Descriptive Summary | ||
| Creator: | American Postal Workers Union. | |
| Title: | American Postal Workers Union: Moe Biller Files | |
| Dates: | 1930-2001 | |
| Abstract: | Moe Biller served as president of the New York Metro Area Postal Union (originally the Postal Union of Manhattan-Bronx Clerks) from 1959 to 1980. As local president he led the New York City union through the hard-fought national postal strike of 1970. From 1980 until his retirement in 2001 he was president of the American Postal Workers Union. This collection consists of a selection of his APWU presidential files, documentation of an oral history project carried out by retirees of the New York Metro Area Postal Union in the late 1970s, and a selection of printed items dealing with postal workers' history of the 1930s collected by Biller. | |
| Quantity: | 4.5 linear feet (5 boxes) | |
| Call Phrase: | Wagner 099 | |
Arrangement | ||
| Each of the two series is arranged alphabetically by topic. | ||
| Organized in two series: | ||
| I. Subject Files | ||
| II. Oral History Project Files: New York Metro Area Postal Union | ||
Moe (Morris) Biller was born in New York City on November 15, 1915. He attended Brooklyn College and City College and began work in the Postal Service in 1937 as a substitute clerk. Except for wartime service in the military he spent the rest of his life in the Postal Service and as a postal union leader. He had held almost every position within his local union (National Federation of Postal Clerks, Local 10) before the local broke away to become the Manhattan-Bronx Postal Workers, a local of the newly formed National Postal Clerks Union. He became president of the new local, 25,000 members strong, in 1959 and led the local through the so-called Great Postal Strike of 1970. This national strike lasted eight days and resulted in the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970, creating the U.S. Postal service and granting its employees collective bargaining rights. In 1971 the National Postal Clerks Union joined with four other postal unions to become the American Postal Workers Union. Biller's local took on its present name, the New York Metro Area Postal Union, in 1973; the new name reflected the inclusion of the New York Bulk and Foreign Mail Center and the North Jersey Facility in the local's bargaining unit.
Biller was elected president of the American Postal Workers Union in 1980, and carried his activist style into this new arena. He was a long-time supporter of the civil rights movement and of women's efforts to advance in the labor movement. He served on the boards of numerous charitable organizations, including the March of Dimes and United Way, and sat on the boards of university labor studies programs at Cornell University and Empire State College. Biller's personal interest in labor history was exemplified in the cooperation he offered to the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University, to the Tenement Museum on New York's Lower East Side, and to a number of labor history oral history and film projects. It was with his full and enthusiastic support that Dana Schechter embarked on her project to document the history of the New York Metro Area Postal Union through interviews with and by the local's retirees.
In view of his life-long interest in the preservation of labor history, Biller concluded that it was appropriate to mark his retirement from the APWU by donating a selection of his presidential files, as well as his personal collection of memorabilia, signed photographs, posters and books on postal union history to the labor archives at New York University. Incoming APWU president William Burrus confirmed the donation and designated the Robert Wagner Labor Archives as the official repositoryt for APWU records at the same time. In 2001 the union also transferred to NYU a body of records documenting the New York Metro Area Postal Union oral history project; these were apparently given to Moe Biller during his tenure as New York Metro president. On his retirement Moe Biller returned to his beloved New York City to live; he died in New York on September 5, 2003.
Sources:
Walsh, John and Garth Mangum, Labor Struggle in the Post Office: From Selective Lobbying to Collective Bargaining (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 1992).
Series I: Subject Files, includes correspondence, reports, flyers and clippings documenting Moe Biller's years as president of the New York Metro Area Postal Union (APWU, Local 10). Especially well represented are materials reflecting health and safety hazards in the industry, and the union's energetic attempts to im prove working conditions. A smaller amount of material (mostly convention records, daily schedules, expense records, and committee materials) relate to Biller's tenure as international president of the American Postal Workers Union. Also included are a range of records and printed ephemera documenting the Depression-era history of U.S. postal workers (and their organizations); these were given to Moe Biller by various members of the APWU over the years.
Series II: Oral History Project Files: New York Metro Area Postal Union, consists of background files, transcripts and other documentation produced and collected in the course of an oral history project supervised by Dana Schechter in the late 1970s and carried out by retired postal workers. The audio tapes produced by this project make up oral history collection OH 3 at the Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. The oral history project includes a lengthy interview with Moe Biller, covering his early life and his years as president of the New York Metro Area Postal Union.
Open for research without restrictions.
Permission to publish materials must be obtained in
writing from the:
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer
Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY
10012
Phone: (212) 998-2630
Fax: (212) 995-4225
E-mail:
gail.malmgreen@nyu.edu
Access Points | ||
| Subject Names: | ||
| Biller, Moe (Morris). | ||
| Goodman, Sidney. | ||
| Salk, Charles. | ||
| Schechter, Dana. | ||
| Subject Organizations: | ||
| American Postal Workers Union. | ||
| New York Metro Area Postal Union. | ||
| Subject Topics: | ||
| Postal Strike, United States, 1970. | ||
| Postal workers--Labor unions. | ||
| Strikes and lockouts--Postal Workers. | ||
| United States Postal Service -- Employees -- History. | ||
| Subject Places: | ||
| New York (State) -- New York. | ||
| Washington, DC. | ||
| Document Types: | ||
| Clippings. | ||
| Correspondence. | ||
| Records. | ||
| Transcripts. | ||
American Postal Workers Union Photograph and Memorabilia Collection (see archivist for access).
New York Metro Area Postal Union Photographs (Photographs 011).
New York Metro Area Postal Union Records (Wagner 103).
A large collection of photographs and memorabilia have been separated to the Non-Print Department of the Tamiment Library.
These records were donated by APWU president Moe Biller at the time of his retirement in the fall of 2001. The donation was confirmed by incoming president, William Burrus.
Published citations should take the following
form:
Identification of item, date (if known); The American Postal
Workers Union: Moe Biller Files ; Wagner 099; box number; folder
number;
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes
Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York
University Libraries.
[The following section contains a detailed listing of the materials in the collection.]