Original subtitles

(logo whooshing)

- I'm hoping my buddy comes out.

(gentle country music)

The young handicapped guy right here.

What's up, Jason.

And he usually comes out, gets his mail.

(man laughs)

How you doing, buddy?

All right, is that good? - Thank you.

- All right, you got it, Jason.

Have a good day, bud.

Be careful.

Now he can't get in the box or anything,

so I'll hold this mail for him.

And he'll come out and I'll give him his mail.

(upbeat country music)

I mean, you just befriend these people.

They're like family too.

So I see them coming up,

I'll just grab their mail or something like that.

They get things like clockwork,

like their medicine, their checks.

So you know when that's coming and they know.

Some customers get that special attention.

Seatbelt on.

It's part of the job.

When it gets to that point too, it's not even like a job,

it's just like a normal family thing

that you're doing with them, for them.

(gentle country music)

- You can leave a letter on your door

and it will be hand-delivered

to a spot thousands of miles away

in the most remote corner of the United States.

- It's just really great.

I mean, I don't think there's a bigger bargain

in the world these days.

- That's a miracle right there.

It takes three or four of those

to get my normal cup of coffee.

If you can get this letter anywhere in the world,

and you trust it's gonna go there.

(gentle country music)

- The postal service delivers 155 billion pieces

of mail every year, approximately 40% of the world's mail.

(gentle country music)

- You can actually see the people that you're touching,

and I'm a people person, so it gives me a good feeling.

- Are you all right?

- Yeah.

- Good.

- We come here for the news, we come here for our mail,

for the kids to play.

I mean, this is just kind of our social point of Evanston.

- It's a post office and you know the postmaster,

if there are clerks there, you know them,

you know they're there to serve you.

- They see each other,

they get to talk about things that are happening

and what they need to get involved in in town.

- It can be politics, it can be a bond issue,

it can be that there's a forest fire

two miles down the road coming your way.

- Each place is composed of different people

and everybody's got a story to tell.

- Well, the post office is kind of a window on the world.

- You look forward to it.

- You got it?

- Thank you.

- You're welcome.

(both laughing)

- Have a great day. - Take care.

- It's a nice interlude.

Hi, Jack.

How are things, and a little bit of information

about the neighborhood and the community.

- Take big picture.

- [Jack] A real life spice in the community.

- The first thing I learned when I came

to the postal service was three words,

the sanctity of the mail.

- I'm Jay, and this is my dad.

- Right now, we're in front of the maple crush station

in Maplewood, New Jersey.

My job was box clerk, window clerk.

And I spent many wonderful years here

taking care of beautiful customers.

- [Jay] He always had a lot to say

about his job at the post office.

- I felt a feeling of accomplishment

every day I came home from work.

- I love the attitude of those that work here.

They're very personal and they give you good advice,

like we just got it today.

- I like to help people, and I care about them,

and I wanna give them the best service

and the most knowledgeable service that I could.

- [Jay] After hearing the stories for 27 years

and watching what he went through to keep his job,

I set out to uncover if what happened

to him was happening everywhere.

(gentle country music)

(car engine roaring)

- I loved my job when I went to work at the post office.

It was a tough job.

A lot of the jobs were playing out around here

at the time that I worked in the textile industry

and the mail I was working at was closing down.

- When I started at the post office,

I was 27 years old with two children,

and I had three jobs working at the mall.

They were all minimum wage jobs,

and there's no way I could support my children.

- I couldn't have found a better job.

Money was great, the hours.

It was just a great place to work.

But as time went on

(letters rattling)

I had never been messed with in my whole career

to have to have turn 51 with so many years in.

It's almost like they'd had their usefulness out of me

and it was time for me to go.

(letters rattling)

- Don't talk to nobody, deliver the mail

as fast as you can, cut the lawns,

climb somebody's bushes.

They would actually tell you that.

- They're trying to get you to speed up.

And if anything gets you to break safety measures,

but they won't tell you that.

It's big time stress.

- I gotta do everything right.

If I do one thing wrong,

the 99 things I did are negated.

- My chest was pumping and my head was about to pop.

- It's like a mutual distrust.

The employees don't trust the supervisors,

the managers don't trust the workers.

- It's basically a war zone.

You're on one side, they're on the other.

(protestors chanting)

- The system right now as the postal service operates

as counterproductive,

in many places, it's a day-to-day battle.

- I was told by several postmasters

and supervisors throughout my career,

I will follow you till I catch you do something wrong.

- In this postal culture, you're the enemy if you speak up.

- We'll find a way to get at you for opening your mouth.

(suspenseful music)

- I worry about someone going postal.

This is not an option for me,

but what about someone that has put their life

into the post office?

What if they find themselves in Brian's crosshairs,

see no way out and decide to fire back.

What if I'm at work that day

and get caught in the crossfire?

I warned them.

I put it in writing and I sent it to the EEO investigator.

And I know that somebody took notice

because the EO investigator sent it to Charlotte

who sent a guy down to interview me

for an hour to make sure

that I wasn't contemplating something, that.

- The district manager was having a town hall meeting.

I told him, I said, "We're giving you this paper,

this petition, because we don't wanna sit around

and watch TV at the 11 o'clock news

and something crazy happens in the post office

and we look at the TV and see you guys on there saying

we didn't know anything was wrong.

(gentle somber music)

So we're putting you on notice that we have a problem.

(gentle somber music)

And then of course, we have this disaster Tuesday morning,

where Steve Spencer committed suicide

in the bathroom of the annex.

(bell dings)

I was totally shocked.

We had no one.

We didn't have anybody to talk to, the carriers.

We sent two people to the hospital after that.

It's just a tragedy that they had to work through that.

(gentle piano music)

- Steve was, he was this happy face.

He was this happy face that you'd see

in the morning, this friendly guy.

He didn't have any problems,

not on the outside.

- Steve was straight up fella.

He always willing to take the lead in all the things

that the union and the postal service did for the community.

He was a tireless worker.

(somber music)

- There would be postal management supervisors

that will be coming out and following Steve.

At first, it was just every once in a while.

But the last three months that he was alive,

it had gotten to be, well, three, four times a week.

- You're taking your lunch break,

you see him pass by or pull into the place you're at

and stop and look,

and look at their watch and get out

and check, see if your vehicles locked, look in it,

no one all the time, but you're watching them.

And then they move on, and to me, that's harassment.

- I believe they were following him to shake Steve up.

Hopefully they would find him doing something

they could dismiss him for

that they could fire him for,

but they can never do that.

And I think that's why they followed him for so long.

(somber music)

- Steve would be the kind of fit,

he would've been the kind of guy

that would be a sacrificial lamb to make things right

for everybody else.

He was just that good-hearted.

- Steve Spencer was my secretary when I was president.

The thing that I was shocked about is

why Steve didn't come to somebody for help

because everybody used to go to Steve for help.

- Being real honest with you, if it wasn't for Steve,

a lot of days,

I probably could have done something wrong to people.

- Even the president of the union would come to him

for advice because they knew, well,

everyone knew, the postal management knew

of the union members old and new knew

that he has so much knowledge.

And I think that's where part of the problem came in.

They were truly afraid of him.

He was the one that they were determined

to see leave the postal service.

(somber piano music)

- I wasn't surprised at what happened last week,

'cause I've seen it coming.

There's gonna be a lot more coming to if it don't stop.

(suspenseful music)

- [Man] You could cut the stress level walking

into the building.

- I think people feel like their jobs are on the line.

I think they feel like that if they say something

that they're gonna be after them,

they're gonna find things to go after them for,

they're gonna find things to try to get them out.

- When we were voicing our opinions

about what this guy's saying and doing,

the firm interviewed six people.

