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> Some 9,000 young men in the New York area got a temporary reprieve from the draft. New York's local draft boards, unable to send out their traditional greetings because of the strike, delayed physical examinations and inductions scheduled for April 5 to 20 for at least a week. This did not really rate as much of a hardship.
The strike tested the ingenuity and determination of many of those affected. Some firms, like the National Broadcasting Co., shipped their mail to areas where postmen remained on the job. Many turned to Western Union. "It's terrible," said John Blasi, assistant manager of a Times Square office, as he watched clerks who normally handle 800 telegrams a day write out the 2,000th by 11 a.m. "We can't handle it."
The strike proved to be an unexpected bonanza for a handful. Arnold Bloom, of Manhattan, who transmits documents by facsimile machines to 31 centers in the U.S. and Canada, was besieged with requests to send everything from electrocardiograms to copies of Securities and Exchange Commission rulings. One physician requested the medical records of an American hospitalized in Europe. Messenger services thrived. New York City's Fleet Messenger Service, which normally handles 3,000 deliveries a day, had orders for 4,000 before noon on the first day of the strike. Another firm used the strike as an opportunity to go into the business of private mail delivery. It picked up more than 100,000 letters at 10¢ plus postage, trucked them out of New York and mailed them.
A New Jersey lawyer, unable to mail necessary papers to the courthouse, telephoned the judge who was handling his case and explained what he wanted to do. Then he called the opposing lawyer, who in turn called the judge to confirm receipt of the message. In Paterson, N.J., police divided up a stack of court orders and delivered them in patrol cars. "The absence of mail is vexatious," said Passaic County Judge Vincent Duffy, "but it won't stop the courts. Thank God for the telephone and the automobile."
The postal workers, of course, feel that they have been inconvenienced and deprived for years. For one thing, their salary scales are the same across the country. A letter carrier in New York, the nation's second most expensive city, gets no more than his counterpart in Butte, Mont., where living costs are lower. The workers seek a salary schedule that starts at $8,500 and goes to a top scale of $11,700 after five years. They also want broader retirement benefits and Government assumption of the costs of their pension plan, which now comes out of their pay.
Congress, enmeshed in both the pay question and the issue of renovating the whole postal system, displayed no interest in acting quickly.