50 Years Ago | Federal workers vote for union with 34% voting

“Let’s talk union.”

That was the talk on the reservation throughout February and early March as federal employees on the reservation were preparing to vote on unionization and who they wanted to represent them if the vote was in favor of a union.

At the time, there were about 3,400 federal employees on the reservation, some 90% Navajo.

Two unions – the National Federation of Federal Employees and the AFL-CIO – had expressed an interest in representing them.

Only 1,162 employees, or about 34% of the group, filled out ballots. A total of 178 employees voted to have no union. The NFFE came in first with 750 votes and the AFL-CIO received 204 votes. The other votes went to other unions.

The AFL-CIO never had a chance because the NFFE spent a lot of time and money campaigning for Navajo votes, setting up 24 branches on the reservation and in nearby border communities.

It was made clear from the beginning that a union would never call for a strike since federal law prohibited federal workers from striking or doing slowdowns to get what they wanted. The union could also not push for higher wages since wages were set by Congress.

What the union could do, said NFFE officials, was push for better conditions and fight for members who felt they had been unfairly fired or suspended.

This paved the way for tribal employees to push for more rights.

While the tribe had a grievance procedure for employees who felt they had been fired or disciplined unfairly, the tribal bureaucracy controlled the process making it difficult for employees to fight an unjust action.

The fight for better rights eventually led couple of years later to the creation of a tribal office and the Navajo Labor Commission, both of which provided more protection.

However, it wasn’t until Tom Boise was chosen to run the labor office that tribal employees and Navajos who worked for reservation businesses finally had an advocate to take on anyone, including the Navajo Tribal Council, to make sure workers on the reservation received fair treatment.

A new bus service

Let’s talk about another problem that many Navajos faced back in 1972 – the lack of transportation service going to and from the reservation to border communities.

In those days, if you did not have a car or could not find someone to drive you to a border town, your only option was hitch-hiking. It was not unusual to see someone on the side of the road holding up a dollar in an effort to find a ride.

So, a lot of reservation residents became interested when Gallup Mayor Frankie Garcia began talking about the possibility of getting federal funding to develop a bus line going to and from the Zuni Pueblo and Window Rock.

It was obvious why Garcia was interested in such a bus line. It would obviously increase traffic from both reservations to Gallup. But Navajo Tribal Chairman Peter MacDonald probably had even more interest in such a project.

He was doubling the size of the Navajo government by taking over federal programs and creating new ones. During his campaign, he had listened to problems suffered by many Navajos who had to travel to Gallup to fill their medical prescriptions or see a doctor.

He realized that a bus line to and from Gallup to Window Rock would help a lot of residents in the Window Rock-Fort Defiance area. Expanding it to other areas of the reservation would be a lot easier than having to create the line from scratch.

Garcia was able to get both the Navajo and Zuni tribes to support the project so last week the groups sent representatives to Washington, D.C., to talk to federal transportation officials. The officials were also interested and called upon Garcia to meet with the other government entities and come up with cost and details.

The Nixon administration was looking at this as a pilot project. If it succeeded and had enough riders, the federal government would look at setting this up on other reservations.

Over the next few months, a plan took shape calling for four buses daily to travel between Gallup and the Navajo and Zuni reservations. The cost would be a dollar but arrangements could be made to help low-income travelers, which probably includes most of the riders.

The groups decided they would need $30,000 in planning funds and $250,000 in subsidies to operate it for the first year. The three groups would chip in and pay a total of 15% percent of the costs – 5% each.

The plan was to have the new routes up and running in mid-1973 but this never happened, in part because of the aftermath of Garcia’s kidnapping on March 1, 1973, and the death of his kidnapper, Larry Casuse.

After that, several projects Garcia was in the process of implementing just went by the wayside as he began making plans to move to Arizona after his term as mayor expired.

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