The Tentative Agreement between NALC and the USPS, announced on October 19th, is unacceptable. After 600 days of negotiating and promising an “historic” contract, our union leadership has failed us.
Every city carrier needs to be informed about the failures of this tentative agreement and the pressing need to vote NO and seek a better deal in federal arbitration.
Commit to voting NO on the 2023-2026 TA
Please note: signing this pledge does not count as voting on the TA. All NALC members will receive a ballot in the mail that they will need to fill out and return. As we find out more about the timing of the vote, this website will be updated.
Why this contract is unacceptable:
We’re worth more than 1.3%
The TA gives us 1.3% raises in 2023, 2024, and 2025. 1.3% is simply a slap in the face to mail carriers who put our bodies on the line every day, and especially for those who worked through a pandemic as essential workers.
At a time of exploding prices for everything, a 1.3% raise almost guarantees a salary that doesn’t keep up with costs, and puts dreams like home ownership even further out of reach for most carriers. COLAs scaled to already inadequate salaries means more economic hardship and more letter carriers living on the edge of poverty.
Eliminating Table 1
The creation of Table 2 in 2013 led to a generation of carriers who began their careers making almost $10/hr less than their more senior peers. Instead of fighting for a return to a livable starting salary, this tentative agreement puts us all on Table 2. A PTF who started under this contract would be making $4 less per hour than a PTF who started on January 11, 2013. A CCA who joined under this contract would be making $9 less per hour than a PTF who started on January 11, 2013.
Reducing the time to Step P — but only for a few
Our current system of 13 years to Step P is outrageous, and one of the few bright spots of this contract is reducing that timeframe. However, by advancing everyone in Steps AA-B into Step C, the vast majority of carriers will feel no impact. A carrier who makes Step C tomorrow will still have taken 13 years from hiring to reaching the top step, and a carrier who is currently in Step N will not get to Step P any sooner. There is simply no rationale for eliminating Steps AA-B without moving every city carrier below Step P up two steps. (Disclosure: the creator of this page is a regular city carrier currently in Step A who would be moved to Step C by this contract).
Continuing the use and abuse of CCAs
At a time when the post office is desperate for staff, an all-career workforce is the only path forward. The position of City Carrier Assistant should not exist. Rather than eliminating the CCA position, or at a minimum mandating a faster conversion to career, this TA entrenches the existence of a second-class workforce who receive inferior pay and benefits for the same work.
(Note: mandating one N/S day per week and forwarding AL for CCAs and PTFs is a legitimate step in a positive direction. However, it falls far short of eliminating the CCA position entirely and creating an all-career workforce, given the continued pay and benefit disparities between CCAs and PTFs).
No relief for health insurance costs — just as they’re getting worse
A continuation of the same cost-sharing for health insurance means a continuation of city carriers paying staggering amounts for their health insurance, especially if they have dependents on their plan. As we anticipate price increases with the rollout of the Postal Service Health Benefits program, this contract ensures that we have no relief from higher premiums and less affordable care.
Voting no
WHY WE MUST VOTE NO:
Approving this TA sets a horrible precedent for wages, benefits, an all-career workforce, and affordable healthcare premiums. It ensures that we spend our next round of contract negotiations clawing back from disaster instead of making new gains. Ratification also sends the message that the completely broken and non-democratic method by which this agreement was reached is acceptable. It’s simply dangerous to tell union leadership that the rank-and-file members will rubber-stamp a lowball contract after being kept in the dark for almost two years.
After almost two years out of contract, there will be temptation to sign off on this contract in order to get the backpay and COLA that have been delayed by this broken process. City carriers across the country are under incredible financial pressure. However, voting yes on this TA would be shortsighted, and have potentially disastrous consequences for city carriers going forward.
The TA only needs a simple majority of votes cast in order to pass — which means that it’s critical that we organize every NALC member we can to vote no.
WHAT HAPPENS IF WE VOTE NO:
If we are successful in voting down the TA, the contract will go to arbitration, where it should have gone in July 2023. There are several reasons to believe that we will receive a better deal in arbitration:
Arbitrators are instructed to find a balance between the priorities of the two sides. If NALC members vote down this TA, which USPS has agreed to, it will send the message to the arbitrator that the balance is currently tilted towards USPS and away from rank-and-file carriers.
Past arbitrators have expressly compared the wages and benefits of city carriers to similar workers in the private sector. That comparison was the basis of the terrible DAS decision to create Table 2 and CCAs in 2013.* However, we are now in a position where similar workers are in a much stronger economic position than we are. There’s strong evidence and precedent that our position in arbitration would benefit significantly from the increasing wages we’ve seen across the private sector over the last several years.
There is, of course, no guarantee that arbitration gets us a better deal than this TA, and it would mean more time before our next contract went into effect. However, given the manifest failure of this TA to address any of the concerns of rank and file city carriers, and the unacceptable precedent that ratifying this TA would set, voting down this TA and moving to arbitration is simply our only path forward.
*hat tip to user Ok_Antelope_8383 for this post in r/fromatoarbitration, which lays out this point very well
Recent union wins
Other unions doing comparable work are getting huge wins. We can’t roll over and accept poverty wages. Voting down this TA is the best way to get closer to what these workers have won in the past several years.
In 2023, UPS drivers, represented by the Teamsters, won a contract that increased pay by $7.50/hr and secured a top rate pay of $49/hr by the end of the contract.
UAW-organized workers at Ford, GM, and Stellantis won historic contracts in 2023, winning minimum 33% raises with up to 160% raises for some of the lowest-paid workers over the lifetime of the contract. They also dramatically lowered the time to top pay.
Just recently, dock workers represented by the International Longshoremen’s Association and the U.S. Maritime Alliance won a 62% raise over the course of a six-year contract.
Commit to voting NO on the 2023-2026 TA
About this page
My name is Wesley, and I’m a regular city carrier in the Boston area. I am a proud NALC member who wants to see real change in this union. I have been heartened by the growth of groups like Concerned Letter Carriers and Build a Fighting NALC, along with works like the From A to Arbitration podcast, but I am not affiliated with any of them. I also do not have any position in the union.
Before I began working at the post office, I had a career building online advocacy campaigns for nonprofit groups and political campaigns. In my outrage at the unacceptable TA released on October 19th, I reached back to those roots to create this page. My only hope is that this page will be a helpful resource to rally a No vote on this TA.
I can be reached at wesley@nalcvotesno.com, or by submitting the Pledge form on this page. All information will be kept confidential.