All six people said, "I feel my blood pressure coming up

when I see this manager.

The hair on my arm stands up.

I get nervous, I get tense."

I said, "What's your definition of going postal?"

And when I said that to Majid,

he threw himself back into the computer,

the girl that was taking notes drops her pen.

And he says, "We don't like to talk about going postal."

I said, "Okay, well, then let's change the word.

You tell me what the word is

that we'd use instead of going postal."

He says, "I don't wanna talk about going postal."

They don't wanna talk about that.

- [Woman] We need an ambulance.

- [Man] Where are you at?

- [Jay] On August 18th, 1983,

Perry Smith carried a 12 gauge shotgun to the post office

where he worked for 25 years.

He chased the postmaster to a nearby store and killed him,

shooting two former coworkers in the process.

Less than four months later,

it happened again in Alabama, then Georgia,

and New York City.

For more than two decades, it kept happening.

Postal employees came to work aiming for their bosses,

leaving a wake of collateral damage

as dozens of postal workers were killed or injured.

- [Woman] Oh, my God, he's using (indistinct).

- [Woman] I think we're gonna die.

- He had a nine millimeter pistol

and he started to shoot at us all.

- In Montclair, New Jersey,

there were two postal employees killed,

two people from the general public, and one maimed for life.

I went and sat outside that office that night and had tears

in my eyes because I wondered if I should go to work

because of the fact that this could happen to me,

but it could happen to anybody in any walk of life.

And I had too much to give up to leave the postal service.

(somber music)

- Every incident of post office violence back then

I was involved in, I was called in.

- [Reporter] Dr. Mike Mantell an expert

in dealing with mass trauma arrived today.

- I remember talking about how quickly they cleaned up

the blood and the bullet holes

and how some of the post office workers said,

there's still some bullet holes in the wall

and it turns our stomach and it turns and twists our minds,

and it affects us deeply.

And it was just get back to work.

Don't worry about it.

Get over it.

Don't just take a file cabinet and move it over

to cover a bullet hole, clean it up.

- I've seen a lot of people that are waiting

to explode in there.

- To lay the labor management relations,

to layer that stress, I just don't think is legitimate.

- [Police man] (indistinct) policeman.

- [Reporter] This time it's Royal Oak, Michigan.

Another postal worker gone bizarre

on a shooting rampage targeting his supervisors.

- He came in at about eight o'clock

and had his gun under his coat.

He shot Chris Carlisle in the head five times.

Came out, shot two other supervisors and went upstairs.

And I guess he shot some people who were injury comp

and somebody jumped out of a window.

- [Reporter] Incredibly, everyone at Royal Oak

knew it was coming and most knew the gunman by name.

- Tom McElvane was their main target.

They went after the guy for everything.

They went after him 'cause his shorts weren't

the right length,

that he went to the bathroom too many times.

The day that he was actually fired and it stuck,

three management people got in a car

and followed him out to his route.

They were following like within inches of his bumper.

And then he slowed down to 10 or 15 miles an hour,

they said that he tried to hit them

with slam on the brakes and make them hit him.

What it came down to was that he would not submit to them.

And so, when I came to San Francisco,

I was just shocked that the manager there was

the same kind of manager that I had seen in Royal Oak,

barking at everybody, screaming at him,

scream from across the room for you to come to her desk

so she could yell at you in front of everybody in the place.

It's frightening to me to be in there.

And the times that I went to the postmaster in San Francisco

and personally asked, what can we do?

Because the morale is so bad

that I can see how another Royal Oak will happen here.

And the response always was to me,

"Well, geez, Audrey, you seem to have

some kind of personal problems.

Have you thought about seeing a psychiatrist."

- [Reporter] A postal supervisor appears

to have been killed by a coworker

who later turned the gun on himself.

Postal employees were told not to comment.

- As specifics to discipline,

already that information we're not gonna release.

Both of these employees were very well-liked.

- They didn't have any idea.

No one could possibly know why he did it.

How can that be

that you just have the same situation

so many times over and over.

How can that possibly be?

It has to be the mentality of the post office.

- This is a philosophy that's being promoted

by the post office in general, harass, intimidate.

And we're here to say, stop the harassment,

stop the abuse, stop the harassment, stop the abuse.

(train horn honking)

- Stewart is a union person in the local post office

that takes care of any problems with management

and any of the other employees.

It's just the part of my makeup

that I can not see another human being

being easily verbally harassed,

or dehumanized an earshot of me,

without me getting up and trying to assist them.

- You just see the injustice and you say, you know what,

I'm either gonna go nuts

or I'm gonna go do something about it.

That's one of the things that made me a steward.

Invariably, you'll find that the stewards

were people that grew up standing in between a bully

and somebody who either couldn't

or wouldn't defend himself.

- I am not an individual that likes to fight.

I like to sit down and negotiate,

but if I'm backed into the corner,

I'll come out swing both arms,

because I believe in human rights,

and I believe in fairness, and I believe in morality.

- There's always some type of retaliation

whenever you get a really good settlement,

whenever you, as I would say,

just nail them once, they wanna come back and get you,

but it's just business.

It's not supposed to get personal.

- [Jay] As a shop steward,

my dad had an adversarial relationship

with many of the bosses.

Around the dinner table,

I'd hear stories like this one.

- After he had lost a large arbitration and grievance

with me, and he took me outside

on my 45th birthday without any earshot

of anyone else and say,

"I may fire you for no reason at all

and you'll be on the outside looking in for six months

to a year till you get to arbitration."

In 1997, the local management had postal inspectors,

following me and filming me on a daily basis.

They accused me of stealing $500 over a 10-year period

and put me out of work.

At this time, I understand Bob is suspended

without pay pending the outcome

of a criminal investigation

regarding mileage expense reports.

- [Jay] It was the spring of my senior year

and the future was suddenly uncertain.

- In the federal sector and especially

in the postal service,

they have an incredible maze of how to resolve problems.

It's totally designed to take as long as possible.

- These were mileage vouchers for 10 years,

which only came to two miles a day, seven miles,

wherever I went that they had asked me to go,

plus the letters,

hundreds and hundreds of letters

from customers that I service over the years.

And I'd never had a financial shortage.

I never took anything from the postal service.

- [Jay] In US workplaces you were presumed guilty

until proven innocent.

- Workers are routinely fired, suspended,

held out, starved,

and it is a disciplining tool on the part of management.

Most working class people can't sustain

a single paycheck,

much less several months of waiting for a grievance case

to be heard by an arbitrator or through a grievance panel.

- There's always a fear you're not gonna get the job back.

And many people give up and take the punishment.

As I've known single mothers and single fathers

that had to feed their families

and took the deal and made it look

like they were guilty of something they never did.

- [Man] What you're actually gonna do,

you're gonna fuck around and get fired?

- [Man] They can fire me for asking questions-

- [Man] What are you trying to figure out with that?

- [Man] You're gonna fuck around and get fired.

- [Man] What are trying to figure out?

- [Man] Now, the union will get you your job back,

but in the meantime, you're gonna be hurting.

- [Man] Why would they fire me?

- [Man] You're gonna be fired without pay.

- [Man] What are you trying to do, though?

- [Man] He's trying to start the most-

(tense music)

- Well, yeah, I had one manager of many officers.

He told me the best way to do

to take care of your employees

find your best employee and find something

that he's doing wrong and give them a letter of warning.

And I would say to myself,

why in a world would I want to do that?

Well, they figured that if you wrote up your best employee

and the other employees would fall in line thinking,

well, they just wrote off the best guy

in the office for some minor little detail.

They wanted to intimidate everybody.

- Sir, the working environment

in the postal service is combative now.

We're getting warning letters without checks.

