NALC   100 Indiana Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20001

National Association of Letter Carriers

In 1889, a call informed all city post office of a meeting to form a union of national letter carriers. Approximately 60 letter carriers answered the call and traveled to Milwaukee to found the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC). These early letter carriers joined together to create a labor union dedicated to preserving decent wages and justice on the job. Today, the NALC still maintains its history as a progressive union of more than 300,000 workers in 50 states. However, the struggle to uphold the union’s ideals during the 1800s and 1900s was met with many obstacles.

A law was enacted in 1888 that stated letter carriers were only allowed to work eight-hour days. Initially the Post Office Department ignored the regulation, then interpreted it to mean eight hour days, seven days a week. The NALC stood up to the Post Office and sued the federal government, winning the case in 1893. In addition, postal workers were essentially silenced in the early 1900s when President Theodore Roosevelt forbade all postal employees from lobbying to members of Congress for wage increases. After the NALC protested, they found a sympathetic Republican senator who helped lead a campaign to rescind all postal “gag orders.”

The NALC can be accredited with helping pass laws that stated postal workers could not spread their eight hour shift over more than ten consecutive hours and regulations that closed all post offices on Sundays. The union also lobbied for a Federal Employees’ Compensation Act which ensured postal workers who were hurt on the job could receive medical help and compensation.

Made up of letter carriers employed by the U.S. Postal Service, the NALC still upholds the objectives it fought for during the 1900s—fraternity, fidelity, benevolence and unity.