The Strike
On March 17, 1970, members of Local 36 in Manhattan met and voted to strike. Picketing began just after midnight, on March 18.
More than 210,000 United States Post Office Department workers were eventually involved, although initially the strike affected only workers in New York City. These workers decided to strike against the wishes of their leadership. The spontaneous unity produced by this decision empowered the workers and called into question their need for central organization.
President Nixon appeared on national television and ordered the employees back to work, but his address only stiffened the resolve of the existing strikers and angered workers in another 671 locations in other cities into walking out as well. Workers in other government agencies also announced they would strike if Nixon pursued legal action against the postal employees.
Authorities were unsure of how to proceed. Union leaders plead with the workers to return to their jobs. The government was hesitant to arrest strike leaders for fear of arousing sympathy among other workers.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Postal Strike Of 1970
Famous quotes containing the word strike:
“Besides, our action on each other, good as well as evil, is so incidental and at random, that we can seldom hear the acknowledgments of any person who would thank us for a benefit, without some shame and humiliation. We can rarely strike a direct stroke, but must be content with an oblique one; we seldom have the satisfaction of yielding a direct benefit, which is directly received.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When we walk the streets at night in safety, it does not strike us that this might be otherwise. This habit of feeling safe has become second nature, and we do not reflect on just how this is due solely to the working of special institutions. Commonplace thinking often has the impression that force holds the state together, but in fact its only bond is the fundamental sense of order which everybody possesses.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)