- [Patrick] The current atmosphere out there

is ones largely of fear and intimidation.

Many of us are working six days a week,

10 hours a day, 12 hours a day,

because we're very dedicated.

However, when you do that

and you're still told you failed, you failed, you failed.

And the answer to everything is discipline,

discipline of your employees, or you'll be disciplined.

- There's a ton of pressure, but there's no reason

why people should threaten people or treat them poorly.

That message will go up with my next-

(audience claps)

- [Man] We're supposed to treat people fairly

and treat people with dignity and respect.

Now, if you say one thing,

but you promote somebody who does completely the opposite,

then what do you say?

- I've had particular managers

who I've received hundreds of complaints on.

I've had to go out to the post office,

I've had to sit down and have a come to Jesus meeting

with that manager about what their responsibility is

and how they should be treating their workers.

When a United States Congress who walks in a post office

and reams out the manager, you get a response.

I mean, it's unfortunate that that has to happen,

but sometimes that has to happen.

- If you have a disagreement with a boss,

you might be suspended.

You might be called in for an investigative interview.

- [Man] You'll see audit teams miraculously showing up

at your door at five o'clock in the morning

to look through your records.

You did initial one little block of 47 blocks.

Also you're being disciplined.

I was told to lay off, back off.

You don't want something to happen to you.

- If you go to a post office and they have 60 routes,

they'll probably have enough personnel to operate 46 routes.

They'll probably have enough vehicles for 43 routes

and they'll be short on everything they need

to run that office.

In that respect, it's hostile on its own.

- Every little delivery number you are answerable for

every single day in your post office.

- Like I say, on any given day on the street,

it's not the same day.

It's a different 24 hours.

The management doesn't allow for that

because they're so focused

on the binary code off the numbers.

- From the craft all the way up to the top management,

they're under a lot of pressure, and stress,

and computer programs that follow you around all day.

I mean, we know what everyone is doing.

- [Man] You've got an email

or your boss would call you up and they would say,

"Get the carriers back by 5:00, or else."

- One of the managers of post office operations was calling

the post office is telling them,

I told you guys no overtime this week, fix it.

So they're being told to lie, cheat, and steal.

- It's tough not to break some kind of rule,

or law, or something in a year

when you're managing the post office,

because they just don't give you

what you need to operate in.

- I had gotten curious about why some of my pay

and my overtime wasn't paid to me.

I would go in in the morning, I would swipe my badge,

I would go case my route.

And I would work that way until I went home and I swipe off.

But what they were doing,

they were going in and actually deleting

my badge swipe time.

(suspenseful music)

- [Man] Unfortunately, supervisors won't take

the carriers time and change it to 1699

so that they're backed by 1700.

Just don't be caught, 'cause if you get caught,

then they start (indistinct)

- If something's going on and you didn't suck in a way

that you shouldn't be doing,

I'm gonna check into it.

I'm gonna read it.

I'm gonna look through the contract.

I'm gonna look to the employee labor manual,

I'm going to CFR.

I'm not stopping with this right here,

because this is not right.

They said that Steve didn't clock on, on Tuesday,

the day that he died.

Notice that they came in here on six, two.

You see this is all management generated on six, two.

They came in here on six, three and deleted the clock ring.

Why did you have to go on there that day

and delete something on the same day Steve died,

unless Steve clocked in?

- [Jay] Could you answer that question?

- I know what it was.

It's keeping them having to pay Wanda

because Steve was on the clock,

because of his death on the clock

'cause he's on postal time.

- Yes.

- I think that the union and management was in it together.

I think that they drove a wedge to Steve.

And I think that they left Steve feeling like he just-

- Had nothing left.

- Had nothing left to do and no other way out.

And they come close to putting that to me.

We speak out, we speak out to congressman,

we speak out to all kinds of people, our politicians,

you can't get nobody to address it.

It's almost like the politicians and the postal services-

- Together.

- I mean, it is.

It's almost like it's all in this one corruption.

(car engine roaring)

God said we had to stand up for what was right.

And this is right.

What we're talking about is right.

This is a corruption that's got to stop

and we have to stand up for what is right.

We have to.

- Most people anywhere who are

in business today use the mail,

whether it's part of their marketing program,

part of their communication capabilities.

From our perspective as account managers, sales specialists,

you say, well, my goal is to increase revenue.

How can I do that?

- I went into the marketing department,

it was a different and a change of pace and a better pay.

One of the things that the postal service does

is they measure everything because they can measure mail,

how many letters they do per second per machine.

And that mindset came over into the sales department.

The postal service bought a program called customer first,

and they could manage and manipulate numbers for everything.

- So you're going through all sorts of computer systems,

scouring for money that the postal service already made

and already got and then get it associated

with your account.

All I cared about was the end big number.

(letters rattling)

- It was a lot of work, many,

many more hours than we got paid for your salary employee,

but they expect you to work.

You're 40 anyway, plus another 20, easy.

And many times it was an 80-hour work week.

- There was a mandate

that you bring in $100,000 new revenue every month.

Many of my colleagues were reporting 100,000,

500,000, 700,000, a million dollar sales.

- They started to create this the favoritism,

better geographic territories, the better customers,

all of the things that would make your job easier

if you played the game.

- And then when all the numbers came out, they said,

"Oh, how come New York stinks?

Look at the rest of the country.

Look what they're doing."

I'll go, "What are they doing?

They're making up numbers.

It's not real."

And a lot of people made lots of money

based on whatever that criteria was.

And a lot of the people like, I'll say old post office,

kind of like what I call myself old post office,

we're going, this is ridiculous.

What is almost nonsense?

What is the one that's wasted activity?

Well, some people didn't look at it that way.

All they saw was a formula for them to get paid,

and they immediately jumped in there and started doing that.

- If you didn't bring in the numbers,

your manager didn't get paid either.

So your manager had a vested interest

in getting you to write down what you needed to write down.

I started getting in trouble.

For the first time in my postal career,

I started getting in trouble

for not producing what they wanted.

And it took me a while to pick up the tricks,

how you were able to get the numbers that they expected.

And little by little, I caught on, but after a while,

it just felt wrong.

And every time I talked about it,

it's almost like I was growing enemies within.

They didn't like the fact that I was bringing up stuff.

It was dangerous.

- And so, some people would just outright

avoid talking to me because they didn't wanna be seen

and get in trouble 'cause they would be quizzed

or they would have extra duties.

- When the vice president of sales came to New York

because we were like falling into line, I just went for it.

I called him onto the side, I said,

"Sir, I know for a fact

that there are places where portfolios are being adjusted

and manipulated so people become stars

and other people become losers

and are under punished."

He goes, "I never promised you fair."

- I'm writing all these people

and telling them 80%

of our USPS income was being manipulated.

(car engine roaring)

Yeah, these are actually,

I just took these out of the house here

and they need to be filed

that there's just papers and documentation,

sales that were fabricated at work.

I have got so much more than this

and then different files here.

I mean, at work I have huge file cabinets.

There's no way I would wanna keep it all at work

'cause you never know if something would happen.

And then some people,

they get walked out for very unusual, strange reasons.

And so, you wanna definitely have it.

I mean, I don't think it's being paranoid,

it's just being realistic

that you're going against a really huge organization.

And you're trying to make them understand

how they've really wronged so many people.

- Victoria, I'm putting you out on administrative leave,

pending an investigation into wrongdoing.

And she had two policemen with her.

So I looked at her and she just walked away.

And I asked them, "How long, what do I do?"

And he says, "Get your personal belongings.

"How long will it take you you," they ask me?

I said, "Probably 20 minutes.

I've got everything in the office."

And they shouted at me,, "Now, lady, now."

