Word: mailmen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Clifford Odets' play Waiting for Lefty, typified the spirit of radical protest in the depressed 1930s. Now, in the affluent '70s, it is echoing from meetings of union men who would fit neatly into Odets' script (truck drivers, tugboat deckhands) and many others who would not (mailmen, air traffic controllers). Their mood of frustration is so intense that 1970 may go down in U.S. economic history as the Year of the Strike...
...their eagerness to ward off just such a disaster, both sides made concessions. The Government, which had earlier pledged not to negotiate until the strike ended, seized on a developing back-to-work trend as an excuse to open talks with union leaders. The mailmen, who had vowed to stay out until Congress took action on their wage demands, settled for the opening of serious talks with Administration officials-though the Executive Branch by itself has no authority to set pay scales...
...House Post Office and Civil Service Committee reported out a measure that provided for 98% of the postal workers a hike of 5.4% retroactive to October 1969, plus an average 6% raise for all federal employees, including the mailmen, early in 1970. The House passed the bill and sent it along to the Senate. There, according to union officials, "it was emasculated." The Senate amended it so that it provided a raise of only 4% for all federal employees earning less than $10,000 annually. House and Senate conferees never met on the bill, and it passed into legislative limbo...
...convince the Congressmen and the national [union] president that we were not playing games and that there would be a strike unless we got the legislation that would satisfy [our members]." Their attempt was unsuccessful. Earlier this month, the Post Office Committee reported out still another bill providing the mailmen with a 5.4% increase retroactive to January. The men were unhappy with the amount. They were further irked by the announcement that Congress would take no action on the bill for three or four weeks. "This was the spark that set them on fire," said Sandbank...
...discussions on all of the issues as soon as the men went back to work. Senator Gale McGee, chairman of the Senate Post Office Comittee, agreed to consider postal pay raises as part of a general salary bill covering all federal employees, but refused to take any action while mailmen remained on strike. Said McGee: "I will not discuss any pay legislation that rewards only those workers who walk out on the American people in a wildcat strike." Rademacher was satisfied with the deal, confident that he could sell it to postal union officials...