More on the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), Part One

Yes, I did spend real human money at the NALC online store, as promised, and got myself three mementos: a patch bearing the organization's logo plus two books. A part of me also wanted to purchase a "branch past president pin" for $10, just to see whether they would find out that I had never been a "branch past president" and refuse to ship it to me, but that would be too whimsical an experiment, and I am not an unduly whimsical person.

A patch, a more interesting book and one that is less so

The NALC Patch

Back to the patch. NALC's logo is as simple as the union's architectural taste, but apparently invokes within its ranks great pride and fondness. A postal employee in 1891 reported, upon the recent adoption of said symbol, that "the badges... have been received and the boys are highly delighted with them, and we're constantly being complimented on their beauty by the public." Whether letter carriers still wear them is a mystery to me, but I will make sure to intercept the mail lady next time she visits my apartment.

A History of the NALC

The second object is a physical copy of M. Brady Mikusko and E. John Miller's Carriers in a Common Cause, the somewhat official history of NALC, in its "125th anniversary edition." Given that it is available in its entirety online, a brief (at least brief-er than the 136-page long book) executive summary here should suffice:

1) 1775-1862, during which the Post Office was still an infantile and disorganized affair, and the carriers received no salaries but merely collected 2 cents from every letter delivered -- this sounds like a pretty decent living, until you recall that at the time most people went to post offices to collect their own mail rather than have it delivered to their doorsteps, which was not good for carriers' income security.

Another threat to said security is the spoils system, aggravated during the Jackson administration in the 1830s. Under this system many executive employees, including postmasters, their clerks and letter carriers, were hired, promoted, fired and replaced based on their partisan affiliation or personal relationship to superiors. Their career prospects were thus at the whims of partisan politicians, and there was no qualification requirement whatsoever.

2) 1863-1888, during which period three major changes affected the letter carriers: (a) as city delivery became a thing in 1863 (by which urbanites could receive and send letters at their residences, usually twice a day), local carrier associations began to develop in major cities like New York and Chicago, the first ever attempts at association; (b) the assassination of President Garfield in 1881 by a disappointed office seeker kicked start the famous civil service reform, culminating in the 1883 Pendleton Act that mandates competitive exams for those civil servants including letter carriers.

Moreover, (c) this period witnessed the first major clash between the Post Office Department and its carrier workforce -- when an 1868 law gave all federal "laborers, workmen and mechanics" 8-hour workdays, the Department deliberately exempted letter carriers from its coverage. Disappointed postal workers joined forces with the Knights of Labor, and with its foremost congressional ally Rep. Samuel S. Cox earned themselves the long overdue 8-hour days in 1888. Four years earlier, Cox had already persuaded his congressional colleagues to give all letter carriers 15 days of with-pay vacation each year. The 1880s was a pretty good time for American postal workers.

3) 1889-1901, a period with continual, but limited, success for postal workers. The NALC, the first national labor union for letter carriers, was organized in Milwaukee in 1889, and immediately proved itself in suing the Government over the Post Office Department's stubborn unwillingness to enforce its 8-hour workday policy. Coming out of the case victorious, the union soon threw itself into another struggle, this time against the "repugnant" practice of hiring postal spotters, whose sole responsibility was to spot and report every slight workplace mistake, often targeting union members and officers. Despite NALC's repeated protests, the system was only brought down by vocal opposition from the nation's newspapers, a sign of the organization's constrained resources.

This was further evidenced by its failure to realize any of its three top policy goals: (a) a uniform salary structure between big-city and small-town carriers; (b) minimum wages for substitute carriers, who had to be constantly on call for temporary and meagerly paid-for tasks; (c) guaranteed pension for carriers. Its plea to have carriers' wages generally raised also fell on deaf ears, and by 1900 letter carriers were making roughly half of that made by bricklayers.

4) 1902-1912, largely coinciding with the Theodore Roosevelt administration, was not too good a time for postal workers. In response to rising activism and unionizing amongst federal employees, Roosevelt issued in 1902 the so-called "gag order," forbidding all federal employees to petition members of Congress on legislative issues. Another executive order followed in 1906 to permit dismissal of federal employees without cause, while the Taft administration in 1909 further banned them from answering congressional requests for information about their working conditions.

This "Reign of Terror," as called by the NALC, ended in 1912 with the Lloyd-LaFollette Act and its two companion acts, lifting the gag order, mandating post office closure on Sundays, legalizing federal employee unionization and, at the same time, forbidding their affiliation to any union organization that advocates for labor strikes against the federal government. All in all, not too bad a trade-off.

5) 1913-1920, which witnessed the power dynamics between the letter carriers and their employers swing once more to strike the workers in their face like a pendulum. Albert S. Burleson, the Postmaster General appointed in 1913, vehemently opposed all progressive legislation passed in the previous era. The NALC managed to pass several federal acts on workplace injury compensation and equalization of pay, but its foremost objective of a letter carrier pension system would not be achieved without at least a few ugly incidents, most notably the 1915 Fairmont, WV protest, when an entire station resigned upon the sacking of one elderly colleague. The government responded swiftly by jailing and fining these workers, one of whom committed suicide in prison.

The carriers, of course, did not acquiesce so easily. Their earlier suspicions of those more powerful labor unions like the American Federation of Labor (AFL) turned to tolerance and support under those oppressive Burleson years, and the NALC finally assented to its affiliation with it in 1917, with 92% of its membership voting in favor. More coordinated and strengthened than ever, letter carriers lent its force to the AFL's campaign for workmen's pensions -- In 1920, Congress passed the Civil Service Retirement Act, finally offering annuities to some federal employees, including letter carriers, above the age of 65.