their
struggles. Some of the massive state-wide teachers strikes in recent
years were in states that officially ban collective bargaining (strikes
were illegal in all but Colorado), and New York City transit workers
struck in 1966, 1980 and again in 2005 despite a state law prohibiting
strikes and providing for massive fines and imprisonment of union
officials. (More than a thousand workers marched with TWU Local 100
President Roger Toussaint when he surrendered to serve three days in
jail; the union was also fined $2.5 million – far less than workers
gained in the final contract.)
In 1970, U.S. postal workers belonged to eight separate craft unions,
including the National Association of Letter Carriers, which lobbied
Congress for better pay, assisted workers with grievances, and managed
union benefit plans. There was no collective bargaining and strikes were
illegal. A 1968 study reported “widespread disquiet” as a result of
“antiquated personnel practices … [and] appalling working conditions.”
In New York City, high living costs had forced many postal workers onto
welfare to supplement incomes eroded by surging inflation. There had
been several small wildcats, such as a 1969 “sick-out” by 72 workers at
the Kingsbridge Station in the Bronx. So when the Letter Carriers’
Bronx-Manhattan local voted to strike and set up picket lines around New
York City post offices, 25,000 drivers and clerks joined the strike,
shutting down postal operations in the city. The strike quickly spread
to workers throughout New York state, New Jersey and Connecticut despite
union statements discouraging strike action. The strike shut down New
York’s financial industry, kept 9,000 people from receiving draft
notices, delayed the mailing of census forms and tax refunds, and
generally disrupted the country’s communications. By March 21, the
strike had spread to more than 200 cities and towns across the country,
including Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, San
Francisco, Minneapolis, Denver and Boston.
Ultimately, more than 200,000 postal workers in 15 states joined the
wildcat. Government and union officials moved quickly against the
strike. The courts quickly issued an injunction against the New York
strikers, and the head of the Letter Carriers said the union’s executive
council was considering expelling the New York City local because of the
strike. Chicago postal workers voted to strike the same day postal union
leaders called upon workers to end the strike in exchange for a
government promise to consider workers’ demands. The next day, New York
City postal workers voted almost unanimously to defy the back-to-work
agreement.
The government had to act, as the strike was on the verge of spreading
to other government employees. The head of the American Federation of
Government Employees reported that he had to intervene personally to
prevent several strikes. National Federation of Federal Employees locals
throughout the country indicated that they wanted to strike in support
of the postal workers. The National Association of Government Employees
similarly heard from union members across the country who wanted to
strike, looking to the postal workers as examples. Injunctions and heavy
fines were levied on union leaders; but the workers paid no attention.
President Richard Nixon took time off from bombing Cambodia to dispatch
24,000 soldiers to distribute the mail in New York City, but they were
ineffective. While Nixon insisted there would be no negotiations until
workers abandoned the strike, Secretary of Labor William Usery quietly
began negotiations that brought the strike to an end.
Postal workers won improved conditions and a 6 percent wage increase
retroactive to 1969, with another 8 percent to follow. But while the
government agreed to collective bargaining, the Postal Reorganization
Act passed in April 1970 continued the ban on postal strikes, instead
providing for binding arbitration.
Following the strike, five unions representing postal clerks, mail
processors, maintenance and motor vehicle workers merged into a new
American Postal Workers Union, and several strike activists were elected
to local and national union office.
This was the first nation-wide strike of government employees, and the
first nation-wide strike in recent decades to be carried on not only
independently of, but in opposition to, national union officials. The
strikers did not play by the rules of the game. The risks they took were
considerable. Striking against the government is a felony, punishable by
a year and a day in jail and a $1,000 fine.
The Great Postal Strike of 1970 was the moment they were “standing 10
feet tall instead of groveling in the dust,” as a Manhattan letter
carrier put it. They got fed up, joined together, and transformed both
the Postal Service and their own lives forever.
Sources: Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (Revised edition), PM Press, 2014.
Philip F. Rubio,There’s Always Work at the Post Office: African American
Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality, University
of North Carolina Press, 2010.