 I am Al Bradbury, editor of Labor Notes. Labor Notes is a magazine and an organizing project, and since 1979 has been the voice of, in the sort of organizing hub for the trouble-making wing of the labor movement, we like to say. People want to put the movement back in the labor movement, including many postal workers over the years. And presently, I've been honored to work with a group of postal workers who've been meeting every week through the pandemic to organize around safer working conditions in the postal service, saving the people's public postal service and more. And we have quite a list of speakers and a great film for you tonight, so I don't want to take up any more time. We are gonna hear first from Dennis O'Neill and then Lee Ornati, both retired postal workers. And then we will hear from a couple of the filmmakers, Tammy Gold and Eric Lewis, and then we will see the film itself. And then we will hear from some of the participants in the strike portrayed and the struggle portrayed, Chris Lomalino and Bob Kirkman. And then to current postal workers, Malachi Dre and Aaron Brown will pose questions and responses to the speakers. We're gonna accomplish all that in under 90 minutes. If you have questions that you're hoping the panelists will answer, you can type them in the Q&A box and we may get to them. You'll see Q&A at the bottom of your screen. So take it away, Dennis. Dennis, you're on mute. Thanks, Al. I just wanna underline how important Labor Notes has been to not just this one video with the whole project that we're working on. This has been, as people have probably noticed, a very strange year. In January, we were talking in New York Metro area Postal Union of the APWU and other unions as well about observing the 50th anniversary of the 1970 postal wildcat, the famous strike to pretty much shut down the postal system, introduced actual unionism with collective bargaining and really created the modern postal service. All that went by the wayside. And we have been through a year in which the United States Postal Service and postal workers have actually been at the heart of, not so much the economic, but the political struggle in the United States. Is there going to be a democratic election or not? Will it be possible? Can the postal service be throttled by intentional mismanagement, the deprivation of money, et cetera, and can postal workers and the many millions of Americans who actually love the postal service step up and beat this shit back. And that we put together a small crew which became a larger crew. And we've been doing, had a bunch of rank and filers, retirees, local presidents, all four unions, as Al says, meeting weekly, zooming weekly and trying to figure out what stage the struggle is at because we've gone through phase after phase after phase. And I'm sure that many of you have been following this and are at least vaguely aware of just the super importance of the postal struggle. We have supposedly a hundred and some people on this call right now. And I will bet a bright shiny buffalo nickel that if I had asked you three months ago who the postmaster general of the United States was, except for those who are postal workers, you would have had no idea. And a lot of people would have said, what's a postmaster general? So we're in a very different state. We've got a target. We've got Lewis DeJoy who tried to screw the post office up and we're, hang on, let me just show this shit here. Okay, good. And, we are organizing still, right now we're dying. Postal workers are, there is tons of mail every place. There is gridlock and there are delays in the Georgia ballot mail. So we're still on some of the same struggles we've been. The two main issues that we have now are occupational safety and health in the COVID era and the incredible super exploitation, over exploitation of postal workers with speed up, not so much speed up, but just mandatory overtime. There are people who are listening to this call right now who probably have not had a day off in over a month and those days aren't eight hour days. They're 12, 16 hour days. So we thought that the experience of the struggle at the bulk which is what we're doing here has some lessons for today, both for people who are fighting today but also reminders of folks who are around back in the day that this is an ongoing struggle. So with that, I'll kick it to Lee Ornati and he's gonna lay a little background for us. Hello everyone, my name's Lee. I'm gonna just do a quick on the 1974 Wildcat at the bulk. I was an activist from the anti-draft struggle. They were trying to draft me and send me to Vietnam and I didn't like it. So I became radicalized and as part of that, I turned my eyes to the union struggle to the working people and because I had seen the 1970 strike which was an amazing nationwide almost spontaneous activity. I started at the post office in late 1970, early 1971. I worked at the Long Island City facility that's on Northern Boulevard where Home Depot is now and major world and it was a crazy place. It was a big open area backed up on the railroad. It was mud, it was old trucks, it was sidelined rail cars. It was a big drafty building and nothing had changed there since World War II. It was the old way and they were beginning to hire young people. Immediately within the first year, I ran for office for us to be a steward on the throw the bums out platform and won overwhelmingly and I was looking for some stuff. So I found my old steward's badges and in any case, but right away the union and the management united to try to sideline me and try to fire me and because I was young and banged up pretty often they were nearly successful. But then within the first year I was there, they started talking that they were closing down. Now the 1970 strike had helped with the economics of the post office whereas the wages had been terrible before they did begin to raise somewhat but postal management had a response. They were gonna squeeze advances, they were gonna squeeze productivity out of the workers if they could and they had a lot of allies in that struggle. Where I worked had been the post office for all the packages, the pre-sort for all the packages for Long Island, the Long Island city local and the APO FPO, the mail for the army and the Navy. And they shut that all down and moved the bulk packages plus the army and the Navy to the bulk facility in New Jersey. So this bulk facility was the first one to open of 17 new bulk facilities and I transferred there and they hired a lot of people. I was 22, had worked less than two years in the post office and my seniority was number 53 out of over 3,000. All the others were new hires and they were hired from Jersey City. They were young, there were a lot of African-Americans, a lot of rebellious young people, a lot of vets, vets got extra points when they tried to come in. If you were a wounded vet, there was no way they could keep you out, you just got in. And so there were a lot of vets and there was a rebellious attitude but it was not a labor-focused kind of a thing. It was a general kind of a thing. And postal management had no idea how to run a bulk facility. They didn't know how the equipment worked, they didn't know how to organize it, they didn't know how to management, they