I should have realized that I was being set up.

It took me a long time because I couldn't believe it.

I grew up in the postal service.

There are rules and regulations.

I couldn't believe that my colleagues would be so afraid.

"You shouldn't be afraid,"

I used to tell them because the systems protect you.

And what I learned is they don't.

- And you can't walk around a corner worrying

about they're coming after you for some reason,

somehow looking for excuses

to find you doing something wrong

and then punishing you for it and bringing you up

on progressive disciplinary action

with a view towards removing you from the postal service.

How can anybody focus on their job?

(gentle piano music)

It's almost like assassination really.

(gentle piano music)

- The manager I was telling you about

would always want three weeks of appointments

for a day scheduled out,

yet the people that were

the favored didn't have to have that.

They were sort of missing on their calendars.

And I believe that that contributed

to my current health state that I could have been

in a lot better shape had I addressed my health issue,

that I was not allowed to.

'Cause if you go out on medical where you take a day sick,

you have to make up those visits.

So now the four visits you didn't make that day,

you gotta make them up that week.

I have never used any sick leave

and I've never taken any time off as you can see

from our conversation.

So I have enough leave to cover me.

- [Jay] The pressure Sue was under proved deadly.

By the time she sought treatment, her cancer had taken over.

Looking back, would you have done anything differently?

- Yeah, I would have started complaining earlier

and been more forceful about it.

(water sloshing)

- We've got some raspberry bushes that we transplanted.

If we can get enough berries, we'll make some jam.

The biggest complaint that I have

is that people can't get a grievance filed.

It sounds to me like they're not even filing them.

Show me the grievance,

and that's what I was doing at the last union meeting.

Show me the grievance.

And so, the next thing you know,

someone in the back starts hauling for the sergeant at arms.

Like they need to grab me and throw me out

of the union meeting because I won't stop complaining

that I'm being lied to.

Right now, our union is afraid of management.

Our union should not be afraid of management.

They should not.

I hope by the time that this is over

that our union is afraid of its members.

- [Reporter] In March, 1970,

US postal workers went on strike.

It was the first nationwide strike against the government

and the largest wildcat strike in history.

- We called it a wildcat strike

because postal workers went out on strike

in opposition to what the union leaders

were advising them to do.

- In several large cities,

the post offices are shut down.

In New York, for example,

the mail system is wholly paralyzed by illegal walkout.

The government immediately obtained a court order

against the strike and union leaders order

the carriers back to work, many refused.

- I don't like to go on strike

but we must because we've been (indistinct) too long.

- You can't live in new York City on what they're giving in.

- Prior to the strike, raises were dictated by congress.

Congress said, "Yeah, we're gonna give them a raise,"

congress said, "No, we're not gonna give them a raise."

That's what created the strike.

(upbeat guitar music)

- I've been told I'm eligible for welfare,

but I don't wanna take welfare.

- We wanna work, but this is the only means

we have of letting congress know

that we cannot take it any longer.

Either they give us what we should have

or we will stay out on strike until hell freezes over.

(protestors cheering)

(upbeat guitar music)

- I pulled the Berkeley Heights office out

eight to 10 clerks in there.

I was a young buck and I took a chance.

And we out there where everybody that walked their line

should have been fired,

but we took a chance to make it better for everybody else.

- Well, what if what you're doing is illegal?

- I don't care.

If they wanna put me in jail, put me in jail,

but they haven't got a jail big enough to put all of us in.

(upbeat guitar music)

- [Reporter] The strike has spread from coast to coast.

Now it directly affects 14 states

and has involved about 200,000 postal workers.

- I have 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.

Do you think you're doing it as fast as a postal worker?

- No, I don't, no.

He must have his own little tricks

because I can't find half the slots.

- [Reporter] What exactly are you doing?

- I don't really know. (laughs)

- [Jay] Finally, Nixon had to give the postal workers

what they were asking for.

- [Nixon] The disposition that I have made 12% Pay increase,

quicker raises, no penalties for local union leaders.

- Collective bargaining and binding arbitration.

(protestors cheering)

- And I am grateful for the strikers

'cause if it wasn't for the strikers of 1970,

we wouldn't be wherever you are today in the postal service.

- And everybody knows today what happened.

We've got the American Postal Workers Union,

we've got the Postal Service and a Private Corporation semi

and we made out.

- They put them on a different footing

with management being able to strike this major operation

and essentially bring it to its knees.

(car horn honking)

I would say that it wasn't a wholesale victory.

- The forces around Nixon said,

"Make the post office stand on its own two feet

and only operate within its own revenues."

And so, they pulled it out of the post office department,

which was a cabinet level department

and put it into a public corporation.

- [Jay] They called themselves

The Citizen's Committee on Postal Reform.

They were Standard Oil, Bank of America,

Boeing, Coca-Cola and a host of giant corporations.

Their goal was to take the post office

out of the hands of congress and the president

to have it run by a board of governors

made up of corporate insiders.

In 1970, with workers satisfied by higher pay,

they got their wish.

And the postal reorganization act became law.

The first chairman

of the new US Postal Service was Fred Kapell,

former AT&T CEO.

(instrumental music)

Though the new law begins with the founder's vision

for a postal service operated as a basic

and fundamental service

to bind the nation together,

Kapell's vision of a corporation with leaders

not accountable to the people has proven stronger.

(bright upbeat music)

- Hello, and thanks for joining me today.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you

about the situation that we find ourselves in today

in regards to the postal service and our entire business.

The bottom line is this, we have got to constantly look at

what we can do to cut expenses

in an attempt to track revenue going forward.

Now, people say, "Well, this is a service business.

We shouldn't have to worry about that.

We are a business.

You work in a business."

We are no different than any other business out there.

As always, thank you for the great job

that you do every day,

and I'll talk to you next time.

- The nature of privatization in the US Postal Service

is very much hidden from public view.

It's privatization from the inside out.

So you still see the US Postal Service

letter carrier delivering the mail to your door,

but all the people involved from getting it

from say, the business in Chicago

to your local postal center

may not have been postal employees

because that whole segment

of the US mail stream may have been privatized.

- With the US Postal Service provides FedEx and UPS

is what they call the last mile, which is expensive.

If they had to go the last mile

to the destination to deliver.

- [Man] We have Federal Express who will drop off parcels.

You purchased the item on the internet,

you think that you're going through Federal Express,

'cause that's the only option you're given on the internet.

Federal Express then takes them and drops them off

at the post office and then we deliver them.

(suspenseful music)

They can go and charge someone $10, or $15, or whatever,

then they can go to the post office

and get it delivered for $3.

- There are all these other companies

that are also processing parts of the mail

and delivering parts of the mail

and creating the machines that help to do the sorting.

- [Man] We're seeing private companies doing the work

that we used to do.

We give them discounts to do the work full shift.

- It's all those people

who were behind the scenes sorting the mail,

collecting the mail.

Pitney Bowes has one of

the larger mail house services in the country.

They have a variety of business services,

many of which are designed to replace

the inner workings of the US postal service.

- Post service has spent billions of dollars

in investment on equipment that now is underutilized.

Much of that work has been contracted out.

- And so, what has been privatized

is everything up to that last mile of delivery,

because that's where private enterprise

can make the biggest profit.

They take the profit and then they leave

the costliest aspect public.

- [Man] We were contracting out everything.

I could see that the postal service

would just be a shell of what it is now.

- The postal service was founded based

on a premise to provide

a service to all American people,

no matter where they live, universal service.

- You can't discriminate.

You can't say, I don't wanna go

into the bad parts of the city,

there's no money there.

- Business doesn't do that.

It can't do that because it's not profitable.

- And the postal service

has the responsibility of delivering

to little towns in America.

