In 1970, Bill Usery was the newly appointed Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor-Management Relations when the Secretary of Labor ordered him to mediate a labor dispute in the US Postal Service. For these federal employees, the law made striking illegal. On March 18 1970, workers at the Manhattan Post Office went on strike, which very quickly produced a nation wide strike that shut down the Postal Service. A total of 210,000 employees were on strike. The immediate cause of the strike was congressional action giving postal employees a 4 percent pay increase and at the same time granting the congress a 41 percent pay increase.

Usery was faced with several immediate problems: the Postmaster General Blount would not meet with the unions while they remained on strike, the seven postal unions had too many spokesmen, the unions had no legal right to collective bargaining, and with the postal service virtually shut down, Nixon ordered the Army and the National Guard to handle the mail. Eventually, that would involve 175,000 military personnel.

After eight frantic days, Usery achieved a settlement. A few days later, Postmaster General Blount asked Usery to come to his office, so he could express personally his thanks for a job well done. Near the end of their conversation, the Postmaster asked Usery if there was anything he could do to express his thanks. Usery suggested the collective bargaining stamp shown above.

On March 13, 1975, the stamp appeared as “FIRST DAY ISSUE”.