created chaos. And so all the new young people who they would change your hours with no notice, they would have some people with no work, some people with mandatory overtime and so a lot of people wanted to fight back and we were with that. So we called a Wildcat and everybody walked out and we were not well-organized but the people got behind us. When we started, they weren't really behind us but they got behind us and it was a great Wildcat. Later on, we were out for about a week, several of us got arrested, seven people were arrested and then three people were fired and they made some concessions and everybody went back, especially people were scared because of the fired workers. Now, those leaders, it took years for them to come back but eventually they did get their jobs back and so when they came back, that was part of the leadership and the right sentiment for people to go out on the 78 strikes. So my point here is just to say, step at a time, this built. Thank you. Thanks very much, Lee. So we will hear now from the filmmakers, Tammy Gold and Eric Lewis. Tammy, please take it away. Okay. Well, Eric who's here, Eric unmute yourself. So we could talk like that. Eric and I, we knew people who were part of the struggle in the both facility in Jersey City and one day a friend of ours challenged us and he said, come on, go out there and start working on a film. And that was Dan Gordon and he said he would help us. So it was really spontaneous and we started filming really the struggle that was going on pretty much day by day. We had no money, we had no equipment, everything was loaned. So you see in the film, which is barely restored but you do see this range of technology being put together at the same time, it's really reflective of the struggle. It was people coming together. There was no money to support the fired workers or the whole movement. And the, I see the film is very reflecting of labor movements and labor struggles which it's kind of really ground up. It's really from the bottom up and it couldn't have been done without the postal workers and it couldn't have been done without the leadership of the struggle that was going on. So I guess, I mean, I don't want to say that much more about it. It was a collaborative effort. We, Eric and I and Dan worked very hard to make the film, the process of making the film as much collaborative as we saw the struggle. So Eric, what else do you, what do you think about the process and the making of the film and why we did it? Well, it was a confluence of wonderful things. I recall we were either associated with working at the Henry Street settlement and they provided some of the equipment in the beginning. And both Tammy and I, I recall we're coming out of a kind of rabbit hole where Tammy had been, you know, had made a wonderful film about Nicaragua and my country occupied. And I had come from being in the Free Southern Theater, a civil rights theater group and then been very active politically and the political stuff kind of suppressed our artistic work. And we came together and supported each other and Dan, you know, was a catalyst in this too. So we wanted to do something to contribute visually, artistically to the movement. And it was very powerful for me. It got me back into that and which I'm very grateful for and that's what I stayed in. I do want to say I looked at the film and I know I don't want to be spoilers but it's a very great film. And it did win it won first prize on what became the Sundance Festival in 1982. It was called at the time the US Film and Video Festival. And I do want to also say and give honor to Michael McDermott who was a postal worker who was killed during the filming when we had filmed. And his tragedy has given a story arc to the documentary that we created that highlights the seriousness of a necessity for labor organizing both then and today. And I don't want to, as his wife said during the hearings and I quoted him, she said, is this what a life is worth in the post office, a sack of mail? And she was commenting on the fact that the conveyor belt that he was working on the safety switches were disabled in order to keep the workflow happening because they malfunctioned too often. And if they had been in place he wouldn't have been killed. So unfortunately, that's not such an unusual story. And I will stop there. Let this film speak for itself. So before I roll the film, I just wanted to mention that because of this event today it's the first time I've looked at the film probably in 20 years or more. The film is 40 years old. And it's really not in good condition. So we ask for your kind of sensitivity and appreciation that this was organized. And Eric and I are going to try to have the film restored because you've motivated us. So thank you, thank you. I'm going to share the screen and all this necessitates lots of patience. Here I go. Everybody else should mute. Okay, mute. Everybody. And we're a chief distribution network for big business. The postal service is to a greater extent to brainwash the public. I shouldn't say brainwash, dry clean the public as to how great of a job this is. This job is hell. Absolutely hell. This is what we'll catch you. 600,000 people working for the postal service. Since 1970, when it was reorganized by Nixon more and more mail is handled by machine. Postal management wanted to improve productivity. But for the postal worker, mechanization has meant more noise, more dust, more forced overtime, and more accidents. Postal workers today work under factory conditions. But unlike other factory workers, postal workers do not have the right to strike. The unions represent the nation's postal workers. The largest is the American Postal Workers Union. Metro, the New York metropolitan area, is the largest local in the APWU. Despite the government ban on strikes, there has been no labor peace in the postal service. In the three contracts since 1970, there have been two major workouts. No workers were fired. In 1978, the union policy was, no contract, no work. Carter was trying to control inflation by clamping down on workers' wage increases. And he wanted the postal worker to be an example. When the old contract expired at midnight, July 21st, postal workers at the New York Bulk Center walked out, joined by workers from other facilities across the country. It demands work and speed-ups, no forced overtime, and pay increases to keep up with the cost of living. Since 1975, we're working under a contract that's been a job of security. He wrote it on working conditions, and that's where prices of living go up. Families on this contract, this isn't a decent contract for anyone. Postal inspectors, the secret police of the Postal Service took extensive videotapes of the demonstrations which were used against them. We have workers here being fired by postal inspectors because they were seen speaking to each other in the cafeteria. They put injunctions on us here. They're refusing to let us pick it. They're refusing to let us hand out literature. The repression is unbelievable. People have to face surveillance 24 hours a day out here, like right now. Videotapes. Postmaster General Bolger arbitrarily fired 200 of the thousands of protesting workers. Recently in the difficulties we had in the early