That's what we're all about.

(suspenseful music)

If we're talking about mail delivery

and nobody else does it, and nobody else wants to do it.

- And as far as remote areas having to pay more, well,

you know what?

That seems fair to me

because out in Wyoming and other places like that,

they pay a lot less for their homes and for their land.

So, this would kind of equal everything out.

- If you were starting a mail company

you would skim the cream off the top,

you would deliver to the big cities.

You'd only do what is profitable.

I'm thinking of the few smaller towns

that did lose their post offices.

And you remember back when they were towns,

you don't even consider them towns anymore.

- [Jay] Despite their costly responsibility

of delivering to over a 100 million addresses

nearly every day, by 2006,

the postal service was making a billion dollars a year

and supporting a trillion dollar mail industry.

But it wasn't enough.

- Right now, the US Postal Service

is in the fight of its life to save it-

- The postal service is in such bad financial shape

that it may have to shut down this winter.

- And it's now facing default.

- A thunderbolt about the future of the US Postal Service.

(indistinct chatter)

- The postal service is a cash cow

and there was a way to pull money out of the postal service

to put into the federal budget.

- [Jay] The postal accountability and enhancement act

was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2006.

Under the law, the postal service must pre-pay pension funds

in 10 annual installments

of over five and a 1/2 billion dollars.

- [Man] No other company does that,

no other government agency does that.

- And President Bush, he said he would only sign the bill

if the postal service recognize

that they have a liability

for the healthcare costs of their pensioners

now and going forward, and that they agreed

to fund it over 10 years.

Well, most employees have not even recognized

that it's a liability, but in order to get him

to sign the legislation, we had to agree to that.

I think when the president signed the bill in 2007,

we thought everything's fine, it's hunky-dory.

And a year later, we're in this terrible economic mess

as a country.

(car engine roaring)

- I actually think there was some malice

among some individuals involved that wanted

to see the United States Postal Service

as a union environment go away

and just privatize the whole thing.

I think there was some of that in the mix.

- Ladies and gentlemen,

it's a third quarter and you're down by 25 points.

And if Tom Brady doesn't come in,

the fact is you're bankrupt.

You're beyond bankrupt.

Deferred maintenance is about $9 billion,

those vehicles and things,

they just have to be restored sooner.

The wheels literally will fall off.

That tells us as a businessman,

that no matter what they say,

they have more than a sprawl cash problem.

80% of their costs are human beings.

And if you've got too many human beings,

you'll build in inefficiency, you'll use labor poorly.

- [Man] Dawning by decades of lavish spending,

defeated by new technology, booming last century,

it's bleeding money today.

It begs for a government bail.

- That was a way to make the books of the post office look

like they were losing money

so you could portray the postal system

as inefficiently unprofitable,

and therefore make the comparison to FedEx and UPS.

Gee, they are profitable,

but that's only because you didn't make them do

what you made the post office do.

It's hustling the public, it's shameful.

- In spite of the economy tanking,

if we hadn't had that payment,

the postal service would have been one of the few businesses

around that actually made money.

We would have been hailed as a great success.

- [Jay] Saddled with a $56 billion demand

by the federal government,

combined with the biggest financial collapse

since The Great Depression,

the stage was set for the hustle,

the half truth that would justify

the largest downsizing in US history.

(gentle piano music)

- [Jay] First-class mail was declining at a rapid pace

because people are mailing less.

- In this information age of emails, tweets,

and text messages,

what we affectionately call snail mail

seems somewhat impractical.

- The post office is essentially technologically obsolete.

We all have a post office in our pocket.

- We must create a low cost streamlined operational network.

- [Jay] They called it network rationalization.

It would break apart the infrastructure

that kept mail fast, affordable, and reliable.

- As we consolidate plants,

we'll be moving people from one place to another.

In some case we'll be moving employees

from one job to another.

- Sorry, your volume's down,

there's excess the whole building.

Excess this, get rid of all of that.

I don't care.

It's not me.

Move them out and tell them, it'd be lucky to get a job.

(country guitar music)

- Demonstrations sprung up across the country

in 2011 and '12.

- We wanna get the mail out.

- We don't need no bail out

- We wanna get the mail out.

- What they're doing across the country

is they're closing postal mail facilities.

And one of them here in our valley is Mid-Hudson.

(country guitar music)

- I think it's very obvious to anybody

that's immediately involved the lunacy

of sending local mail a 100 miles this way

or a 100 miles that way when you've got the facilities,

and the equipment, and the people right here.

(car engine roaring)

- The fact that they would take our mail,

ship it off to Albany, let them work it, bring it back

and then the trucks would arrive to deliver the mail.

It's just a delay of the mail service.

- I'm not gonna talk about the fact

that this should be a jewel in your system.

The fact that it has a $1 a year lease,

the fact that it sits in Stewart Airport,

the fact that it's on the crossroads of the Northeast

on two major highways.

- I'm here tonight as a tax payer,

small business owner,

and a person who spends thousands of dollars

at the post office.

- You're gonna sink the ship completely.

- All of those people that we deliver to

and that we process their mail,

they will get it overnight, first class.

- [Woman] With the postal service proposes,

is changing that overnight service

to a two to three-day service.

- Things that we're really concerned with are the elderly,

the poor, those that are dependent on their medicines.

They're out there and they're depending on that mail

to be delivered by their carrier.

- As far as being a letter carrier,

it's very personal because I delivered

to the route I grew up on.

As a mail carrier, I deal with these people every day,

and I don't wanna see the service get cut for them.

I hate to see what the postal service does to our customers.

They almost treat our customers like they don't count.

And that's what we're fighting for.

We do think they count.

- You have to pay your bills,

you want your bills to get there on time,

you don't wanna count on waiting a week and a 1/2,

or two weeks, or whatever the heck it's gonna take.

That's not right.

And not everybody owns a computer.

Not everybody wants to do their mail over the internet.

Not everybody wants to do their banking over the internet.

You look at the hacking that's going on.

I rely on the postal service to do my business.

- The postal service, you're bucking the trend here.

Things try to get more local,

and we're talking about getting people

to commute an hour and a 1/2 in their cars,

for me, it's gonna be over three hours round trip,

and then having these trucks go all distances.

- You're also talking about all of that pollutant.

Hudson valley is the most beautiful valley

that you could imagine with the river and everything.

And it's a big expense for everybody.

- They're being told there's no jobs

within 50 miles, might be jobs within a 100 miles.

And then if there's no jobs within a 100 miles

they talk to maybe up to 200, 300 miles.

They own homes or they live in condos,

they got kids in school, kids in college,

they can't afford just to pack their bag and move out.

- We don't wanna lose them.

They're great people,

they're great neighbors, they're lovable.

Please don't move away.

(audience laughing)

- These people down at that plant

give their heart and soul to that damn plant.

- This job represents for me,

I was able to provide my children a home,

a stable family environment.

I have a daughter now in college.

My two boys are in high school.

If I lose this job, with the economy the way it is,

how can I support my children?

- If they take our jobs away at the plant,

we have no idea where we're gonna be working.

It just seems like they're gonna tell us

at the last minute, and nobody really cares.

- [Jay] In all 223 plants

had operations moved elsewhere.

- The postal service is a human organization.

- [Jay] With postal managers promising

a $1.6 billion savings in two years.

After two years and all the disruption,

they saved about $91 million or 51/2%

of their imagined goal.

- The loss of jobs is typical in all industries

as they're going to automation?

The only way to be more efficient

is to embrace technology and automation.

- Today, they got machines with so much mail

that you blink an eye, and I got a truck full already.

And what did that mean?

That meant less jobs.

