Existing comment:
Earning A Living Wage:
With Free Home Delivery Service, letter carriers soon were working seven days a week with low pay and no vacations. Many were Civil War veterans, and in 1889 they gathered in Milwaukee to form a union, the National Association of Letter Carriers. In 1917 the union joined the American Federation of Labor.
Many women and African Americans held their first federal jobs as Post Office employees. But women who were hired as carriers in wartime were laid off when the men returned. And for many years black and white postal workers were prohibited from working in the same offices. |