days, this agreement, a tentative agreement, I did take the necessary action to fire the people that were involved in the illegal strike. Did you mean that to be a lesson? I didn't mean it to be a lesson. I meant that to uphold the law. In this area, we've had postal inspectors camping out outside people's doors, harassing them, harassing their neighbors, their wives and children, a woman worker here named Linda, cheese of her house was snatched from her brother and the postal inspector's broken the door. This has been going on all over. They've been following people, trying to stop people from doing anything to communicate with their fellow workers. We definitely want to see better safety conditions. There's too much dust in the BMCs. Far too much noise. The highest accident rate. The post office says they're committed to safety. The post office has bought these mechanical stock treks that are bruising up male and bruising up people and they're blaming it on the individual worker. If your job is clean and safe and healthy, you can quibble over in your own mind how much money it's worth. But no matter how much money you work and your life is in danger or your hand might be cut off by a machine that you're working in, money doesn't matter. See, the union has not put themselves on the line. They are putting us on the line. Both employed and fired workers felt that the union leadership had sold them out by not pouring a strike. That the union advocated a strike and when the people went out on strike, they didn't back them. That's right. That's the way I feel about it. And I feel the union, it's their obligation to bring all the people back. That's right. Give them help. That's what it means. We were sold down the drain on the contract. Don't let them sell you out. Don't let them sell you out. We're getting very angry with the way the union handled this. We want to go there. We want to tell them that we want amnesty and we don't want normal or small. Let's get this contract renegotiated and amnesty for all the fired workers. In North, federal judge Lacey upheld the legality of the firings. That's all. And that's all I'm concerned. The Nazis have more rights than I do. The Nazis can protest do what they want, but I, the U.S. citizen, can't. So I'm back where I started from behind April. In the meantime, they got a contract. They're gonna try and shut down your throat. You can't even live on it. So were you one of the ones that were fired? I was fired Friday morning. Fired workers felt that the union were inclined to not fight for them in court. The union is helping. How are they helping us? By trying to, wait a minute. Are you representing us as a whole? Are you representing us as a union? I understand. No, are you representing us against us? That's fine. You made every move in that court to block amnesty and you know it. All of us are in court today. We've been fired. We've been served with injunctions. The union has not taken a positive stand on helping us with a dam. Mo Biller, president of Metro, agreed it was a mistake not to have called a strike, although he opposed the contract at the time. I say we should have struck right. The problems arose at that time, which seemed to be overwhelming possibly because I was in Washington rather than in New York. I'm not going to alibi about it. There was a lot of confusion, but certainly I feel that we made a very fundamental error. I considered one of the most serious errors of my career. Postal Workers Defense Committee, a rank and file group, was formed to fight for amnesty for the 205 workers. On our side, we had the rank and file and we had some progressive union officials and some shop stewards. And the role of the Defense Committee was to mobilize our side of it. That's why people went out to the various conventions, ran people for union offices, leafleted all the stations in New York, put out a newspaper that was circulated nationally to be a core to rally people, not only behind the firings, but around all of the issues that affected the postal workers. In August, one month after the firings, the APWU held its National Convention in Denver. Five workers collected money at the plant gates to send a delegation to the convention. National President Emmett Andrews expected a tight convention. But many delegates supported the work and opposed the contract. Hundreds of delegates demonstrated against the contract. Their target, National President Emmett Andrews. I never quit in any fight and I like a good fight. You think the contract is worth standing up for? I think so and on behalf of the future of everybody in this business, the Postal Service and our people here, well, I think, well, it's the best I could get. I go on record to stand at the National Committee, the bargaining committee. Emmett Andrews and his boys did not bargain in fairness. They were not allowed to bargain that they have sold out the rank and file and I make those charges. This last contract, we had people in our office with like 28 to 30 year service and I never thought they would go and strike, but this time they were ready. I spent four and a half years in World War II and 36 months of that overseas in combat and I don't want anybody to tell me that I can't walk because I walk. I walk in a day and I recommend it to anybody and don't mind who I recommend it to. Not only were most of the delegates against the contract but they also voted support for the fired workers. I feel they should be rehired because I feel that they didn't go out on strike that maybe a lot of the stuff wouldn't start. I felt that they were the leaders and there's no way protecting them now. I think definitely if this union does not support those 200 workers who's out of a job, we can forget it. The government will destroy us. So what do I think about their working out? What else could they do? They're on site of contract. They tell you that's not negotiable. It was up to them to tell you what's negotiable and what's not negotiable. Heck, you gotta fight them. It had never happened before. All three unions voted down the postal contract overwhelmingly by forcing negotiations to reopen there was a chance to make amnesty a contract demand. Postmaster General Bolger continued to take a hard line. Having turned down that contract, the unions now want us to return to the bargaining table. But as far as I'm concerned, we did our bargaining. I could not in good conscience agree to anything more at the bargaining table now. Postmaster General has taken a hard line. Only a hard line on the union side can win a decent contract and amnesty for the fired workers. The survival of our union and its very credibility is at stake. With pressure from the rank and file, Bolger had to sit down with union leaders. However, only two issues were renegotiated. Removal of limitations on the cost of living allowance and the no-layoff quotes. From here, the contract went to finding arbitration. Final contract was out of the workers hands. There was no mention of mandatory overtime. No mention of safety. No mention of amnesty for the 200 fired workers. It was clear that Andrews and the national leadership opposed the fight for amnesty. At the local level, five workers had fought to get the metro leadership to take a strong stand. At this crucial