- But if you look at some of the things Amazon

is talking about drones and the like,

I think they're looking for a way

to cut the middleman out on delivering.

- Drones, robots, all technological changes

are now revolutionizing

most of the industries in our economy.

So, this is a general problem.

One solution is you 50?

You're fired.

Go home, go on welfare, become a crook,

leave the country, whatever.

Here's the second way.

Everybody works halftime.

Nobody loses a job.

And guess what, nobody loses any pay either.

(people clapping)

- All right, one down.

- Half the work time of everybody there about 100 people

is now available for their families,

for their own development,

for their relationships, for the community.

That's a benefit for the majority.

We don't do that.

We do the opposite.

We fire 50 of them because that makes profit

because the money you don't have to pay those 50 you fired,

you, the employer get to keep.

(gentle country music)

So we allow the profit motive

to shape the way technology is instituted

in our businesses, public and private.

- Technology really needs to be used just for the betterment

of our lives and not just for cutting corners,

putting people out of work.

I mean, I do the math and I say, well, okay,

you can keep eliminating jobs because you have now a machine

that can do it.

But if you take it all the way to the extreme

and you just have a couple people working

in a whole country with just machines,

who's gonna buy all the stuff.

How can that work?

People need to be able to make a living.

If delivering mail is not necessary,

hey, let's not deliver mail, let's do something necessary.

Do we need houses?

Do we need food?

- The simple story is that the decline

of the us postal service coincides

with the rise of the internet and email.

And that story is just too simplistic.

First-class mail volumes have declined,

and that has created financial pressure.

But if you look at mail volume as a whole,

particularly if you look at the parcel segment,

they have grown substantially.

Looking at internet use,

people with more use of the internet

or more access to the internet tend to get more mail.

The role and influence

of private corporations is tremendous.

And their ability to shape the legal environment

then really reflects their desire to limit competition.

- If the postal service was out of the way,

don't you think FedEx and UPS could charge more

for what they do.

If the postal service was out of the way,

don't you think the vampires and congress

could sell off all the property

and all the assets the postal service has

and steal that money.

(gentle piano music)

- All across the United States,

we are losing very distinguished buildings and public art

that they contain.

- Major buildings that the postal service owned,

iconic beautiful buildings in the centers of town

have been sold to real estate developers

for not that much money.

(somber instrumental music)

- They were designed to be among the best buildings in town,

architecturally distinguished, but also the craftsmanship.

(somber instrumental music)

Artworks were commissioned for the first time

for small rural towns

where people had generally never seen art before,

let alone public art that depicted themselves

and the work that they do, and their legends,

and their history, and their landscapes.

It was to a noble Americans who do common work

so that they would know that this is part

of what constitutes a civilization,

of all of us working together doing our bit.

The real estate portfolio,

which the public owns and paid for is variously estimated

to be worth $50 to a $100 billion.

So anybody who can get their hands on that

is going to make out very nicely like abandoned perhaps.

The postal service gave an exclusive contract

to the world's largest commercial real estate company,

CBRE to not only sell our property,

but also to advise them on what to sell

and also to lease back property

which the postal service doesn't own to it.

So this is a very nice cushy deal.

Now what really gets interesting is

the chair of the board and largely the owner of CBRE

is none other than Richard C. Blum,

a billionaire, private equity capitalist,

who just happens to be the husband

of Senator Dianne Feinstein,

perhaps the most powerful senator in congress.

By any measure,

this is a rather startling conflict of interest

that nobody seems to have looked into

and the press has scarcely mentioned.

(gentle instrumental music)

- In my own city of Santa Monica,

I was involved in reforms that transformed that city

so that the downtown of Santa Monica became,

if not the most,

one of the most vibrant retail centers in all of California.

And there's a beautiful post office in that set of blocks,

and the postal service sold it

to some guy who's making it into a movie studio,

whereas they could have shared that space,

expanded the opportunity

so that they would have ongoing revenue

and maintain this beautiful location

in the middle of town where everybody could go to it.

They've moved the post office to someplace

on the other side of the freeway

where the bus depot is.

It's really a crime.

That's an area where the postal service

has not followed my suggestions at all,

and I'm quite frustrated about it.

(gentle instrumental music)

- [Jay] In Washington, DC, you can go

to the old post office

and pay the President of the United States $24

for a cheeseburger.

(gentle instrumental music)

Mary Burkhardt, Pacific Branch President

of the National Association of Postal Supervisors.

Every four years, delegates gathered

to elect the officers who will represent them in Washington.

- You need to be assertive,

you need to be even a little aggressive,

and you have to be unafraid.

That was always my expectation.

The three officers that we elected

and we're paying almost 150,000 a year to.

So, you think, wow,

those are the best of the best.

They're fighting, they're 24/7

And so, it was always a little disappointing

to see that they leave right at 5:00

and didn't carry cell phones.

And didn't even know a lot of the basic rules.

We have not elected the right people.

(audience applauds)

When I first ran, one of the national officers told me,

"Why are you doing this?"

Because, it was already,

the election happened four years ago.

He said that all the votes were promised to other people

and you don't have anything to run on, but your skills.

If our whole convention is that corrupt, why even have it,

just dial it in, promise it in.

(funky upbeat music)

We need someone that's serious,

someone who will get it done,

someone with the facts behind them,

someone that's different.

(indistinct chatter)

- [Man] Did you get ice cream?

- Not one candidate can show you they've gone

to the OIG and been a whistleblower,

and I've done it twice.

Not one can say they have gone to postal headquarters

and talked to everyone.

I better get in or I'll get locked out of my own campaign.

Thank you, thank you.

- Yeah, the vote's in.

We're hoping that Mary will be the new secretary treasurer.

- For the office of national secretary treasurer,

John Jader, 1,288, Joe Cart, 176 votes, Brian Wagner, 1,593,

Mary Burkhardt, 235 Votes.

(audience cheering)

- But I'm real disappointed

that Mary Burkhardt did not get selected

because she was by far the most competent

and most caring of the candidates that were running.

- And that's why one day I want one member,

one vote 'cause that's the ultimate way to break this up.

Every time I mentioned it, they're like,

"We can't have one member, one vote, we can't do that."

And I said, "Why not?"

And they go, "Well, because they don't know

what they're doing."

And I go, "But isn't that what the Elisa said

in England and isn't that why we formed this nation,

and isn't that why people sit at the 1800s,

and isn't that why women can't vote,

isn't that why black people couldn't vote."

And so, what we're doing is we're disenfranchising everybody

for a few good old boy power brokers, nothing happens.

And it's just a tired organization

with a lot of travel expenses.

- Don't buy Staples.

Boycott Staples.

- Our message is loud, our message is clear.

US mail is not for sale.

- [Woman] Yes.

- [Jay] In November, 2013,

the postal service begins opening mini post offices

in Staples stores nationwide.

- I mean, what's gonna happen next?

You're gonna go to your local post office,

there's gonna be a sign on the door,

we're closed, go to nearest Staple.

- If it's not a secret deal, give us a contract.

I like to know what they're getting out of me.

The contract has been so redacted

that you could hardly read it.

(protestors chanting)

- We took an oath, and we were hired to protect their mail.

I'm a customer too, so I'm gonna say protect our mail.

- After three years of pressure,

the postal service was found in violation of its contract

with employees, and Staples closed their postal counters.

- It's about big business and money,

it's not about the public and giving them the service

that they deserve.

It's not about quality, trained workers.

It's about money.

(suspenseful music)

- One of the things the postal system did

was to create the expectation

that a job can have reasonable hours,

can have a good pension.

What used to be called

a middle-class American dream lifestyle, right,

if you destroy those jobs,

what you're doing is you're ratcheting down

the standard of living.

