FacebookTwitterLinkedIn

In the spring of 1977, a letter appeared in Proceedings, the long-running journal of the U.S. Naval Institute.

“I am no malcontent,” wrote a junior enlisted Navy man. “I love the Navy and believe in a strong national defense. But, I believe a man who is treated with dignity and respect, rather than like a child by an elitist, is bound to be a better fighter.”

The letter writer represented his division at his ship’s human relations council, where he could bring his shipmates’ concerns to the attention of leadership. But the ship hadn’t held a council meeting in nine months. The man wrote that he had inquired up the chain of command as to why the meetings had suddenly stopped.

Spc. Ryan Cooley, 101st Airborne Division, reenlists in the Army for another five years on Camp Taji, Iraq, in 2019. Photo by Maj. Vonnie L. Wright, courtesy of the U.S. Army.

The answer he had received infuriated him. “If the ship has no problems,” a higher-ranking officer told him, “I see no reason to have the meetings.”

In his letter, the writer made it clear that he would not stand idly by.

“I am going to join the American Federation of Government Employees and stand up and fight for myself.”

He had written the letter in response to an article that had appeared the previous fall. Penned by four active-duty Navy officers, it was titled “Is Military Unionism an Idea Whose Time Has Come?”

In the pages of Proceedings in the mid-1970s, the topic wasn’t unusual. The title of a June 1977 article, written by a retired captain, was “The Military Union Card.” The next month, another article, this one by an active-duty commander, asked “Should Military Unionization Be Permitted?”

Four years earlier, the military had undergone a seismic shift. In 1973, Congress abolished the draft, which, apart from a short period in the late 1940s, had been part of the American experience since before the United States entered World War II.

Following widespread opposition to the Vietnam War, and the sense that the selective service system was unequal, Richard Nixon campaigned on ending the draft. After he was elected in 1968, he stood up a panel, known as the Gates Commission, to study the issue, and upon its recommendation ended mandatory conscription—50 years ago this month.

READ MORE