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

Several grassroots letter carrier groups say the 1.3% annual pay raises and semiannual cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) outlined in the tentative agreement between USPS and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) don’t match up with the hours and demands of an increasingly strenuous job.

Since NALC provided details of the tentative agreement earlier this month, letter carriers, in hundreds of social media posts, have voiced their frustrations. Many are now trying to organize their coworkers to vote against the deal.

The tentative agreement needs a simple majority of votes for approval. A third-party arbitrator would resolve the labor impasse if members don’t approve the tentative contract.

Build a Fighting NALC, a coalition of letter carriers advocating for a more inclusive collective bargaining process for rank-and-file employees, is calling for $30-an-hour starting pay, an end to mandatory overtime and full COLAs for all bargaining unit members.

Under the union’s tentative agreement, career carriers would make about $25 to $40 an hour, depending on their level of seniority. Noncareer city carrier assistants would receive starting pay closer to $20 an hour.

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

Tyler Vasseur, shop steward for NALC Branch 9 in Minneapolis, and member of the coordinating committee of Build a Fighting NALC, told more than 500 letter carriers in a virtual meeting on Oct. 27 that the proposed COLAs and pay raises aren’t keeping up with inflation.

“If inflation is 8%, that should mean an 8% raise for letter carriers,” Vasseur said. “That would be a real cost of living adjustment, as it currently stands.”

Under the tentative agreement,  which runs from May 20, 2023, through Nov. 7, 2026, letter carriers would get retroactive 1.3% pay raises for November 2023 and November 2024, and would receive another 1.3% pay raise 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.

“The retroactive COLAs seem like a lot of money, but that is because inflation has been historically high. This contract, as it stands, still amounts to a pay cut and a loss of purchasing power for letter carriers,” Vasseur said.

Members of NALC’s senior leadership have also rejected the tentative agreement. NALC Vice President John D. Henry said he intends to vote against the contract proposal, and is encouraging others to do the same.

“I’m of the belief that the TA is woefully short of expectations by the membership and exceedingly deficient of what our letter carriers deserve,” Henry wrote in a post on the Concerned Letter Carriers website. “Moreover, it’s devoid of the respect our letter carriers have earned through their devotion, dedication and hard work through any and all circumstances!”

Private-sector pay comparisons

Some letter carriers say they feel underwhelmed by NALC’s negotiations, considering the deals struck by other major unions.

Last year, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters negotiated a contract that increased hourly pay for United Parcel Service (UPS) drivers by $7.50 and secured a top hourly pay rate of $49 by the end of the contract.

“They’re willing to vote down bad TAs and fight for more,” Vasseur said. “I think that that is an inspiration for the rest of us in the broader labor movement.”

NALC’s proposed pay raises also aren’t keeping pace with the rest of the federal government. President Joe Biden is proposing a 2% average pay raise for non-postal federal employees that would take effect in January 2025.

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

NALC National President Brian Renfroe told members in a recent Zoom call that UPS is an “obvious” private-sector comparison for wages and benefits.

USPS, he added, offers a more competitive benefits package. But in terms of wages, letter carriers on the low end of the pay scale are paid about 80-82% of an equivalent employee’s wages at UPS.

On the other end of the pay scale, more senior letter carriers top out at about 87-88% of an equivalent UPS employee’s wages.

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

NALC, he added, generally achieves positive results during arbitration when USPS is in better financial health, but does not see such gains when the agency is in worse financial health.

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

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said last year that USPS is not currently on track with its “break-even” goal, under its 10-year reform plan. The agency, however, is looking to cut billions of dollars in annual costs through its network modernization efforts.

“There’s naturally more risk when the Postal Service is losing several billion dollars a year — which they’ve done every year since 2010 — versus a scenario that we hope, through our continued work on Capitol Hill and the White House and other things, with some of this policy stuff, we can get to a place where they’re breaking even like they’re supposed to,” Renfroe said.

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

3,000 pledges to vote ‘no’ — and counting

Wesley, a regular carrier in the Boston metro area, launched the “NALC Votes No” website last week. Among its features, the site allows letter carriers to submit their pledge to vote no on the tentative agreement.

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

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

Wesley said he’s “cautiously optimistic” that a majority of voting letter carriers could vote to reject the tentative agreement.

While the NALC has about 200,000 members, a fraction of them typically vote on the union contract.

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

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

Wesley said he likes his letter carrier job, but that the starting pay — especially in a major metropolitan area — isn’t enough to make up for long hours.

“The biggest thing that people are not aware of is how understaffed we are. We are very hard up for people to join as letter carriers,” he said.

Wesley said takes about 20,000 steps on an average workday. Between June and mid-October, he’s worked 60-hour weeks every week, and only recently used his leave time for a vacation.

“There are just lots of jobs that pay the same or better and don’t have forced overtime into 60 hours, and don’t have a lot of a lot of the difficulties that come along with being a mail carrier,” he said.

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

A steady stream of complaints

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

“People are having trouble living day-to-day with this money that they’re getting paid. It’s way below what we’re entitled to, based on the economy,” a letter carrier in Newport News, Virginia, told Federal News Network over the phone.

The letter carrier, who’s worked at USPS for 10 years, said the tentative agreement doesn’t reflect the hazards employees face on their routes.

USPS, since 2020, has seen a surge in mail theft and related crimes.

Criminals in some cases are robbing letter carriers for their arrow keys, which open blue collection boxes, to steal mail and packages, as well as commit financial crimes — including altering checks and committing check fraud.

NALC has endorsed a bipartisan bill that would set higher penalties for robbing or assaulting letter carriers.

A letter carrier in Portland, Oregon said general wage increases and COLAs aren’t 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 be voting not to ratify, and I’m urging all the carriers I know to do the same,” the carrier said.

Another letter carrier, based in San Diego, said the tentative agreement “is awful for city letter carriers,” and does not keep pace with their expenses.

‘We feel very good about our case’

NALC leadership says the 1.3% annual raises don’t reflect the full scope of compensation for letter carriers under the tentative agreement.

Factoring in the semiannual COLAs, the union says letter carriers on the bottom end of the pay scale would receive about a 25% pay raise, and that letter carriers on the top of that scale would receive about an 11% raise.

NALC has a calculator on its website showing letter carriers what they would be paid under the tentative agreement. The calculator includes general wage increases, estimated future COLAs and step increases.

Renfroe said the tentative agreement represents the best achievable outcome, given the financial constraints of the Postal Service.

“Everyone, I think, would look at this agreement — or, frankly, any other agreement in our history — and they would see areas where we would like to have negotiated this, we would like to have negotiated that. There’s no doubt about that. And trust me, there are plenty that I would myself like to have negotiated. But I can tell you, when it comes to this round of bargaining, the reason I pushed this off, and kept going and kept going, is to squeeze every single penny out of them that we possibly could, given the circumstances right now. And the circumstances right now are we are bargaining with an employer that lost $6.5 billion last year,” he said.

Renfroe said the tentative agreement will result in USPS spending about $1 billion more than it first agreed to when negotiations began.

The union continued to bargain with USPS for nearly two years, he added, because 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 kept negotiating. And eventually, it gets to a point normally — and it did this time — where it became pretty evident to me that we had pushed all we could push,” Renfroe told members in an Oct. 23 virtual meeting with NALC members.

“While we feel very good about our case, we do not think that at this particular point, considering the circumstances that are in front of us, we would be able to achieve a better economic package than the package that’s included in this tentative agreement,” Renfroe said.

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