point, Mo Biller moved to eliminate shop-steward elections in the New York area. So the whole purpose was that contrary to my own beliefs and my theoretical beliefs continue to be election because it's a grassroots thing. It's not an alibi. I still felt that we were not developing a stable-steward system. And when people are so-called stiffs, you have to get rid of them, period. It's much easier to get rid of somebody who will point. We just dump them, and that's it. We just had a vote there for a constitutional amendment. The vote was, the constitutional amendment that was proposed was that there be no more election of stewards, that there be only appointment of stewards. By the president, it was defeated. A majority, it was a majority vote, but it needed a two-thirds amendment to win. It did not get the two-thirds amendment. And you yourself, what do you think of the proposed amendment? I voted against it. Why? Why? Because I am for the democratic system of elections of stewards. I voted against it. Why? I'd rather have a democratic union where we elect our own stewards. I think we more or less know who is and who isn't qualified better than they can. And the people that voted for it don't work on the floor in the places they work in, in offices, executable offices. You know, they don't have people to work on the floor. They don't know what the hell's going on out there. They don't know what troubles we face or how do they know what kind of defense we need. What went on in five was beautiful because I believe in the people, the people. I just want to say one thing. The strike, the strike at the bulk centers, the rank and fall rejected the contract and the defeat of this commandment All parties, same state, rank and fall, move or fail. This thing where they try to eliminate good shop stewards, we could end up with 200 better shop stewards. But yet, what concerns me is the union. You do not have the support. Now that really concerns me. So that means we got to have the people behind us. Even with the union leadership. Kenny Liner, a fired worker and an active member of the Postal Workers Defense Committee ran for election as a vice president of the APWU and he won. The fired workers and the defense committee were gaining national support. The hard line taken by postal management had contributed to worsening safety on the job. Since 1978, fewer and fewer grievances had been won. This was a direct result of the union's weak stand on the fireman. Working conditions worsened. As a present shop store, we have not been able to win any grievances inside the facility at Step One or Step Two. It's almost seems like it's a pre-planned thing for management to deny everything we bring up there since July 21 last year. Between 1976 and 1979, there have been 60 work-related deaths in the Postal Service. There were more accidents in 1979 in the Jersey City Bulk Mail Center than there were employees. Clearly, your workers are unhappy about something. And you say that this agreement was fair and you have enough money. Do you think they're unhappy about their working conditions, all the mechanization that you've been putting in, the machines and the depersonalization of the jobs that they have? I think you find that it's not only in the Postal Service but in all the industries where you go into automation or mechanization, the employee finds it difficult to adjust to. We're trying to, we have a program that we call the Quality of Working Life. We're making quite a few studies, quite a few inquiries into this to see what we can do to make the job more enjoyable for the Postal Employee. As a steward, I used to go to the Medical Office all the time with people who in fact were sick or were injured and they continually tell them they were fit for duty. One day I took the nurse's side and I said, what kind of criteria do you have for whether people, she said, well, unless they're bleeding or unconscious, I consider them fit for duty, you know? And that's the way it went. You go to the quack down in the Medical Office, he'd say you were fit for duty. They didn't do anything to keep people on the job. Metro began to support the fired workers. Hundreds of workers took part in demonstrations organized by the Metro Anesty Committee. If you're driving your vehicle, be very careful in traffic. If you're liking on a machine's inside, be very careful because Banja isn't going to get a ticket stand but what happens to you? Banja. I think that the union is now supporting us is because they have finally felt threatened themselves. They see that this is not only a strike against postal workers, but a strike against postal unions or unions of all kinds. If they are allowed to get away with this, this will almost start the beginning of the abolishment of unions because this has shown that the union has no strength. They have just, disregarded the fact that we had a union at all. They have just trampled on our union and then us in turn. So if the union don't do anything here, then the union can just as well pull out and go away and disappear because it wouldn't be no good no more. Once again, the fired workers were still out of work. On July 21st, 1979, one year after the walkout, many angry and determined workers camped out in front of the Bulk Mail Center in Jersey City. The fired workers called the encampment, Bolgerville, named after the postmaster general who had put them there. As we stated before, we have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of work to do. As we stated before, we would have been back on the job a long time ago if it was not for the betrayal by the national union leaders, Emmett Andrews and Lani Johnson, who signed a contract with 200 workers on the street. And now Emmett Andrews has shown what he thinks of the fired workers. He's refusing to appeal the arbitration that is lost. He's refusing to seek amnesty. And to highlight that, he just threw me out of office that I was elected to for two years by the membership. And he's spitting in the face of that membership, spitting in the face of democracy. I'm proud to see all our brothers and sisters out here. And we're more determined than ever to win this fight. Make no mistake about it, Mr. Inspector. We're gonna win this fight. And when we get back inside, you're gonna pay the consequences. You're leaving scars. You're leaving scars that are not gonna be removed. So take that back to your un-American cohorts, your colleagues, your cronies. Take that message back. When we get back inside, the scars remain. And you will pay the consequences. Thank you. And we are gonna win. Make no mistake about it. We're gonna win this thing. In every walk of life. Christmas time came. The most dangerous time of the year for postal workers. With the fired workers still on the street, morale in the bulk was low. On December 15th, 1979, Michael McDermott, a 25-year-old male hamper at the Jersey City Baltic, was trapped in a conveyor belt and crushed to death. 