You're allowing all the other employers

in an area to offer less and less

so that the only comparison anybody has is the poor job.

- What are the costs of low wages?

Not just cost to those individual workers,

but costs to the communities.

- The first largest business

that employs the most people is Walmart.

And the wages there are so low,

that many of the Walmart employees have to go on welfare.

That is they're subsidized by the taxpayer.

- [Man] And what you end up having

is the US Postal Service retail clerk

subsidizing Walmart in order to pay those workers

so much lower wages.

So it really changes the direction

of who is subsidizing whom.

- Traditional 9:00 &to 5:00 doesn't work

in our current economy

as people are working multiple part-time jobs,

you may work a four-hour a day at the post office

and drive Uber for four hours.

- They've tried to bring in hourly wage people

for part-time hours at $15 an hour with no benefits,

no health insurance.

- Even though they have a ton of employment opportunities,

it's hard for them to find people

to come and fill the spots.

And then the people we do get sometimes there,

they just don't get it.

They think the job is easy and it's not.

It's very physically enduring.

- This past winter, it was the polar vortex.

It was absolutely horrendous.

We were working forced overtime.

We were working six day weeks.

We were working 12 and 13 hour days.

- I feel like this is a low cut,

and it's getting really not fun anymore.

- [Man] When I was working on the UPS mail,

you gotta break it down per loop.

- The plant just runs it off.

We're overburdened.

- [Jay] You see yourself staying here until you retire?

- Oh, yeah.

Not by choice though. (laughs)

Like I said, my family needs me.

My family needs me, that's what I keep telling myself,

my family needs me.

It gets me through the day.

- When you say your family, you mean?

- [Jay] My wife, three kids.

- Now, this is America's job.

This is for the people.

This has existed since the beginning of this country.

And there's no reason to stop it.

(gentle instrumental music)

I think letter carriers

are the most widely appreciated federal worker

in the country.

- Day-to-day when I knock on people's doors and they see me,

my postal uniform,

they feel like I'm someone they can trust.

- People do come out in our favor.

Communities are always backing

the letter carriers all the time.

- [Man] Whatsup, man.

- Hey, whatsup.

- [Man] You're on TV, man?

- Yeah, why, you wanna be on TV with me?

- Our postal workers know our people on the routes.

They take pride in being able to make sure

that they're okay.

We've saved quite a few lives all through the years.

- Well, I did a few emergency breathing.

I opened his airway up.

I didn't do anything more than anybody else would.

- Yes, you did.

- He's a hero.

- I believe this guy,

just making sure I'm in the right place at the right time

- You see something going on in the neighborhood,

you report it.

See a fire, they run in and they help people

or they at least warn the people in the area.

- You think I'm kidding, right?

I'm going through the guy's garage.

Little park in the winter time

instead of walking away around to the front of the house.

It's where you go through after 30 years.

- In emergencies and national security situations,

or you're gonna deliver a medicine

or you're gonna deliver some antidote

or you're gonna deliver some equipment,

the post office is the last hope of this country

because it doesn't say, well, that's not very profitable.

I'm not gonna do it.

It has a civic obligation as well as a legal obligation

to perform on behalf of the American people.

- You have powers in this country

that are trying to choke off

the postal service and take everything it has

that's worth any money.

And then you have a group of people that are trying

to fulfill the mission

and to deliver to every address every day,

the one philosophy flies in the face of the other.

- The way to do it is not to eliminate a day of delivery.

The way to do it is not to eliminate door-to-door services,

something that we've provided the people all these years.

You wanna make it like foreign to people.

You wanna put a box up at the corner and have your mother

have to walk a mile to get her mail every day.

I don't think people want that.

- I would love to see us go

the direction of the self-directed work team

or self-managed team

because we're capable of making the decisions ourselves.

We can put peer pressure on each other to perform.

We can probably achieve better results.

If Richard has a problem,

I have a problem and the other people know it

and they have to get on board with that.

This has to be an important decision

just like everything else.

You gotta involve the employees in getting the mail done.

When we take ownership,

you're not gonna recognize the place.

- Desire, commitment, that's what we want.

You only get it when you make people part of the process.

- [Man] We don't need four people doing the same job

at four different levels of four different pay structures.

- I think there's no one more equipped

to run the post office

and the people that actually do the work

and understand what it takes.

- Oh, we can definitely run it.

In my station, for example, and I come from Westmont,

we ran our stations.

Employees ran our station.

You know what your assignment is every day.

We can do it all.

- And most of the oversight and the paperwork

that the people deal with now is

just did the mail get there on time?

Did did that box get there?

Did the Amazon get all scanned properly?

(gentle piano music)

But there's a lot of people in here

that are justifying their job, which is a useless job.

We have one guy that comes down

just to make sure the mail gets here in time.

We could check that.

Ridiculous.

- Let the post office be a pioneer again

in the days of the Pony Express and the way that it was,

but now not about reaching into the far reaches

of our country, but rather

into the way we organize business,

every post office should be a local workers cooperative,

a group of workers whose job it is to make

that institution as useful,

as helpful to the local community

as it knows how to be,

free to do that in any way it sees fit.

- At one time, they're able to offer copying services

in a post office lobbies.

And Kinkos got that shut down.

They lobbied congress

and all of a sudden there's a law

that you can have copy machines in your local post office.

- The postal service has his hands tied by congress.

For example, up until 1968,

you had postal savings system as part of the post office

and the banks didn't like it,

even though people used it, it was convenient,

it was reliable.

Banks pressured congress.

They closed it down.

- People have said,

well, let the post office go into banking.

Well, that's not why we created the postal service.

We got plenty of private banks that'll do banking.

I think it might diffuse our mission.

It might open us up to a lot of criticism.

- The postal service didn't crash the economy

and steal people's pensions.

The postal service is there

to provide a service for the people.

- Unless the banking community

has completely abandoned a certain area,

and there are some areas that are underbanked.

- There are only 30 million unbanked people in this country

and they could be the source of wonderful service

and communities all over the country,

because most offices there doesn't have to be built

and they will produce revenue for the postal service.

(lively instrumental music)

- I think there's a lot of other adaptations

that we could be leading the way in

such as a high-speed internet kiosk,

the access to a secure online bill payment center.

There's communities all across the country

that don't even have access to high-speed internet period.

And there's also many people that can't afford

to have these services in their home.

- The postal service doesn't have

to pay tax on their building.

So if we're gonna do that,

we've got to find a way to level the playing field

so they don't put the mom and pop internet cafe

a couple of blocks down out of business.

- This would be the government competing

with the private sector, you betcha.

And that's a good thing.

Let the private sector have a competitor.

to exclude the government means

the private sector can do to us,

the customers, what it wishes.

There's no one else who benefits from that,

not the public, not the country as a whole,

but for the private alternative profit makers,

that's why this was done.

(lively instrumental music)

- We understand their frustration about waiting in lines,

the short staffing, we wanna be the best.

We've always strive to be the best

and to see all of what's falling apart now,

it hurts a lot of workers because we have pride.

- Let them be responsible,

not only to one another as workers,

but to the community they serve,

but there'd be a board of the community elected

democratically that interacts with this worker co-op

to reach the decisions that serve this community best.

It's a whole new way of organized.

- [Woman] That's right.

- [Man] The post office belongs to us.

The post office belongs to the American people.

- Yeah!

(protestors chanting)

- I want to be able to bring back pride

in being a postal worker.

I'm proud to be a postal worker.

I'm proud to be able to serve the American people.

That means something.

That means something to me.

- I definitely wanna see a lot of grassroots activism,

people getting out there

and protecting the United States Postal Service.

The letter is so personal,

the emails and the texting and all that

is all impersonal.

