The suc­cess also marks the reju­ve­na­tion of the Amer­i­can Postal Work­ers Union (APWU) under the lead­er­ship of Mark Dimond­stein. First elect­ed as pres­i­dent in 2013, Dimond­stein promised union mem­bers a more aggres­sive attack on USPS pri­va­ti­za­tion ini­tia­tives and a more pro­gres­sive union over­all. He deliv­ered on those promis­es with the Sta­ples cam­paign, and stood out in 2016 as one of the few union lead­ers to back insur­gent Bernie Sanders’ cam­paign for the White House.

Mem­bers of one of the largest labor unions for post office work­ers are cel­e­brat­ing the suc­cess of a three-year cam­paign to roll back a com­mer­cial alliance between the U.S. Postal Ser­vice (USPS) and office sup­plies retail­er Sta­ples that threat­ened a major advance in the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the nation­al mail sys­tem. Com­ing just before the acces­sion of Don­ald Trump to the White House, the vic­to­ry marks one of the most suc­cess­ful cor­po­rate cam­paigns by any labor union dur­ing the Oba­ma era.

In an inter­view with In These Times, the union leader cred­its the suc­cess of the cam­paign to the thou­sands of hours of unpaid vol­un­teer work by union mem­bers, and also to impres­sive demon­stra­tions of sol­i­dar­i­ty by oth­er unions, par­tic­u­lar­ly teach­ers unions. Launched in 2014, the cam­paign gained ear­ly momen­tum, he says, and land­ed some of its most effec­tive blows in mid-2014 and ear­ly 2015. Over the course of 2016, exec­u­tives at USPS and Sta­ples were in a slow retreat and for­mal­ly caved in a let­ter to the union announc­ing the can­cel­la­tion of the pri­va­ti­za­tion effort ear­li­er this month.

Union mem­bers were imme­di­ate­ly gal­va­nized in oppo­si­tion when the USPS-Sta­ples deal was announced as a ​“pilot pro­gram” in 2013. The pilot called for Sta­ples to open ​“postal coun­ters” in its exist­ing retail stores where most stan­dard post office ser­vices would be avail­able. Such coun­ters would be intro­duced in a num­ber of select test mar­kets, and grad­u­al­ly expand­ed to more than 1,000 Sta­ples out­lets nation­wide. The work­ers at these coun­ters would be non-union Sta­ples employ­ees, effec­tive­ly replac­ing APWU members.

“It was obvi­ous from the start that they were not being hon­est about the inten­tions of this pro­gram. If these Sta­ples out­lets were suc­cess­ful, then the next step would have been to close the reg­u­lar post offices in those mar­kets, and elim­i­nate the union work­ers. It was a back­door pri­va­ti­za­tion. Our mem­bers are not stu­pid, and they saw it for what it was right from the begin­ning,” Dimond­stein says.

The first order of busi­ness for the cor­po­rate cam­paign against USPS-Sta­ples was to ener­gize oth­er unions, Dia­mond­stein says, and this ulti­mate­ly proved crit­i­cal. Oher postal unions — notably the Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tion of Let­ter Car­ri­ers and the Nation­al Postal Mail Han­dlers Union—were eager part­ners, he reports. Their call for a nation­al boy­cott of Sta­ples was endorsed by AFL-CIO in June 2014.

But the act of sol­i­dar­i­ty that car­ried the most pow­er­ful punch was the deci­sion by the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers (AFT) and the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NEA) to sup­port the boy­cott. Accord­ing to Dimond­stein, ​“There are 3 or 4 mil­lion teach­ers in this coun­try, and in a lot of cities and towns the teach­ers are giv­en the pow­er to go out and buy school sup­plies. For Sta­ples, these are cus­tomers who come back year after year. This is mar­ket pow­er that has real mean­ing to cor­po­ra­tions like Staples.”

AFT Pres­i­dent Ran­di Wein­garten even encour­aged the APWU to stage a pub­lic demon­stra­tion against Sta­ples at the same time as the AFT’s 2014 con­ven­tion in Los Ange­les. Wein­garten per­son­al­ly led a large group of teach­ers from the con­ven­tion to an APWU ral­ly, held at the Sta­ples Cen­ter sports are­na, and deliv­ered a fiery speech in sup­port of the postal work­ers. She backed up the rhetoric, accord­ing to Dimond­stein, with active efforts to get AFT affil­i­ates to back the boy­cott nationwide.

“It was at that moment,” that the bal­ance of pow­er shift­ed in favor of the union, says Dimond­stein. Oth­er ele­ments of the cor­po­rate cam­paign—pub­lic demon­stra­tions, a legal attack at the Nation­al Labor Rela­tions Board, nation­wide pub­lic­i­ty efforts, etc. — were begin­ning have an effect, but the teach­ers’ efforts seemed to pull it all togeth­er in the pub­lic mind, the union leader says.

Even so, it would take mas­sive over­reach by the cor­po­rate man­agers of Sta­ples to dri­ve a final stake through the heart of the USPS-Sta­ples deal. In Feb­ru­ary 2015, Sta­ples announced it would buy retail com­peti­tor Office Depot in a deal val­ued at $6.3 bil­lion. But the com­bi­na­tion of the two large office sup­ply retail­ers raised obvi­ous anti-trust issues. (A sim­i­lar merg­er was blocked in 1997 by the Fed­er­al Trade Commission.)

The APWU jumped into action to oppose the merg­er, mobi­liz­ing oth­er poten­tial oppo­nents and meet­ing with anti-trust reg­u­la­tors at the trade commission.

“Our research team did a just fan­tas­tic job. It’s hard for me to see how the merg­er could pos­si­bly have ever been approved after look­ing at their work,” Dimond­stein says.

Sure enough, the trade com­mis­sion ruled against the Sta­ples-Office Depot deal, embar­rass­ing Sta­ples CEO Ronald Sar­gent and lat­er cost­ing him his job. The com­pa­ny was also forced to pay Office Depot about $250 mil­lion in a ​“break-up fee” for the failed merg­er, Dimond­stein says.

“We opposed the merg­er and that put us square­ly on the side of the con­sumer. As a union, we always want to be on the side of the con­sumer and that dri­ves a lot what we do,” the APWU leader says.

Asked about the cost of the cam­paign, Dimond­stein declines to answer direct­ly. He insists, how­ev­er, that the union spent less than $5 mil­lion and much of the cost was borne by unpaid vol­un­teers from the membership.

“We were will­ing to spend what­ev­er it took. But it doesn’t take as much as you’d think when you have a unit­ed mem­ber­ship will­ing to pitch in. We put in sub­stan­tial resources, but our feel­ing [is] that this is pre­cise­ly the kind of thing that union dues are for,” he says.

If the cam­paign presents a sin­gle over­rid­ing les­son, then it is the impor­tance of labor union sol­i­dar­i­ty, Dimond­stein con­cludes. With­in USPS, there are mul­ti­ple unions so ​“it is always divide and con­quer with them.” But APWU was able to spear­head an effec­tive coali­tion with oth­er unions and also enlist the AFL-CIO in the boycott.

“The stay­ing pow­er of our own mem­bers is real­ly what car­ried us and our allies for­ward,” Dimond­stein says. ​“They had the con­fi­dence that work­ers can win — and will win.”