When Can I Sign Up?
First Day On the Job
I hired into the Post Office in October of 1972. I was a postal assistant. I had a friend of mine who worked for approximately a year. During that year, ¾ of the days we worked they told us they were going to fire us. We couldn’t belong to the union, although we hired in as the lowest level clerk craft. We couldn’t get retirement and we couldn’t get sick leave or annual leave. We worked four hours a night. I was going to college and working at the Post Office. In October they negotiated a contract, in 1973. The Post Office called us in, in September and said today is a great day, you can join the Post Office. There were 30 of us working at the Post Office. No one would stand up to sign the list to become career employees. Finally a guy got up, raised his hand, and said, ‘ok, when can we join the union?’ The Director of Operations and the Director of Human Resources said, ‘I guess you can join right now.’ And when he said that, everybody got up, and all 30 people got up and signed the papers to join the Post Office. We had experienced what it was like to work for the Post Office, without the union, without the protection. Almost all of the people that signed up with me went into management. I’m one of the few that’s left.
AUTHOR NAME: Randall Downard
