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Discontent is high in the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) as a rank-and-file campaign seeks to vote the new contract down.
By Connor Wright
BOSTON – Last Friday, the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) signed a tentative agreement with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), outlining a proposed contract that would last through 2026 if approved by rank-and-file letter carriers. NALC members have been working without a contract for almost two years.
The leadership of the 200,000-member union released a summary of the tentative agreement (TA) on Saturday. It includes raises of 1.3% per year, annual cost of living adjustments (COLA), and small increases in base pay for some positions. The raises and COLA will also be paid retroactively for the roughly 600 days the current contract has been expired.
The proposed agreement is now pending approval from NALC’s membership. Ballots are slated to go out in mid-November. A simple majority is needed to approve the TA.
The new contract is not guaranteed to pass. Friday’s announcement sparked a wave of discontent among members, according to local carriers who spoke to Working Mass. Almost immediately, a national NALC Votes No campaign was set up, calling for members to vote down the TA for a chance at a better contract.
“The Tentative Agreement between NALC and the USPS, announced on October 19th, is unacceptable,” the campaign website reads. “After 600 days of negotiating and promising an ‘historic’ contract, our union leadership has failed us.”
The campaign cites multiple reasons for rejecting the TA. The 1.3% raises fall well below inflation, amounting to a pay cut; the COLAs are small and tied to already low base wages; healthcare payments are even higher than last contract’s; and the use of “City Carrier Assistants,” a lower-paid second tier of the union workforce, is left unchanged.
Multiple groups within NALC oppose the TA and have thrown in with the No campaign. Build a Fighting NALC (BFN) – a group that aims to “transform our union into a democratic, fighting union” – seems to be the driving force behind the campaign. Concerned Letter Carriers, another rank-and-file network, has also endorsed NALC Votes No. Even some top union officers are calling for a No vote, opposing a deal largely negotiated by current NALC president Brian Renfroe.
For years, there has been widespread dissatisfaction among NALC’s rank and file over weak contract gains and harsh working conditions. Those issues came to a head during the union’s last national convention, when BFN clashed with the union’s current leadership, demanding that the union open up bargaining to rank-and-file members and strengthen its demands in negotiations with USPS.
The letter carriers have a history of militancy. Famously, in 1970, rank-and-file NALC members launched a massive wildcat strike over brutal working conditions. The 8-day strike remains the largest wildcat in U.S. history, and laid the groundwork for decades of more militant, democratic unionism at the Postal Service, after rank-and-file strike leaders wrested leadership of the union from a corrupt old guard.
Strikes by federal workers are illegal, and national workplace action doesn’t seem to be on the horizon this time around. But the NALC Votes No campaign hopes to draw on the legacy of the 1970 strike.
“We’ve been here before,” one local NALC member told Working Mass. “Whatever it takes to get them to listen to us – that’s what we’ll do.”
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