200 postal workers attended the funeral. The technical machine, the Mike McDermott, we just found this out from the Yasha inspection, found that all the limited switches on the delivery light, instead of somebody got jammed, the machines were removed years ago so that the mail wouldn't stop moving. Also, there was no machine going on a machine and there was no limit switch. If there was a shingard there, he could have left his body, maybe his arm or his leg, he wouldn't have got sucked entirely into the machine. But the thing we found out that really makes us mad is that there's a jamb relay inside the machine that was removed so that the box or body got stuck in there and would stop and it took it out. Deemed postal workers die on the job each year. But Michael McDermott's death was different. It came in the wake of a long and hard struggle in which health and safety was an important issue. Well, there was a mail handler working the truck and an outbound extendable conveyor. He got caught in the conveyor belt. The safety limits which on the front-hand side of the conveyor belts are wired out as a matter of routine because they interfere with production and the guy was killed. He was sucked right into the conveyor belt and ripped apart. Are you complaining to management about the safety condition before? Many times, there was a foreman that covered the same area and shut down the base for them being unsafe. He was demoted because he shut down those very bays for them being unsafe. He was demoted to be in a clerk. Why did you decide to come out here and demonstrate tonight? Because we felt the need to. We felt the need to expose this and show people that the Post Office is a very, has a lot of safety hazards in it. And we want to show everybody that we just want to show everybody this. They haven't heard the end of this. They're not going to kill one of ours and get away with it with nothing happening in this place. No cover up. The workers forced politicians to hold a congressional hearing. However, they had to chant outside the doors for 30 minutes before they were admitted. The hearings began on January 7th, 1980. Honorable Congressman and my fellow, my husband's fellow workers. My husband, Michael, was a good family man and he was a hard worker. He never did complain about the conditions which prevail, such as heavy sacks and belts continuously going and never stopping. He was told to go back to work or else he would be fired. I will never understand until the day Michael was killed why he ever stayed on that job. He would come home at night complaining about his back and how his gloves and his pants were caught and torn because of the conveyors being stripped of its safety devices. Who was to blame for my husband's debt? Are the postal supervisors to blame? Maybe they didn't care and wanted the mail sacks out. Is it not their duty to check these conveyer belts periodically themselves? Is this what a life is worth at the postal service a sack of mail? My plea is that the bulk center where my husband was killed be made safe for all workers. So that the workers can work free of fear of being injured or killed. Some will forget my husband Michael McDermott after this but all I have left is memories and snapshots of them. My daughter will never know who her daddy was. My husband was my whole life. They not only took his, but they also took mine and my daughter's. Thank you. It has been brought out and will be further proved that postal management from bottom to top had repeatedly been made aware of the dangerous safety hazards yes, refused to take corrective action. We are here today to demand that Bojan his accomplices, including Galileo, the general manager Frank Schmidt, the formal general manager, DeSheranti the director of mail processing, Bojan manager of plant maintenance and the rest of the local bulk management and postal inspectors involved be held accountable for their criminal negligence and face criminal charges for the death of Mike McDermott. If you have a neck inspection and your safety people have been inspecting the plant, how do you justify the fact that there are 12 serious violations on May 23 that were outlined by Ocean to report? There's no way I could get that. And isn't it true that right after the accident, there are other conveyor belts that would take them offline the next day because they also were defective? Oh yes, yes, we took, as a matter of fact, Congressman, even today there are bays that do not, that have these, she's in these particular problems, but they are not being used. But you took 11 bays off the line as a result of the, as a result of the accident that happened on May 23, they could close the vehicles the next day. Well, I think we took a lot more than 11 off the line. Why did you take them off the line, sir? Because they did not mean that Ocean was indicating it was a problem. How come these avoided your inspections of inspections were, in fact, made by you and your safety people? Again, you say made by me. Unfortunately, Congressman, I cannot, you know, I cannot give you any reasons why they were in the condition they were. Who was responsible for the policy in the New York Times? Is it you, Mr. Jellison, or is it Mr. Bolliger? Where does the buck stops, or your opinion? Mr. Bolliger stops at the installation, I would imagine myself. The supervisor is to establish the severity of the potential hazard. Some, the equipment is not to be used or it's fixed, some it can be used in a different mode, and some it can be, you have a badment period of excellent bays. And that's a process that should be followed. So therefore, it's up to the whim of the plant manager as to whether or not a person is to work on defective equipment or not. There's a rim? There is a rim. I can't answer the question with that terminology. It's not up to the whim of the plant manager. Well, is there any other procedure within the plant that can shut down the equipment, or that the employees would not be forced to work on defective equipment if the plant manager is so thought that? If the plant manager determined that it was safe enough to work, would we work it? Is that the question? That's right. Yes, we would. And if the man did not accede to the directive of the plant management, would he be dismissed? He would be ordered to operate the equipment and then his procedure would be to file the reasons. Then there is no check and balance system to protect the work you may have set up in that plan. Is that correct? That the authoritative head, the bureaucratic chief is whatever the plant manager who just testified that he knows nothing about safety, that he is not an engineer, is to make this determination. Is that what you're telling this committee, sir? That's what I'm telling this committee, sir. And you feel that the dismissal of 156 employees has contributed to the lack of the morale? No. No. No, that safety is tied up with morale? Yes. And that is part of having a productive and safe place of work to have a good, experienced and core morale in the plant? Yes. What is done to raise the level of the morale in the plant today, sir? Since Mr. Gaderon has gone out there, I repeat. And I think it is important, Morale, that housekeeping has improved. It's went down. When you go to work at the bulk center, you are going to work for an employer whose main method of dealing in employee relations is repression, is outright repression. And so the employee's attitude, and Mrs. McDermott played this out, I think I can do it better as Jesus. It's unsafe, but I gotta have a job. I gotta family. I gotta do it. I was fired