Some USPS mail carriers rally against vote on union contract

Postal workers across the country say they are disappointed with the terms of their union’s tentative contract and plan to vote against the agreement next month.

Several grassroots mail carrier groups are talking about a 1.3% annual pay increase and semi-annual Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA) The terms outlined in the preliminary agreement between the USPS and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) do not meet the hours and demands of the increasingly stressful work.

A week after the NALC provided details of the tentative agreement, mail carriers expressed their disappointment in hundreds of social media posts and tried to organize their colleagues to vote against the agreement.

A simple majority vote is required to approve the preliminary agreement. A third party arbitrator will resolve the labor impasse if the participants do not approve the preliminary contract.

Building a Fight NALC, a coalition of mail carriers advocating for a more inclusive collective bargaining process for rank-and-file employees, is calling for a starting wage of $30 an hour, an end to mandatory overtime and full COLA agreements for all members of bargaining units. .

Under the tentative agreement, career workers will earn between $25 and $40 an hour, depending on their level of experience. Non-career city carrier assistants will earn a starting salary of about $20 an hour.

The coalition is planning a national day of action this week and is calling on postmen to hand out “Vote No” leaflets to colleagues before their shifts.

Tyler Wasser, director of NALC Branch 9 in Minneapolis and a member of the Build a Fighting NALC steering committee, told more than 500 letter carriers at a virtual meeting over the weekend that proposed COLAs and wage increases have not kept pace with inflation. .

“If inflation is 8%, that should mean an 8% increase for postal carriers,” Wasseur said. “It will be a real adjustment to the cost of living as it currently stands.”

Under preliminary agreementwhich runs from May 20, 2023 to November 7, 2026, mail carriers will receive retroactive 1.3% pay increases for November 2023 and November 2024, and will also receive another 1.3% pay increase in November 2025 year.

Under the tentative agreement, letter carriers will receive three of the seven COLAs retroactively as a lump sum payment, and will also receive additional COLAs each March and September during the contract term.

“Retroactive COLAs seem like a lot of money, but that’s because inflation has historically been high. This contract, as it stands, means a reduction in wages and a loss of purchasing power for mail carriers,” Wasseur said.

Some letter carriers say they are unimpressed by the NALC’s negotiations, given agreements reached by other major unions.

Last year, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters negotiated a contract that increased United Parcel Service (UPS) hourly wages by $7.50 and ensured a maximum hourly rate of $49 by the end of the contract.

“They are willing to vote out bad TPs and fight for more,” Wasseur said. “I think it inspires all of us in the broader labor movement.”

Postal Reorganization Act of 1970. Requires the USPS to set employee compensation and benefits at a level “comparable to that of work in the private sector of the economy.”

NALC National President Brian Renfro told members during a recent Zoom call that UPS is an “obvious” comparison in wages and benefits to the private sector.

USPS, he added, is offering a more competitive benefits package. But when it comes to pay, mail carriers, at the lower end of the pay scale, make about 80-82% of the equivalent salary of a UPS employee.

At the other end of the pay scale, more senior carriers earn about 87-88% of the equivalent salary of a UPS employee.

If carriers vote to reject the tentative agreement and submit the matter to arbitration, Renfro said, the union risks having a third-party arbitrator decide on a less favorable COLA calculation.

“The Postal Service could make a pretty strong argument given what’s happened with inflation. It’s going to be a struggle,” Renfro said. “And based on what has happened in previous rounds of interest rate arbitration, I suspect that this will be one of the issues that they will take up.”

Federal News Network requested an interview with Renfro to share the union’s perspective on the tentative agreement.

Wesley, a regular carrier in the Boston metro area, launched “NALC votes against” last week. Among other things, the site allows mail carriers to submit a declaration that they will vote against the preliminary agreement.

NALC members will receive their ballots in the mail by mid-November for the official provisional vote.

In an interview last week, Wesley, who asked that his last name not be published, said the site had received more than 3,000 requests to vote against the contract.

