Postal Service mail carriers across the country say they are frustrated with the terms of a tentative contract negotiated by their union and plan to vote against the deal next month.

Several basic factor groups claim annual and semi-annual wage increases of 1.3% Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA) outlined in the tentative agreement between the USPS and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) do not match the hours and demands of an increasingly arduous job.

In the week since NALC provided details of the tentative agreement, letter carriers expressed their frustrations in hundreds of social media posts and attempted to organize their colleagues to that they vote against the agreement.

The tentative agreement requires a simple majority of votes to be approved. A third-party arbitrator would resolve the labor impasse if members do not approve the contract in principle.

Building a Fighting NALC, a coalition of factors 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 COLAs for all employees. members of the bargaining unit. .

According to the agreement in principle, career transporters would earn between $25 and $40 per hour, depending on their level of seniority. Non-career transit assistants would receive a starting wage closer to $20 an hour.

The coalition is planning a national day of action this week and calling on letter carriers to distribute “Vote No” flyers to their colleagues before their shifts.

Tyler Vasseur, a steward for NALC Branch 9 in Minneapolis and a member of the Build a Fighting NALC coordinating committee, told more than 500 letter carriers during a virtual meeting last weekend that COLAs and wage increases proposed salaries do not keep up with inflation. .

“If inflation is 8%, that should mean an 8% increase for factors,” Vasseur said. “This would be a real adjustment to the cost of living, as things currently stand. »

Under the agreement in principlewhich runs from May 20, 2023 to November 7, 2026, letter carriers would receive retroactive wage increases of 1.3% for November 2023 and November 2024, and would receive another 1.3% wage increase in November 2025.

Under the tentative agreement, letter carriers would receive three of the seven COLAs retroactively, as a lump sum payment, and would receive additional COLAs each March and September for the duration of the contract.

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

Some factors say they are disappointed by the NALC negotiations, given the agreements reached by other large unions.

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

“They are ready to reject bad TAs and fight for more,” Vasseur said. “I think it’s an inspiration to the rest of us in the broader labor movement.”

The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 requires USPS to set employee compensation and benefits on par with “comparable work levels in the private sector of the economy.”

NALC National President Brian Renfroe told members on a recent Zoom call that UPS is an “obvious” comparison to the private sector when it comes to wages and benefits.

USPS, he added, offers a more competitive benefits package. But in terms of wages, letter carriers at the lower end of the pay scale receive about 80-82% of the salary of an equivalent employee at UPS.

At the other end of the pay scale, more experienced carriers make about 87 to 88 percent of the salary of an equivalent UPS employee.

If the carriers vote to reject the tentative agreement and refer the issue to arbitration, Renfroe said the union would run the risk of a third-party arbitrator ruling on a less favorable COLA calculation.

“The Postal Service could make a pretty strong case, just considering what’s happened with inflation. It would be a fight,” Renfroe said. “And judging by what has happened in previous rounds of dispute arbitration, I suspect that would be one of the issues they would address.”

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

Wesley, a scheduled carrier in the Boston metropolitan area, launched the “NALC votes no» website last week. Among its features, the site allows mail carriers to submit their commitment to vote no to the agreement in principle.

NALC members will receive their ballots in the mail by mid-November to officially vote on the tentative agreement.

In an interview last week, Wesley, who asked that his last name not be published, said the website had received more than 3,000 pledges to vote no on the contract.

Wesley said he was “cautiously optimistic” that a majority of factors could vote to reject the tentative agreement. Although the NALC has approximately 200,000 members, a fraction of them typically vote on the collective bargaining agreement.

Before starting his job at USPS in April, Wesley worked in digital fundraising and advocacy for nonprofits.

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

Wesley said he loved his job as a mail carrier, but the starting pay — especially in a large metropolitan area — wasn’t enough to compensate for the long hours.

“The biggest thing people don’t realize is how understaffed we are. It is very difficult for us to recruit letter carriers,” he said.

Wesley said it takes about 20,000 steps in an average work day. Between June and mid-October, he worked 60 hours a week and only recently used his time off to take a vacation.

“There are plenty of jobs that pay as much or better, don’t require overtime up to 60 hours, and don’t present many of the challenges of being a mail carrier,” he said. declared.

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

Since NALC first revealed details of the tentative agreement on October 18, Federal News Network has received a steady stream of calls and emails from letter carriers unhappy with the agreement.

“People have difficulty living on a daily basis with this money they receive. It’s way below what we’re entitled to, based on the economy,” a mail carrier from Newport News, Virginia, said in a phone call to Federal News Network.

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

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

A letter carrier in Portland, Oregon, said across-the-board wage increases and COLAs are not keeping up with inflation.

“Our wages and working conditions have been deteriorating for years, and this tentative agreement does nothing to stop the bleeding. I will vote against ratification and urge every carrier I know to do the same,” the carrier said.

Another letter carrier, based in San Diego, said the tentative agreement “is horrible for the city’s letter carriers” and doesn’t track their spending.

NALC officials say the 1.3% annual increases do not reflect the full extent of letter carrier compensation under the tentative agreement.

Taking into account semi-annual COLAs, the union says letter carriers at the lower end of the pay scale would receive a pay increase of approximately 25% and letter carriers at the top of the scale would receive an increase of approximately 25%. ‘around 11%.

Renfroe said the tentative agreement represents the best possible outcome, given the Postal Service’s financial constraints.

“Everyone, I think, would look at this deal – or, frankly, any other deal in our history – and see the areas where we would have liked to negotiate this, we would have liked to negotiate that. There is no doubt about it. And believe me, there are many that I would like to negotiate myself. But I can tell you that when it comes to this round of negotiations, the reason I rejected this proposal and continued is to get as much out of it as possible, given the current circumstances. And the current situation is that we are negotiating with an employer that lost $6.5 billion last year.

Renfroe said the tentative agreement would result in USPS spending about $1 billion more than it initially agreed to at the start of negotiations.

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

“As long as we could continue to move them, we could continue to pursue the economic objectives that we had,” we continued to negotiate. And eventually, you normally get to a point – and it happened this time – where it became pretty obvious to me that we had pushed everything we could push,” Renfroe told members during a virtual meeting on October 23.

Renfroe said the union sees positive results in arbitration when the USPS is in better financial health, but sees no such gains when the agency is in worse financial health.

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

“There is naturally more risk when the Postal Service loses several billion dollars a year – which it has every year since 2010 – compared to a scenario we hope for, through our continued work at the Capitol and the House Blanche and other things, with With some of these policy issues, we can get to a point where they break even like they’re supposed to,” Renfroe said.

“While we are very satisfied with our record, we do not believe that at this particular stage, given the circumstances before us, we would be able to obtain a better economic package than that included in this agreement of principle,” Renfroe said.

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