By Gerry Scoppettuolo
On Sunday, March 23 thousands of rank and file letter carriers and their supporters rallied at close to 300 cities and post offices across the U.S. to protest the threatened privatization of the U.S. postal service. Three days before, the Postal Workers Union (APWU) also held rallies in hundreds of cities attracting thousands.
One could not have predicted several months ago that the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), traditionally conservative politically, would be effectively setting the standard for militantly mobilizing rank and file workers to fight the current repression. Such rebellions can never really be predicted, growing as they do out of the changing (in this case rapidly deteriorating) material conditions of labor in the U.S. as a whole.
As hundreds of thousands of letter carriers deliver the daily mail, they have direct contact with the masses whom they serve. These workers have unabashed pride in what they do and who they do it for. Often, they are the ones who deliver critically important drugs, legal documents, letters from loved ones and packages to millions of people every day, especially those who live in rural areas. Their “point of production” is not the factory floor, but the very streets and houses on their daily routes and the people that they encounter and with whom they have regular familiarity.
Anger and restlessness in the ranks have been building in the NALC ranks who have worked the past two years without a contract. Top union leadership arbitrarily accepted a 1.3% annual wage increase over three years that they had sent to expedited arbitration, bypassing an overwhelming rejection by the rank and file.
The very real possibility of privatization has been no secret. This threat, combined with rapidly deteriorating material conditions, has changed the mood of the workers. As a result, a national network of rank and file leaders, the Build a Fighting NALC (BFN), has grown slowly over the past two years. BFN was the main organizer of the hundreds of rallies on March 23 with virtually no help from their national union, save for the printing and distribution of posters. BFN Coordinating Committee declared:
We must make it clear to the President and the broader public that we will not simply sit back and wait for the courts or politicians to come to our rescue. We will not roll over and watch the USPS die without a fight. BFN
The NALC nationally is one of the most diverse unions in the U.S., According to the union’s official fact sheet:
Women comprise 35 percent of the letter carrier workforce; African Americans, 23 percent; Latinos, 11 percent; Asian American/Pacific Islanders; 7 percent. The average age of letter carriers is 46, and the average job tenure of our members is about 13 years.
The rally in Boston attracted hundreds of letter carriers and featured many heartfelt and bracing speeches from the rank and file including one from Mara Cahill, a transgender letter carrier from Philadelphia.
More “from the bottom up” union unrest, appeared in the Save Our Services rallies organized nationally on February 18 by the Federal Unionist Network (FUN) which describes itself as “an informal association of federal unionists and our allies organizing to support each other in strengthening our unions, improving our agencies and building solidarity across the federal sector of labor.”
Elsewhere in Organized Labor Resistance News
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) had a modest rally in Washington D.C. on February 11 and nationally coordinated rallies across the country on March 20. AFGE is also relying on the federal courts, and ultimately the Supreme Court, to strike down Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and the termination of approximately 100,000 federal employees. By the time you read this, the federal judge who issued a temporary restraining order stopping these terminations will have ruled on extending the TRO nationwide (AP, March 26th). As of March 25, 53 such temporary injunctions have been issued by federal courts. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), representing mostly IRS workers, is also resorting exclusively to the courts.
Thus, two fundamentally opposing future paths of struggle have been laid out by organized labor. History has shown that worker power from below has often produced profound reforms. But those gains have often been eroded over the years and union militancy has mostly been lost. It remains to be seen if this new assault on organized labor and the wider communities can give birth to a new resurgence in defense of our rights. It also is an open question whether the working class can move from defense against the billionaire class to offense that can overturn the entire exploitative system of monopoly capitalism. Only that victory can assure lasting benefits to all poor and working people in this country.
The author is a former member NTEU, National Treasury Employees Union, Nashville, TN
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