Wesley said he was “cautiously optimistic” that a majority of letter carriers could vote to reject the tentative agreement. Although the NALC has approximately 200,000 members, a portion of them typically vote in favor of the union contract.

Before joining the USPS in April, Wesley previously worked in digital fundraising and advocacy for nonprofit organizations.

“I was just trying to put something together that could be a helpful resource for other carriers who were very frustrated,” Wesley said of the website he launched.

Wesley said he enjoys working as a mail carrier, but the starting salary, especially in a large metropolitan area, is not enough to compensate for the long hours.

“The biggest thing that people don’t realize is how understaffed we are. It is very difficult for us to allow people to join us as postmen,” he said.

Wesley said he takes about 20,000 steps in an average workday. He worked 60 hours a week every week from June to mid-October and only recently used his vacation time to go on vacation.

“There are plenty of jobs that pay the same or better and don’t have 60 hours of overtime and don’t have many of the challenges that come with being a mail carrier,” he said.

“I feel like this contract, in addition to being primarily a slap in the face to mail carriers, is also a strategic disaster for the Postal Service if they really want to have enough people to deliver mail,” he added.

Since NALC first released details of the tentative agreement on Oct. 18, Federal News Network has received a steady stream of calls and emails from mail carriers unhappy with the deal.

“People find it difficult to live day to day on the money they are paid. That’s well below what we’re entitled to economically,” a mail carrier from Newport News, Virginia, told Federal News Network by phone.

The mail carrier, who has worked for the USPS for 10 years, said the tentative agreement does not reflect the dangers employees face on their routes.

The USPS has seen an uptick in mail theft and related crimes since 2020.

The Portland, Ore., mail carrier said overall wage growth and COLAs have not kept pace with inflation.

“Our wages and working conditions have been deteriorating for many years, and this preliminary agreement does nothing to stop the bleeding. I will vote for non-ratification and urge all carriers I know to do the same,” the operator said.

Another San Diego mail carrier said the tentative agreement is “terrible for the city’s mail carriers” and doesn’t reflect their costs.

NALC management says the 1.3% annual increase does not reflect the full amount of compensation for letter carriers under the tentative agreement.

Taking semi-annual COLA agreements into account, the union says letter carriers at the bottom of the pay scale will receive a pay increase of approximately 25%, while letter carriers at the top of the scale will receive an increase of approximately 11%.

Renfro said the tentative agreement represents the best achievable outcome given the Postal Service’s financial constraints.

“I think everyone will look at this agreement – or, frankly, any other agreement in our history – and see areas where we would like to discuss this, we would like to discuss that. There is no doubt about it. And believe me, there are many issues that I myself would like to agree on. But I can tell you that when it comes to this round of negotiations, the reason I put it aside and kept going and kept going is to squeeze every penny out of it that we could, given the circumstances right now. And the circumstances now are such that we are negotiating with an employer who lost $6.5 billion last year.”

Renfro said the tentative agreement would result in USPS spending about $1 billion more than what was originally agreed upon at the start of negotiations.

The union continued to negotiate with the USPS for nearly two years, he added, because the USPS “continued to move in a positive direction in terms of the amount of money they were willing to spend.”

“As long as we could continue to move them, we could continue to pursue the economic goals that we had, we continued to negotiate. And eventually, it usually gets to a point — and it did this time — where it becomes very clear to me that we did everything we could,” Renfro told participants at the Oct. 23 virtual meeting.

Renfroe said the union sees positive results in arbitration when the USPS is in better financial shape, but doesn’t see as much success when the agency is in worse financial shape.

USPS ended fiscal 2023 with a net loss of $6.5 billion and is expected to soon report an even higher net loss for fiscal 2024.

“Naturally, there is a greater risk when the Postal Service loses several billion dollars a year—which they have done every year since 2010—compared to the scenario we hope for through our continued work on Capitol Hill, the White House and other things, with some of these political things, we may get to the point where they break even as expected,” Renfro said.

“While we feel very good about our case, we do not think that at this particular stage, given the circumstances before us, we will be able to achieve a better economic package than the package that is included in this preliminary agreement. Renfro said.