After the Storm: Postal Politics and Labor Relations Following the 1970 U.S. Postal Wildcat Strike, 1970–1981

A common misconception of the 1970 United States postal wildcat strike views it as a remarkable grassroots mass activity that nonetheless exhausted itself after 8 days. As the picket lines faded, this master narrative holds, postal unionists returned to work while elected union leadership returned to Capitol Hill to lobby and negotiate, help reorganize the post office and reshape postal policy. In fact, there is much more complexity to the post-strike decade, including localized wildcats; strike threats; contentious collective bargaining; the NALC slapping (then withdrawing) a trusteeship on its largest, most militant branch; and insurgent reformists ascending to national leadership in the NALC and APWU. Far from being a one-off, I argue, the 1970 strike represented the beginning of a new “democratic movement culture” among postal unionists that used historical experience and memory of the strike to maintain pressure on the USPS and its unions to reform themselves.