Sorting Letters, Sorting Lives by Benbow Linda B.;

Author:Benbow, Linda B.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic

CONCLUSION

The Postal Service, like most organizations, engages in a great deal of propaganda related to the idea that it has a responsibility to diversify its workforce in an increasingly multiracial and multicultural society. The Service, in this regard, has a progressive diversity campaign, at least in terms of the resources it utilizes to promote diversity. Posters, contests, awards, newsletters, conflict resolution protocol, and a diversity organization that includes everyone attests to the effort the organization makes to “manage” diversity and promote cultural acceptance in the Service. The Postal Service is not new to the organizational diversity game. The organization was one of the first in the country to deliberately portray workers of different races, ethnicities, and genders working together in advertisements and on billboards on postal trucks in 1956, much to the dismay of southern postmasters and racially sensitive Americans. Today, the Postal Service continues to promote the idea that it stands on the premise of equal opportunity for its employees; however, far from the ideal it actually is in the organization.

Inequality among the ranks is taken for granted as a fact of organizational life. However, there has been a host of GAO reports since the 1980s which have examined race and gender relations in the Service. It is fair to say that the Postal Service is quite aware of many of the issues and conflicts postal officials attribute to diversity. Postal officials are also aware that structural diversity does not exist in the organization; nonetheless, it continues to examine race and gender distributions among EAS employees which has not changed in the Service since the 1980s. White men and women hold over 70 percent of the upper echelon positions, EAS levels 19 through 26 (GAO, 2000). Postal officials are as aware as postal employees that diversity between and within postal facilities is miniscule, at best. Accordingly, the position here is that diversity does not cause conflicts in the Service. Rather, inequality causes conflicts in the authoritarian, male-dominated culture of the Postal Service. Inequities, a trademark of bureaucracies, have always created conflicts between managers and those they manage and between employees. The Postal Service is not different from other organizations in this regard. Organizations continue to maintain the status quo while riding on the diversity bandwagon, waving racial ethnic and women employees around as symbols of a diversity that, literally and figuratively, does not exist. However, the Service, unlike many other organizations, has a conciliatory protocol that predates civil rights legislation; yet, it has one of the most conflict-filled work environments in the country. It would not be an understatement to suggest that this is not particular to the Service. Bureaucratic life in the United States is at an all time low with intolerable conditions and incredibly weak unions.

In the United States Postal Service, downsizing has significantly decreased upper echelon positions, and the level and venues of inequality have expanded in the past century. The inequities that are built into organizations and for which workers have fought many battles to

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