US mail carriers want fair deal from USPS

The head of the National Association of Letter Carriers urged the U.S. Postal Service today at the opening of contract negotiations to build on an improved labor relations climate and reward letter carriers with a “fair” wage increase and continued benefits for helping it become a profitable and productive government agency.

NALC President William H. Young noted that the Postal Service has eliminated the debt of USD 11.3 billion it had in 2001 when the current contract began. The Postal Service has turned an USD 8.4 billion profit over the past three years, he added.

“Letter carriers expect to be rewarded for their contributions to the success of the Postal Service,” Young said.

Young said he and the entire 28-member NALC executive council were committed to negotiating a contract “that is fair to the nation’s letter carriers, fair to postal management and fair to the American people.”

“We are ready to get to work on building a better workplace for our members and finding mutually acceptable solutions to matters affecting the city carrier workforce through a new National Agreement,” he said.

Young was “very optimistic” about prospects for reaching a negotiated settlement, pledging to work with Postmaster General John E. Potter and USPS Vice President-Labor Relations Douglas Tulino “in a spirit of good will to seek a mutually acceptable National Agreement.”

The current five-year contract covering 224,411 city letter carriers in all 50 states and U.S. jurisdictions expires Nov. 20.

Young said that Agreement and the relationship between the NALC and Postal Service during its term “should be seen as a model for the next contract.”
“Negotiated in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001 and the devastating anthrax attacks that followed, the now-expiring contract solidified a major improvement in the quality of labor relations between the NALC and the USPS,” Young said. “The long period of stability it provided allowed the parties to complete a revolution in the way we deal with workplace tensions.”

Young noted that adoption of an alternative dispute resolution process based on joint training of Dispute Resolution Teams has dramatically reduced the number of workplace grievances over the past five years. Grievances pending arbitration have dropped from a 28,000 case backload in 1997 to just 1,200 today.

Young said, however, that there has only been “mixed success” so far in improving working conditions and enhancing postal operations, especially dealing with route inspections and the Postal Service’s continued use of a flawed Delivery Operations Information System (DOIS).

The 2001-2006 National Agreement was the first resolved at the bargaining table between the NALC and Postal Service since 1987. Three subsequent contract talks reached impasse and new contract terms were set by an arbitration board under terms of the Postal Reorganization Act of 1970.

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