Employment with the U.S. Postal Service has historically been a source of upward mobility for thousands of African American men and women since the 1860s, but it is a source that is expected to dry up in this century.
Over the past 10 years the U.S. Postal Service has reduced its workforce by 212,000 positions, anticipates another 100,000 positions lost to attrition, and plans to further eliminate 120,000 career positions by 2015. Some of the 120,000 eliminated positions could come through buyouts and other programs, but a significant number are expected to result from layoffs — if Congress allows the USPS to circumvent union contracts that explicitly prohibit laying off postal workers.
In what is becoming an American trend to undermine collective bargaining agreements across multiple industries, Postal Service employees and retirees face possible contractual changes that are being described by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, as “cost saving” measures intended to “protect taxpayers.”
The USPS is asking Congress to intervene on its behalf. In a recently released optimization document, the USPS states, “Unfortunately, the collective bargaining agreements between the Postal Service and our unionized employees contain layoff restrictions that make it impossible to reduce the size of our workforce by the amount required by 2015, therefore, a legislative change is needed to eliminate the layoff protections in our collective bargaining agreements.”
Postal union leaders are “absolutely opposed” to the layoffs. “The APWU will vehemently oppose any attempt to destroy the collective bargaining rights of postal employees or tamper with our recently negotiated contract — whether by postal management or members of Congress,” said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union.
There is a lot less mail these days, and job security is crumbling. Proposed cost-cutting measures that became public last week could eliminate 20 percent of the postal service workforce. The proposed cuts are the latest knock against a set of federal jobs that were once a trusted gateway to middle-class stability for families like Briscoe’s.
Across the nation, the postal service workforce has long reflected the makeup of America. The workforce is more than 50 percent white, 8 percent Hispanic, 8 percent Asian and 21 percent black, according to figures compiled by Philip F. Rubio, an assistant professor of history at North Carolina A&T State University who studies the postal service. Thirty-seven percent of its workers are female and about 1 / 4 are veterans.
In cities and small towns, postal jobs have long been respected jobs that could provide a stable income for a family. The American Postal Workers Union puts the average salary at $55,000.
“To get a job at the postal service meant an entrée into the middle class,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor who studies labor issues at the University of California at Berkeley. “For generations of Americans, it was the route to sending their kids to college, to having a decent life.”
For decades, the U.S. post service also was one of the nation’s largest employers, said Nancy Pope, the curator of postal history at the Smithsonian. The postal service employs 560,000, but the number is on the decline.
The appeal of postal jobs grew in 1970 after 200,000 USPS employees went on strike in protest of low wages and poor benefits. They won a 14 percent salary increase that year. By the 1980s, there were clauses banning layoffs, which guaranteed workers a job in the service even if their position was eliminated.
“It was the kind of job that, if you got it, you got to keep it,” Pope said.
In rural areas, being a postmaster was the next best thing to being mayor of the town. “It was the job to have,” she said. “And if you are a rural carrier, you know everybody's business.”
In urban areas, the jobs were especially important to African Americans, who were hired by the post office as early as the 1860s. Many major cities — including Charleston, S.C., Little Rock and New Orleans — had African American postmasters during Reconstruction, according to the National Postal Museum.
Alton Branson, a 56-year old letter carrier in Clinton, said he was drawn to the work for the same reasons. A brother-in-law and a mentor encouraged him to apply 37 years ago.
“I just felt there was a lot of pride in the job, in wearing the uniform,” said Branson, a single father who sent three daughters to college on a postal worker’s salary. “Back then, we had the police hats with the badges. That intrigued me.”
In time, the postal service stayed in urban areas as other employers moved out, said Gary Burtless, a labor market expert at the Brookings Institution. “They still have sizable pockets of employment in communities that do not have lots of other good jobs. These jobs have decent wages, good health benefits and vacation benefits.”
Fred Jones, who lives in Largo, was hired as a janitor at a post office six years ago. USPS was looking to hire veterans and that gave him a leg up. His father had worked there for 42 years — eventually becoming a supervisor. Jones’s plan is similar, despite the planned cuts.
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