Giving Thanks
As the temperature slowly drops to tolerable levels and the days get shorter and I get closer to another birthday I become more reflective of the year past. This year has been especially stressful both personally and professionally. What I have done to help mitigate that is to focus harder on what I am grateful for helping others. As such I have decided to dedicate this article to my favorite labor advocate, and to share my love for Labor history and as homage to this great Union. This is for you, Vince.
Vince Sombrotto, who led one of the nation’s most powerful Unions for 24 years, died on January 10th, 2013, at a hospital near his home in Port Washington, Long Island N.Y. He was 89. Vincent Sombrotto, who as a rank-and-file Letter Carrier that led a wildcat strike which shut down post offices across the country in 1970. Our Union now represents about 180,000 active Letter Carriers.
After serving in the Navy, in the Pacific conflict, during World War II, Mr. Sombrotto was hired as a casual letter carrier in 1947 for what was supposed to be a Christmastime job. It was his Mother that suggested that he take the job. After quickly becoming a career Letter Carrier, for most of the next 20 years, he delivered mail from the Grand Central post office in Manhattan.
It must be noted that in 1970, a craft employee of the Post Office with 21 years of service earned a top step average of $8,440, practically poverty level in numerous urban areas. Despite constant please to Congress failed to rectify the pay situation. Perhaps another kind of President might have been able to empathize with the anger of letter carriers over decades of injustice— or even to sense the inevitable conflict. But Richard Nixon (President at the time) was not that leader. Nixon offered the carriers empty promises.
December 1969, when Richard Nixon asked NALC President Rademacher to meet privately with him to forge a compromise on postal pay and postal reform, Rademacher agreed. The two men met in the White House on December 18, 1969—alone except for the presence of two White House lawyers. At this meeting, they reached the long-sought compromise. But when the results of the Rademacher- Nixon meeting became public, the leaders of other postal Unions as well as members of Congress were outraged that they had been excluded. And letter carriers were incensed.
On March 18, 1970, largely at Mr. Sombrotto’s urging, members of Branch 36 of the National Association of Letter Carriers — the Union’s local in Manhattan and the Bronx — had voted 1,555 to 1,055 to strike, defying the Union’s warnings that to do so would break a law barring federal employees from striking. On March 23, 1970, Nixon announced on television that he had “just now directed the activation of the men of the various military organizations to begin, in New York City, the restoration of essential mail services.”
“We were just a group of people that felt that we were being taken advantage of,” Mr. Sombrotto said in 2010 at a 40th-anniversary celebration of the strike. Every letter carrier he knew, he said, “worked on two jobs, three jobs, just to survive.”
By the time Nixon sent in the troops, the wildcat strike had spread to 671 post offices in 30 cities and involved more than 200,000 workers. The walkout gained strength after members of the American Postal Workers Union, joined the Letter Carriers on the picket lines. The primary issue was pay. The poverty line was $3,700; the equivalent of about $30,806.12 today for a family of four, in many urban areas pay was so low compared to cost of living that many postal workers were eligible for welfare and food stamps.
The strike ended after eight days as negotiations continued. The eventual contract included a substantial pay raise and a reduction in the time required to reach top pay. Sombrotto’s personal charisma, street smarts and military background led to his taking charge and to other carriers following his lead. The walkout spurred Congress to enact the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, establishing the United States Postal Service as a quasi-independent entity and providing full collective-bargaining rights for most postal workers. The Postal Reorganization Act also included the present-day process of binding interest arbitration to avoid similar such actions. Vince Sombrotto led the boisterous members of Branch 36 in a walkout that sparked the first national postal strike in history. Following the strike, Sombrotto pushed to maintain the momentum, pledging to give individual letter carriers a political voice in their own Union.
Vincent R. Sombrotto was elected the 16th president of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) in 1978, serving nearly 24 years until his retirement in December 2002. As president, Mr. Sombrotto’s accomplishments for letter carriers and for the Union include seven highly productive rounds of collective bargaining that provided basic wage increases in every contract, preserved uncapped cost-of-living adjustments, and improved working conditions. Furthermore, in 1993 the NALC played a critical role in winning reform of the Hatch Act, and Sombrotto’s bargaining exploits were highlighted by the historic 1999 Grade 6 upgrade. President Sombrotto was responsible for one man, one vote, making the NALC one of the most democratic Unions in the country. Additionally, the NALC has raised millions of dollars for the Muscular Dystrophy Association, and the annual NALC Food Drive has become the world’s largest one-day food collection.
In the mid-1970s, NALC leaders had recognized that although the Union had acquired the right to bargain collectively for its membership, a strong and influential presence in the halls of Congress was still imperative. The Union also formed its political action committee—the Committee on Letter Carrier Political Education, or COLCPE—to raise funds for contributions to friendly congressmen and senators. But these efforts met with little enthusiasm from the membership. Active legislative volunteers were recruited to work with an appointed legislative liaison in each congressional district. In turn, legislative liaisons reported to a state legislative chairman—almost always the state association president. In 2015, its name was changed to Letter Carrier Political Fund (LCPF) to better reflect its mission to support political candidates who advocate for letter carrier initiatives.
Although Vince had plenty of help along the way, he will always be one of my heroes as the architect of one of the world’s best Labor Unions. I am grateful for him. I wish all of you a happy, healthy holiday season. God bless you.
