Tentative Agreement for USPS City Letter Fasters Wurthening to be rejected

On February 1, 2025By Littum

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USPS truck (Photo by Flickr, Lisa Brewster / CC By-SA 4.0?

The preliminary agreement between the US Postal Service (USPS) and the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) appears to be on the way to defeat. The rejection of the agreement reflects not only the fighting atmosphere among 205,000 active letter fixers, but also the provocative nature of the tentative agreement itself.

A memo alleged to be from Deputy Postmaster General Doug A. Tulino, which has been shared on Reddit, indicates that NALC informed USPS that its members would probably reject the tentative agreement. Such refusals have been rare on USPS in recent decades.

Nalc President Brian Renfroe called the document “False” in a press release. Regardless of the authenticity of the document, there is a broad opposition to the tentative agreement between letter fixers.

The agreement, which covers the period from 2023 to 2026, provoked indignation when it was announced in October after almost two years of negotiations. It includes insulting annual increases of 1.3 percent, which constitutes cuts to real wages when inflation is incorporated. In addition, the agreement includes the SUBStandard cost adjustments and does nothing to block the large restructuring program called Delivering for America.

In addition, the union has also renewed the invasive monitoring system known as technology integrated alternative route evaluation and adjustment process (TiAreP). This system tracks letter carriers at every moment and punish them for “stationary events” that occur under their routes. Such events may include the delivery of mail to cluster boxes outside apartment buildings or necessary breaks for bathroom breaks. TiAreP -Data can affect management’s decisions on employment, wages and routes.

“These are nuts,” commented a postal worker World’s Socialist Site, refers to the tentative agreement. “This cannot pass.”

“We live in a country where 12.6 percent of our citizens get benefits (food stamp), and many of them work for large companies – including USPS,” wrote a worker at Reddit. “The federal government should not subsidize big business. Big Business should pay us fair pay. “In comments on NALC’s alleged declaration that workers would probably reject the tentative agreement, the worker wrote,” I am a touch surprised that they were not rich in the vote. “

Whatever final form, the NALC contract will set the pattern for two other major postal contracts affecting hundreds of thousands of workers. Members of the National Rural Letter Carriers Association and members of the American Postal Workers Union work under expired agreements. Each of the latter unions has not reached a new agreement with USPS that will try to use the NALC agreement as a template for these workers.

If the city triplets reject the tentative agreement, the negotiations between NALC and USPS will make room for binding arbitration. Far from being neutral parties, arbitrators enforce the needs of the government and the company. Binding arbitration would produce a tentative agreement with only cosmetic changes if any. NALC and USPS already agree on what workers should accept. The Union hopes to use binding arbitration to force workers into a massively unpopular contract while it claims its hands are bound.

NALC members must reject the entire negotiating framework as uneven. It is designed to suppress the democratic rights of workers, prevent strikes and satisfy the financial needs of the USPS at the expense of the letter leaders. History shows plenty that workers can only win their needs through combat.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon proposed a 4.1 percent increase for NALC members, which is more than three times what they are offered today. Nevertheless, letter carriers rejected it as unacceptable because inflation seriously varodined their wages, which brought some close to poverty. Lettercraft companies in New York began a Wildcat strike that defies a ban on such actions from federal employees. More than 200,000 letter carriers and other postal workers across the country had joined the strike within two days. NALC officials who did not claim that it had reached an agreement concluded the strike and thus helped the right-wing Nixon, who continued to reorganize the post office from a cabinet-level department to an independent agency known today as the USPS. Nalc is prepared to betray the letter carriers in the same way today.

But more than a contract is at stake. The very future of postal delivery is threatened by the delivery of the America Restructuring program. The plan, which has support from NALC and both capitalist parties, is monitored by postmaster General Louis Dejoy, a former director of XPO Logistics. When introducing the program, Dejoy declared that it would eliminate 50,000 jobs, close thousands of post offices and the delivery of slow mail. Invasive monitoring of workers, longer postal routes and the extended use of performance are others, equally retrogressive components of the program.

The goal of delivering to America is to “Amazonify” and privatize USPS so that it can generate profits for its possible shareholders. Facility closures and consolidations reduce citizens’ access to post offices, especially in rural areas. Easy access to fast and efficient postal delivery is not only everyone’s right, but also a social need. Delivers to America trampling to this right in the interests of private profits.

Whatever the results of the voting on the preliminary deal, letter prisoners must have to seize the initiative in their fight. After allowing negotiations to pull for years, NALC is now working with USPS to introduce a contract that would offend and harm its members. Lettercraft companies cannot have any belief in the Union, which is also an accomplice in the implementation of delivery to America.

Previous experience shows that arbitration will produce an agreement that favors the needs of the management rather than the workers. In addition, it would be dangerous for workers to wait for the next EU choice in 2026 and try to remove Renfroe. Auto Workers ‘experience with Uaw President Shawn Fain and UPS workers’ experience with Teamsters -President Sean O’Brien are only the latest illustrations that union reformism is a dead end. Yesterday’s so -called “reformers” pushed through massive job cuts at UPS and the automotive industry, and now sets up to work with Trump.

The urgent task is for letter carriers to determine their direct control over their fight. Workers across the country must establish rank-and-file committees at their facilities. These committees must be independent of NALC and of both capitalist parties. By joining the USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee, letter-fasters will be able to organize a real struggle for lively wages and optimal working conditions. They need to expand their struggle by uniting with letter protection companies, officials, mail managers and other postal workers.

A rebellion against the union apparatus is the first step in establishing the working class as an independent and powerful strength. Mailing companies are part of a wider fight in defense of the working class rights, which are under unprecedented attack by President Donald Trump and his democratic activators. This struggle can only be won if the workers first establish their political and organizational independence.