for nine months. I came back in form and up and down the line with telling people. You don't bother what we tell you, which includes working in unsafe conditions. You'll be out there the way they are. And to a man, everybody at work knows that these people that were fired were fired unjustly. We're standing up against management and around a safe condition. It's very difficult to talk. I just let it's over and I just hope it proves something really, that's all. I see you have an amnesty button on. How, why do you have an amnesty button for the fire workers? Because I think something should be done about it for them, I support them. On January 9th, 1980, Galeon resigned as manager of the Jersey City bulk. But Galeon was just a scapegoat. Bolger and other top management are responsible for conditions in the postal service. The fight won't be over until all the fired workers get their jobs back, until no one is forced to work a 60 hour week, until no one gets killed by management neglect. Thank you so much. So we have, we're lucky enough now to have with us a couple of the people you saw appear in that film, a couple of the postal workers involved in that fight, Cristina Lomolino and Bob Kirkman, who will speak a little bit now about their experience of it. Starting with you, Chris, Bob, you're on mute. It's really a pleasure to speak to some of the postal workers from today. I just can't believe these events are more than 40 years old, but you can tell by the fashion involved. I just wanted to say a few words about the role of rank and file organizations. The role of a rank and file organization as I understand it from our time in the Bulk Mail Center was not to replace the union, but always to fight for union democracy, to try to oust leaders within the union that were not on the side of the people and to run for office ourselves and to encourage our coworkers to run so that the union can always be a fighting organization for the workers. We collaborated and supported union initiatives. For example, if something comes up like the elimination of Deuce Chekhov, that affects everyone. And normally the union would launch a campaign over something like that and we would support them. And I think one thing the film shows is how important it was for rank and file leadership to step up. There were so many workers interviewed that I remember from that time that were outspoken. And the role of the rank and file organization and was to give shape to the demands of the workers and to provide platforms for people to be heard. So it was about mobilizing people to go to union meetings when there was a really important item on the agenda. And I might just add, it's really important to pick your battles because you can't just be in fight mode constantly. It doesn't really work that way. So to choose the fights was really important. Shop-steward elections, democracy in the union, union democracy, without union democracy, the union cannot fight for the workers. So the elimination of the shop-steward elections really provoked people, but it was the leadership that said let's all go and made sure that everyone knew that that's what was being cooked up and why it should be opposed. And there was just an enormous turnout at that union meeting because people could see the importance of not having cronyism in the selection of shop-stewards, but to have union democracy. Also in the contract negotiations, particularly important, and we put a lot of effort into making sure that people knew what the demands were, what were the critical ones, what was going on in the negotiations, and eventually to mobilize people for a no vote. And that no vote, absent rank and file pressure, probably would not have happened. And the thing is when there's a really important demand, word of it spreads very quickly, very quickly, and from facility to facility and from union to union, but there was literature that went out, there were handouts that went out, there were meetings after work where this was all discussed. So providing a vehicle for people to be heard and to fight for what they need is so important. And that's what the rank and file groups, I feel were good at. We had relationships with the workers in all the different unions. We held meetings, there were publications. We supported union initiatives when they were important. We opposed moves to limit union democracy. And in the end, the fired workers became a symbol of the union's failure to really fight. I must say, I worked on the Postal Workers Defense Committee for more than a year and we had a lot of help from volunteer lawyers on there. I myself afterwards, I didn't get my job back, although most did, almost all did in the end. But the ability to mobilize a community of people to support the Postal Workers, even beyond the walls of the Post Office was important too. I remember there were Rutgers law clinic, pro bono lawyers who came to help with all of the arbitrations for the fired workers. And it really inspired me. I became a union side labor lawyer myself after working with them and spent a lifetime in the trade unions. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chris and Bob. Well, I haven't liked Tom, it's been a couple of decades at least since I've seen this film. And you know, it was an incredible experience and watching the film was very, very moving. We focused a lot on the issue of health and safety around the contract struggle. And we also focused a lot on mandatory overtime, which are two things which my new friends who are Postal Workers tell me is still very much an issue. And I think, you know, the thing that jumped out for me of this is that people have to stand up. You know, there had been strikes before people hadn't been fired. I remember sitting with a young friend, I was about 30, I had two young kids in 1978 sitting in my backyard and saying to my friend, I don't know why, I don't know, how am I gonna pay, you know, the rent? How am I gonna, you know, what this is gonna be? And he leaned forward and he said, oh man, I am so glad this happened cause I was gonna get fired anyway for some bullshit. And at least now I did something. And I think we got his job back. We did get almost all of the jobs back. There were four or five people, Chris being one of them, me being one of them, who I think they offered me a job someplace in Oklahoma, which since I was from New Jersey and Jersey City, you know, I was like, fuck you. But everybody else, we ended up forcing, you know, a settlement. We had suits by volunteer lawyers, Chris Remfist and that finally turned into a deal. But, you know, this was 1978, 1979 and what happens in 1980, Pat Go. I think that the thing that we were speaking to, and for those that are too young to know what Pat Go is, it was the air traffic controller, went on strike. Reagan was newly elected president and he fired all of them. And the union movement had a one day demonstration, solidarity day. Most, I mean, we all went, but it was a fact. I mean, in the same way, it speaks to the need for this kind of organization and this kind of activism and this kind of standing up in order to build a movement that people can understand stands for them and stands with them. So I had the lucky experience of ending up working for SEIU for a number of