And you know how much time and effort it takes

to sit down and pen something.

So it means a lot more.

My mom was cleaning out some files and gave me that picture.

So, I love it.

So, yeah, I've been born to do this kind of stuff.

I was doing this way back then.

Mom made sure I was ready.

I guess she planned for me to be somebody (laughs).

And I got the envelope printed.

And inside there's a letter from me.

I wanna continue to do big things

for the membership as your chief spoke person.

And that's what I am a chief spokesperson.

That's what union representatives are.

We're not lawmakers.

So hopefully people don't look at us like some politician.

It's a different kind of election.

So, sent out way more than a thousand of them.

- So the one more year to go with the union.

And as I said, I think I'll be able to smile

and sleep a little better

and not have nightmares about who lost the job today

or who's getting written off for silly stuff

or things like that.

'Cause if you take it personally, which I do,

it stays with you in a very negative type of way.

Really, it wears on you.

- [Jay] You get nostalgic when you come here.

- Oh, without a doubt, I tell you.

It's 30 years, half of my life.

Bartending, you may ask if I want a drink.

I'm here an hour.

- So my fondest memories are coming here as a kid.

And you letting me sit at the counter

and sell a book of stamps and count some change out.

for the customer.

- Right, I wanted to show you that you wanna treat people

like you wanna be treated.

You treat people like you wanna be treated.

And I honestly and firmly believe

that even though these people were doing business

with the postal service,

they were doing business with me.

And after time they were not customers,

they were family and friends.

- [Jay] It doesn't take long outside

the Maplewood Post Office for my dad to bump

into an old customer.

- Are you feeling okay?

- Everything's all right.

- That's good.

I'm out six years already, I can't believe it.

- I know.

- That's my son and his wife.

- Oh, how you doing?

- All right, great - And today's

their first anniversary (laughs).

- We're making a movie about the post office because of him.

(Robert laughs)

- He lived in my house and saw it happen.

So he was honoring me by making this film.

I was fired because I was accused

of falsifying a federal document,

misappropriation of funds from the postal service,

which totaled $579 and 56 cents

over 10 year period, 13 cents a day.

The postal service was able to keep me out of work

for 364 days without benefit of pay or hospitalization.

A very trying time in my life.

- [Jay] I knew it took a big toll on him

and I was about to go to college.

And so, he had a mortgage

and I knew he had all these stresses on him

and it just didn't seem right.

- You lose a couple of cases

that you feel you should have won

and you feel like your world almost like fell apart.

It's like a personal kick in the head.

It's just not acceptable.

That's never a good thing

when you couldn't protect somebody

'cause there have been a minimal number

where they just lost it mentally.

They couldn't continue in the job.

Others fight, and fight, and fight, and continue fighting,

even though they get written up,

they fight and they won't back down.

(gentle piano music)

- But I was so happy that I held out

and I was exonerated the day before we were supposed

to go to court because management knew

they did not have a case against me.

And he reasonable subsistence expense

that you incur as a result

of official travel will be approved.

Somehow, some way from my family,

my family was at the forefront.

My wife, my son,

and the place we lived was at the forefront.

And they gave me all of my strength.

I felt like a boxer who was on the canvas in the 10 count.

And somehow God gave me the strength to swing my arms.

And I hit him, and I won, and I survived.

How's the momon?

- Momon.

- Yeah, momon.

- Momon.

- (indistinct) momon.

(gentle instrumental music)

And even if at the end

of the day management has to put

that worker back to work with full back pay,

they will have achieved something

in terms of imposing discipline

and control on the workforce.

I can't make a statement

because then they're gonna treat me

like they treat you.

Lo and behold, I did lose my job.

(phone ringing)

- He pointed his finger at me,

he looked at me saying,

"Now you keep eye contact at me

when I am talking to you."

I'm not afraid of your congressman

or your senator, (indistinct).

(gentle instrumental music)

(indistinct)

- [Woman] You can't get anybody to address this.

(gentle instrumental music)

- Hello again, Mr. Brian, this is Jay...

I come bearing concerns of many, many postal workers.

But workplace change never came

from the postmaster general,

whether Megan Brennan

or Ben Franklin, justice, safety, respect.

They only ever came in small victories

by employees who know their rights and fight for them.

- I might lose this thing, I might lose everything.

There's a big price to pay fighting the system.

But you have to make a decision that you're gonna do it.

And it was my reputation, my livelihood.

Now I have my job back

after three very long years of struggle.

- I've spent almost $20,000 on a lawyer,

that's something that I might not even get back.

Dave was really wild, 'cause he would stand up going,

"I gotta be honest, I'm under oath,

I gotta be honest."

And he says, she's really a good worker.

And I'm sitting there going,

"Hey, just keep on being honest, man.

Just keep on."

'Cause he turned out to be a better witness for me

than it did for them.

- Tracy won her lawsuit.

(gentle instrumental music)

- Today is election day for the union here in Gastonia.

I was gonna maybe hail that in the main post office.

Tim Ranchi is going to run for president.

- Each candidate is entitled

to having an observer present during the following.

- An observer is in the room with the ballots.

They watched proceedings that are going on mostly

to see that things are done correctly,

done the right way

that there are no per se shady dealings going on.

- The people that we wanna challenge are the people

that have been management.

Once you go to management,

we don't ever want you back.

- Of course, I accepted because I want to see

that this is done right?

And the challenge must be made

before those envelopes are opened.

Very hopefully this can be changed,

the presidency to make a new beginning, push the union,

I think, needs very much.

- There's the letter I sent out.

That was the only mother I really slung.

- [Woman] Okay, like a poem.

- Yeah.

I didn't vote last year.

And this year I wanna be the president.

(both laughing)

- Doesn't take long time.

- No, it doesn't.

- And people don't understand why.

our union does not stand up and speak.

- I understand why.

And most of it has to do with fear.

But the part I don't understand

is what they're afraid of.

You have them in your heart.

It's almost five o'clock.

- Yes, sir.

- Take care.

You take care of yourself.

- Bet ya.

(clock ticking)

- The first thing Steve ever gave him,

it was a watch for Christmas

for our first year we were married.

I thought that it would be appropriate to wear it tonight?

I knew that he wouldn't want me to be there.

I was there for Steve?

What he stood for?

I was there for Steve's respect and to make things right.

And to put that spark back into people.

It started with the spark and then just keep building it up.

- And if one person came there

and saw you supporting me

and changed their vote, one person,

that won the election,

that changed from what would have been tie.

- And if it was, that's one of the greatest things

that can happen.

- The final vote was 31 to 33.

And at one point, I was down by five and I was like, wow.

- I just want to say that I just feel so good about this.

- We're gonna take the presidency in January.

- Main instrument ever, how high, they you to give up.

They want you to give up.

- The way things have been run has stopped people

from standing up because they would feel

that they would be standing alone.

And I hope to spread the message

that you're not alone,

so go ahead and stand up and let's take this on.

♪ Sometimes every single thing is happening, happening ♪

♪ Sometimes every single thing is happening, happening ♪

♪ Across the great divide, you don't wanna choose your side ♪

♪ We must do more than occupy ♪

♪ Give them a chance to just comply ♪

♪ Love and lucky brakes, trampade in every way ♪

♪ Don't say that it's too late to make a patient gray ♪

♪ The time is now, don't give up ♪

♪ Don't walk away ♪

♪ Oh, oh, oh, I need you ♪

♪ I need to treat you to say and rise ♪

♪ And rise ♪

♪ Sometimes every single thing is happening, happening ♪

♪ Sometimes every single thing is happening, it's happening ♪

♪ Sometimes every single thing is happening, happening ♪

♪ Sometimes every single thing is happening, it's happening ♪