Paul Felton

As I stated in the Introduction, I was a steward in a union local that experienced two shootings (Royal Oak and Dearborn). For most of my career, I worked at a building that is part of Royal Oak – it’s not the same building where the 1991 shooting occurred, but there was a high level of tension in both buildings.

After the Royal Oak shooting, my article in the union newspaper described specific examples of outrageous management behavior I had personally witnessed and suggested changes at the highest level of management:

“The bullies, sadists, and liars in management’s ranks need to be disciplined or replaced. But there is another type of upper level manager who needs to change. Some of the postal bureaucrats in powerful positions are nice people. But when we bring to their attention the immoral and inhumane practices on the workroom floor, they pass the buck. They refuse to believe supervisors are really harassing the employees. Or they know, deep down, that the supervisors are lying, but they fail to take action on it. So the bullies and liars have a green light to continue. There are quite a few decent human beings in upper management who sit comfortably behind their desks and make decisions that cause considerable pain to employees they’ve never met.”

While there was a bit of a relaxation in the atmosphere at Royal Oak, at least for a few years after the shooting, the lessons of Royal Oak were not applied generally. In 1992, Reggie Brown, a union officer at the Dearborn office, wrote an article in our local newspaper comparing the atmosphere there to a ticking time bomb. He expressed the fear that Dearborn might become the next Royal Oak.

His fear was justified. On May 6, 1993, Dearborn was the scene of another tragic postal shooting. My subsequent article again explored the root causes in terms of the mindset and behavior of postal management:

“Another part of the problem is a bureaucratic mentality that can be infuriating. A couple of years ago, a labor lawyer I met at a party told me the Post Office is known for a unique brand of pettiness. I knew immediately what she meant. One example would be how they send you back to the doctor several times until your note is worded exactly the way they want it. Many readers can cite their own examples. It’s not that anyone’s going to get violent over a doctor’s note. It’s just that the combination of all the petty rules and regulations, and how they use these rules to stick it to you, is enough to make you scream.”

I won’t say James Newton is typical of a postal manager, but from reading union newsletters around the country I can say there are others like him. Once you have a James Newton in charge, it’s not easy to get rid of him.

While none of the characters in this novel are real, some of the stories are real, or partly real. I did handle an edit grievance like the one in “The Wrong Zip.” The letter from James Newton in “Blaming the Victim” was taken from a grievance file (although the issue was easily resolved with a phone call, unlike my fictional account). “Adding Insult to Injury” is also based on a real grievance file. The show of unity in “Sticker Shock” is told pretty much the way it happened. The stewards’ discussion of the Royal Oak shooting in Chapter 9 is based on my memory of that tragic situation. Most of the anecdotes the stewards tell in “Jump Suits and Jump Shots” are real stories as well. I handled an EEO appeal like the one in “Going Before the Judge” and I retold that story faithfully. I should add that I’ve never filed a grievance for an employee I was sleeping with at the time – those characters were added for dramatic impact. “Grin and Beer It,” “The Fly,” and a number of other stories are simply products of my imagination.

I began writing this novel in the summer of 1998, at which time the fictional murder was in the future. I breathed a sigh of relief when November 1998 passed without incident. Since I had a full-time job in addition to editing a newspaper, work on the book proceeded slowly. After unsuccessful attempts to get it published, I pretty much gave up. I was fortunate to meet the good people at Hard Ball Press at a labor conference in 2012, and the project was revived.

In the time that the manuscript sat, much has changed in the postal world. The job security of postal employees is now in question, and the excellent service delivered to the public is under attack from political forces that would like to bust the unions, privatize the service, and enrich corporations that would take over the profitable aspects of mail processing and delivery. I would be remiss if I didn’t say that most postal workers – in spite of complaints about some of the managers – want very much to keep their jobs. And if the forces that are out to destroy us succeed, the public will suffer along with the employees.

I believe strong labor unions are the key to solving both problems – the danger of privatization and the inhumane treatment of workers by managers in some locations. As a retiree, I intend to remain active in the labor movement, both to defend my own retirement benefits and to do my share to try to make this world a better place.