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The 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 at the end of the congressional session.
Pay Raises
Meanwhile, union restlessness was growing. Last July, postmen received a 4.1 % pay increase as part of a two-year-old package. But the carriers and clerks, viewing their pay raise in the light of the 41% hike that Congressmen had voted for themselves the previous February, were infuriated rather than satisfied. Government employees generally were scheduled to receive another small raise this July 1. As an anti-inflation measure, however, the Nixon Administration proposed deferring that increment for six months.
Nor were postal workers placated by Nixon's plan for postal reform. The Administration was committed to a plan developed in 1968 by a ten-man Commission on Postal Organization headed by Frederick Kappel, former board chairman of American Telephone and Telegraph Co. The plan recommended abolition of the Cabinet-rank position of Postmaster General and the creation of a Government-owned corporation with power to set postage rates with congressional approval (see box page 14).
Fearing loss of their civil service status and diminution of their leverage in Congress, the unions opposed the Kappel plan. So did a good many Congressmen, who were apprehensive that such a plan would deprive them of their patronage power. Moreover, the postal unions are the largest and most politically active civil service bloc and, though their vote power has not resulted in high wages, they still influence many Congressmen. Nixon indicated, however, that he would veto any postal-pay bill that did not include creation of a postal corporation. To resolve the impasse, he called in Rademacher and they agreed on a bill that the letter carriers could support. But other postal unions—the clerks, mail handlers and expressmen—rejected the plan, breaking the unions' once solid front and giving Congress another excuse to go slowly.
Union Revolt
The delay drove the unions to the brink of revolt. "Those bastards took little enough time to vote themselves a 41% pay increase," said a postal worker. "Why should they take longer to give us 8%?" Stamping their feet and clapping their hands, members of Branch 36 broke up their December meeting with raucous cries of "Strike! Strike!" Their mood frightened union officials. "We were no longer in control," said Executive Vice President Herman Sandbank.