years and I worked on the fight for 15 to the very beginning of the fight for 15. And these workers in McDonald's and all sorts of other places did one day strikes. We had a big organization behind them a lot of political muscle, but they had to have a whole lot of courage, right? Because you're working in a fast food restaurant, you're making minimum wage, which is obscene, and but you need to live. So I looked at these workers and having been able to work with them and thought they were so courageous, you know? And we did, the few people that were fired by different fast food restaurants, we were able to put enough pressure on so that they got their jobs back, but that's if you don't take a stand and you don't build an organization and you don't fight, we don't get to rebuild the labor movement that we all need. So that's my thoughts. Thank you. Thank you for organizing this, Dennis and Lee and all of you for watching. And thank you, Bob. So our last panelist is from today's generation of postal unionists, Aaron Brown from the nation's capital local in DC to respond and pose questions to the panelists to get a discussion going. Aaron, take it away. Hey, thanks, Alex. Good evening, everyone. First of all, I'd like to thank the people that built this generation of postal workers. The work that you guys did in the 70s has made it much easier, although not permanently easier for us today. The activism you guys showed back then, the solidarity that you guys showed back then is very inspiring. Right now, I'm a contract liaison on the APWU national contract campaign and the union sent me around to local conventions in my region, the Eastern region to try to promote local activism. As a part of those efforts, I ran across this film about two years ago and I was going around showing it and it inspired a lot of people at the conventions. People would have detailed conversations about the solidarity, the diversity and solidarity and it really motivated people at the conventions. Once the conventions were over and I would get back home and I would make calls, it seemed like some of the steam would be let down. Some people would not be as motivated and we could not get as much activism as we thought we could. Even though we did get some events, like Sticker Day events, T-shirts events and things like that, the gist of the campaign was to have locals react to situations on their work floors and organize events. We have not been as successful as we've wanted to. So one of the questions that I definitely would like to pose to you guys from back then is what were the work floor conversations like that led to the level of activism that we saw? There was a lot of passion and all of the people that spoke in that film and they identified issues of workers, they identified issues against management and they organized on those events and they, everyone participated on a large scale. What were those conversations like on the work floor for you guys back then? Okay, I'll jump in. Yeah, I think you touched on a very important point, which is how did that happen on the work floor? And there's people with a variety of opinions, although as Lee pointed out, the bulk mail centers were situated near big urban centers. So in our case, people were from New York City, they were from Jersey City, they were from Newark and it was a very diverse workplace. However, people were quite united in fighting against some of the more oppressive things that were going on and there was a lot of conversation on the work floor, you know, among clerks, among mail handlers, you know, mechanics, you know, all the different categories within the post office and word spreads very quickly in a workplace, you know, there were thousands of people in a building unlike a more typical post office. So these really mechanized centers, word would spread, word would spread when something unjust happened. People would encourage each other to go to union meetings and give rights to each other to get there. But of course, you know, there were people that weren't moved by all of this and wanted to mind their own business and then there were others that stepped right up. But it was a place where there were such glaring workplace conditions that a lot of people could be united around these union campaigns. And yeah, I'd say there was a lot of talk on the work floor, there was a lot of grumbling on the work floor. And at those flash points when people could do something about it, word spread very quickly and people signed on to go to the union meeting or to go to not a union meeting, some other meeting about a workplace condition. So I agree, it's a really good question. I think back in the 1970s, many of us had been involved in the Black Liberation Movement, the fight against the Vietnam War. And, you know, that impacted on, that reflected sort of like people's aspirations. And it's not unlike, I would imagine, at least the Black Lives Matter movement has made a tremendous difference to me. And I think I can only just imagine because I'm seriously old and not working in the post office right now, but it's being part of a struggle and being part of a stand for justice is, you know, a lot of us were really happy in the midst of that, not that we weren't desperate because we were fighting to get our jobs back. And I think I hope that there's inspiration for postal workers and other workers now. That's what we need that kind of activism. We need, not we, but the workers needed. And, yeah, so, you know, keep it up. Kami, did you have something to add on that? Mike, hi, I guess that one of the things I think Bob just got on, but there was the context. We had to talk about the context of the time and there was organizing within the working class. There were organizing going on in other factories. And it was an understanding of who the working class was and is. And as Bob said, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the women's movement, the black liberation movement, and this was all part of the landscape that this struggle took place in. And today it's different. And it's not like we have this huge, powerful labor movement that we could draw upon. And I think that's possibly, Ariane, what you're speaking about is also about the social conditions and the consciousness that's much larger than just what's happening in one workplace, you know? So I think what it brings up to me is what can we do? The audience on this Zoom, this presentation, the panel earlier when people were talking, someone mentioned before we showed the film about the impact of what's happening in the post office now today on the elections in Georgia. And I think that we should talk about the organizing inside the plans, the saving of the United States Postal Service, and also what can we do in the small amount of time to address what's happening in Georgia? Lee, go ahead. Yeah, so, you know, though I agree with what Bob and Tammy said, it was different. You know, I think today there is, in some ways, a broader consciousness. You know, in our days, if there was a demonstration in one or two big cities, that would be a lot, you know, in the Black Lives Matter movement in New Jersey, there were demonstrations in 56 cities, you know, much broader than anything we had going. Some of the general consciousness, much broader, the consciousness of Black Lives Matter. I mean, the idea of white skin privilege, I mean, there were 400 or 500 people talking about that idea in those days, and they didn't even all agree. And today, it's a broadly understood concept. So in some ways, it's narrower, in some ways, it's much broader. But I think the thing is, is when you're standing around talking to people and talking about what's right and what's wrong, there's a general. And then you're talking about specifics, and it seems specific small outrageous, and they seem very different. But what you have to do is every day, hook those two things up. Every day, hook up the general outrageous with the small individual outrageous so that when things happen, people respond and connect the two things together. You know, what's not right in the world and what's not right every day in your life, the extra overtime, you know, the forced work without proper PPE, the forced exposure to COVID, you know, these kinds of things. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, to me, one of the big things was when they tried to look at where the responsibility lay in the McDermott case, there was no one responsible. It was just like, oh, yeah, you have to work. And that's just the way it is. And whatever it causes, it causes. And there was, I'm sure it's the same today. I'm sure that if you said who's telling people to go to work delivering mail in areas that have 30, 40, 50% transmission, and who says no and who says yes and who says, you know, there's no one in charge. They're just doing it, that's it. And so I think it's a matter of, you know, hooking up the general in the particular. It took us a long time to do that. We had to do it every day and at a certain point people saw the connection. So that's my two cents. Thanks, Lee and Eric, go ahead. I want to jump on Tammy's question of what to do today in the Georgia races and also to connect it to the labor movement. I just looked up the stat. It's a depressing statistic and in 1978, 20% of the labor force was unionized. Today it's 10%. That doesn't mean that we lay down our hands or sit around our hands and do nothing. The thing is crucial that we're in the process of dodging a bullet at the moment. That is Trump did not get re-elected. It doesn't mean anything's over. The Georgia front is an amazing, an extremely important front. And what I'm doing is phone banking every day that I can. And I think people should do that. Either phone bank or write postcards or do whatever they can give money. But particularly reach out to other people in Georgia, your friends, your relatives, whatever. This is another bullet we're gonna dodge because getting the control of the Senate for the Democrats, you can see that politics is not going to solve these problems unless we the people organize and pressure the politicians to change. And I think the country is in tremendous ferment now. It's wonderful, AOC, the Green New Deal, Black Lives Matter. I've never seen such mobilization, but it has to come together as a fist. I remember we, and I think we in the labor movement and people who have that experience of the labor movement have a lot to say, have a lot to inform the current politics. And to join the politics, I think the movement and the labor movement and all these other social movements together, I think is the work of the future of all of us who agree in that. I'm gonna go into new. Thank you. And we are almost to the end of our time. So I'm gonna hand the last word over to Dennis who brought this event together to close us up. Well, thanks a lot, Al. I just wanted to make a point that I think somebody in the comments to the, in the comment I just saw, very important. I mean, there are, it is unclear how many thousand dead postal workers due to the Roma. At least 4,000, it's not clear to us whether that's a national figure or just letter carriers, but I've seen it at a number of articles. They are killing postal workers out there and they're doing it from negligence, from ignorance, from venality and that we have contact. I'm pretty much a daily basis with hundreds, if not thousands of postal workers around the country. And one of the biggest issues right now is people are not being told if someone they work with is positive. People are not being told why a coworker isn't there. People aren't being, you know, the office of the Inspector General of the United States Postal Service which is to sort of quasi-independent watchdog body that's supposed to keep the USPS honest. They did a recommendation months ago, three things. They said masking, they said testing and they said contact tracing. The post office does not want those things. It's shameful and it's deadly. So there are a bunch of steps that people are trying to take. It's hard, but this is something that can and must be organized around. Finally, I just want to give a little plug here. If people want to follow this stuff who don't already, we have this, we have this, excuse me, Facebook page got about 8,000 people like it called Save Our Postal Service. I strongly recommend that everybody check this out. We have new stuff pretty much daily. The political struggle, the health struggle, occasional feel good stuff because otherwise it's just too goddamn dismal. And there are things that you can do that are up there on the regular. The American Postal Workers Union now has a pretty good petition up. We'd like to see people sign that. It's right there on the page. So if you go to that on the regular, it's a very good way to plug in. There also is a contact button. If you want to talk with us, try to plug into this. Please get in touch. I would be glad to talk to you as with Jamie who's on the call, but not on the panel. Aaron who is a part of this, Malachi Dre who was not able to get off. He was supposed to be on the call and got told he had to do mandatory overtime. So we're fighting this. We're gonna keep it on and we could certainly use your help and support. Thank you, Dennis. And for those watching or listening who are postal workers, if you'd like to join a weekly Zoom call of postal workers talking about workplace conditions, our next one is half an hour from now. Send me a chat. Happy to add you to the list. And to bring us to a close, I'm gonna throw back to Aaron for final words. Yeah, thanks, Alex. Once again, thank everyone involved to save our postal service page too for putting this together at this time. Considering that we're facing conditions today in the postal service much like that they were facing in the 70s, we can compare our reactions to their reactions. And I do think that, you know, our reaction can be a little more militant. It can be a little bit more forceful. We just have to come together and organize on our conditions at this time. Kind of at a loss of words right now. Just, you know, in more words than Joe Hill, organize, organize, organize. That's the bedrock of what we're trying to do to improve the conditions at the postal service, to improve the conditions of the working class across the board. So, yeah, thank you all. Thank you all so much. Solidarity. Solidarity. Good night. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye, Dennis. Bye, Eric. Bye, everybody. Alexander. Bye, everyone. Lee.