
March 18, 1970: Postal Workers Strike
History Site
The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Postal Service began on March 18, 1970, with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan who were demanding better wages.

The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Postal Service began on March 18, 1970, with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan who were demanding better wages.
Ultimately, 210,000 (in 30 cities) of the nation’s 750,000 postal employees participated in the wildcat strike.
The first mass work stoppage in the 195-year history of the Postal Service began on March 18, 1970, with a walkout of letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan who were demanding better wages.
In 1820 Lowell, known as East Chelmsford, MA at the time, had a population of 200 and was a farming community. Thirty years later, the population had grown to 33,000 and one could find 32 textile mills in existence there. Lowell was an ideal location for these mills because it was located near the Merrimac River. The river supplied the water necessary to run these factories.
In the town of Matewan, the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum sits at the site of a historic battle which erupted in May of 1920, setting into motion a chain of events that led to the largest armed uprising in the United States since our civil war.
The Southern Oral History Program Interview Database provides detailed descriptions of interviews in the Southern Oral History Program Collection (04007). The interviews in this collection were conducted or collected under the auspices of the Southern Oral History Program in the Center for the Study of…
Our collections are being digitized and made available through our website, OCLC WorldCat, Internet Archive, Digital Commonwealth, and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).
The WTO History Project, a joint effort of several programs at the University of Washington – the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, the Center for Communication and Civic Engagement, the Digital Initiatives project and the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections division of the…
On November 23, 1909, more than 20,000 Yiddish-speaking immigrants, mostly young women in their teens and early twenties, launched an eleven-week general strike in New York’s shirtwaist industry. Dubbed the Uprising of the 20,000, it was the largest strike by women to date in American history.
Women Have Always Worked: Fighting for Equality: 1950–2018.
An exploration from an online edX course.
In 2018, there were 20 major work stoppages involving 485,000 workers, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The number of major work stoppages beginning in 2018 was the highest since 2007 (21 major work stoppages). The number of workers involved was the highest since 1986 (533,000 workers).