Postal service: reading guide

Key texts

• DAM rank and filists! The Communication Workers Group - Subversion - Article by an-ex member of the rank and file Communication Workers Group, looking at their experiences, making suggestions for future workplace organising, rejecting the CWG's rank and filism.
• The national US Postal Service wildcat strike, 1970 - Jeremy Brecher - Short history of the successful nationwide illegal wildcat strike of American postal workers: the first major strike of federal government workers.
• Sorting out the postal strike - Joe Jacobs - Analysis of the 1971 UK postal workers' strike, which was the country's first national postal strike in history.
• The 1978 Postal Wildcat - Michael Braun - Summary of the 1978 American postal wildcat, which was the biggest strike by federal employees in the US since the 1970 postal strike.

Industry struggles

• Scabs! part one and part two - Phinneas Gage - Excellent two part article by a postal worker on a wildcat strike by employees of a private mail contractor, and the difficulty the union had in going beyond 'bargaining unit unionism'.
• Waves of Struggle, The Winter Campaign at the Post Office in Edmonton - Phinneas Gage - Article on the creativity and militancy of Canadian postal workers in their 2011 dispute, which started before and ended after the official strikes were called.
• The committee in action - Phinneas Gage - Great article by a postal worker describing worker organisation at Canada Post and the ups, downs and risks of organizing.
• Royal Mail deal: a post mortem - A postal worker writes up an account of the 2009 UK postal workers' strike, which saw 18 days’ strike action before being called off by the union.
• Comments on the recent summer postal strike - by a striker, 2007 - A postman looks at developments and future implications in the suspension by the union of the 2007 strike.
• 2003: Postal workers wildcat strike - Short history of the largely successful wildcat stoppage of thousands of postal workers in the UK, and the developments which led to the strike.
• Self-organisation and action in the US post office - An account of sabotage, solidarity and wildcat strikes at a large postal sorting office in the US by a mail handler.

Related tags

• Communication Workers Group - Militant rank and file network of postal workers from the late 1980s, initiated by anarcho-syndicalists in the UK.
• Royal Mail - Content about workers' struggles, privatisation and events related to the Royal Mail.
• CWU - Content about the Communication Workers' Union, the main trade union representing postal workers in the UK.
• CUPW - Content about the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, the main trade union representing postal workers in Canada.
• Post strikes 2009 - Content about the 2009 UK postal strikes against 'modernisation'.

Other media

• Signed, sealed and delivered: 1978 strike against mandatory overtime, speedups and hazardous working conditions - Documentary on the results of the 1978 American postal wildcat and the struggle of 200 workers to get their jobs back.
• The Canadian postal workers wildcat strike 1965 - Documentary on the victorious 1965 Canadian postal workers' wildcat, in which workers in more than 30 cities walked off the job against the wishes of their employers, the government and their union.
• Images from 1970 U.S. postal strike - Pictures from the two week wildcat strike at the post office in the US.
• Don't be an overtime addict - Paul Petard - Booklet produced by the anarchist cartoonist and postal worker Paul Petard in the early 2000s, when he was working at a Post Office in London.
• Post office - Charles Bukowski - Bukowski's classic novel on trying to keep his sanity against the everyday grind of delivering mail around Los Angeles.