2006-2011 National Agreement

Bargaining opened August 28, 2006
Aim is new National Agreement

NALC President William H. Young and the entire NALC Executive Council met with USPS officials at USPS Headquarters to open negotiations for a new National Agreement on Monday, August 28. The goal of the bargaining is a successor pact to the 2001-2006 contract that expires November 20.

NALC National Officers meet with USPS officials during the opening of bargaining at USPS Headquarters August 28, 2006.

The contract talks began just nine days after the close of NALC’s 65th Biennial National Convention, where delegates debated bargaining goals and related issues. President Young outlined the union’s broad aims at an Executive Council meeting in Washington in June: “Our goal is a negotiated agreement with general wage increases that reward city carriers for their significant contributions to the success of the USPS in recent years.”

President Young went on to stress that NALC looks forward to the continuation of the current COLA (cost-of-living adjustment) clause and that “we will vigorously resist any attempt to shift the burden of health care costs from the Postal Service to our members.”

Over the period of the current contract, the city delivery work force has added 2.6 million new delivery points to their daily routes, raising the total from 83.2 million to 85.8 million, while shrinking by 6.3 percent. Over that same period, the Postal Service’s annual volume increased by more than 4.2 billion pieces and now stands at 212 billion pieces of mail.

Thanks to the productivity gains and hard work of letter carriers and recent postal pension reforms, the Postal Service has regained its footing after the challenges posed by the terrorists attacks of 2001. It has earned $9.3 billion in profits over the past three years and has eliminated its entire outstanding debt.

The NALC’s National Agreement governs the wages and working conditions of 225,000 active city letter carriers all across the United States as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. territories. Any new National Agreement negotiated by NALC in the fall will be sent out to the members for ratification. “NALC has a long tradition of union democracy and, in the end, I hope that our members will get to decide whether the new contract suits their needs,” Young said. “I won’t send out an agreement for ratification that I don’t believe the membership will approve,” he added.

By law, if the parties fail to reach a negotiated agreement through collective bargaining, the NALC and the USPS engage in a process of dispute resolution that may include mediation, fact-finding and ultimately, binding interest arbitration. In interest arbitration, both sides select arbitrators to work with an appointed neutral arbitrator to craft a binding resolution after hearing testimony from both sides. Over the course of 35 years of collective bargaining, NALC has been a party to 11 labor contracts. Of these, six were negotiated agreements (including the 2001-2006 contract), four were arbitrated agreements and one was partially negotiated and partially arbitrated.

Working toward an agreement

October 20: With the November 20 expiration date of the 2001-2006 contract just weeks away, NALC’s team of negotiators is working hard to reach a new National Agreement with the U.S. Postal Service.

In the first of a series of “main table” meetings, NALC President William H. Young told the USPS representatives that he is firmly committed to reaching a contract at the bargaining table this year rather than resort to the arbitration process.

“I honestly want to make a voluntary agreement with the Postal Service,” Young told a team of postal management negotiators in the initial September 19 session at NALC Headquarters. The contract will cover the wages, hours and working conditions of 224,400 career city letter carriers employed by USPS and represented by the NALC.

As of October 20, several main table sessions had been held and more were scheduled in late October and early November. President Young said, “I want a negotiated contract that recognizes the critical role of letter carriers and rewards their contributions to the Service. I want to reach an agreement we can send out to the members for their decision on whether it meets their needs.” The 2001-2006 contract was settled through negotiation and was approved by 88 percent of the vote by active members.

In addition to the main table, several committees are meeting on specific contract articles, seeking improvements. “Our talks have been fruitful,” said Executive Vice President Jim Williams, the union’s chief spokesman in the talks. “But there are no agreements. As the old saying goes, ‘There’s no deal until there’s a whole deal.’”

The small working groups have been meeting steadily—almost daily—on such topics as overtime and the grievance procedure.

Three other postal unions—the National Rural Letter Carriers Association, the National Postal Mail Handlers Union and the American Postal Workers Union—are also in negotiations. Their contracts have the same November 20 contract expiration date as NALC’s.

Negotiations process heading to arbitration
Young vows fight against outsourcing jobs

(from the NALC Bulletin) December 1: NALC President William H. Young announced that efforts to negotiate a new contract before the expiration of the 2001-2006 National Agreement have failed.

"We came very, very close to reaching an innovative and forward-looking agreement, but when push came to shove, the final decision-makers for the United States Postal Service decided they could not commit to a true partnership for the future," Young said.

Negotiations were extended beyond the original deadline of midnight November 20 to midnight November 30, but last-ditch efforts to bridge the gap between the parties proved fruitless.

"I am, of course, very disappointed," Young said. "The entire Executive Council, aided by the dedicated staff of the NALC, did everything it could to reach a fair agreement. NALC and the Postal Service have made tremendous progress in recent years and it is a shame that wiser heads did not prevail.

“In this round of bargaining, we sought to build on that progress by working to fashion the most far-reaching and revolutionary proposals in the history of postal collective bargaining,” Young said. “We were prepared to fundamentally restructure city carrier work to secure the long-term future of the USPS while sharing literally billions of dollars in savings. We were also prepared to tackle the problem of sky-rocketing health care costs through a new and dramatically innovative approach to the issue. Our price tag for doing this was a decent economic package and a commitment by the USPS to forgo any attempt to contract out existing city carrier work. The USPS was not willing to give us that commitment.”

He went on to note that “the Postal Service had a choice in this round of bargaining: build a durable partnership with the NALC to capture ‘the last mile’ of delivery for the USPS or give in to the siren call of Wal-Martization and contracting out. Unfortunately, it has made the wrong choice and has signaled its intention to pursue the disastrous policy of outsourcing city carrier work.”

Young expressed confidence in the NALC's ability to pursue its bargaining goals through alternate means.

"It is always preferable to reach win-win solutions through good faith bargaining, but this great union is not afraid to use the law's dispute resolution procedures to achieve our aims. We will do whatever it takes to protect the job security and standard of living of America's city letter carriers," he said.

Under the Postal Reorganization Act, the parties may engage in various procedures to end a bargaining stalemate, including mediation and fact-finding. If no agreement is forthcoming, the terms of the new contract will be determined through final and binding interest arbitration. Young indicated that no decisions have yet been made on the nature and timing of the dispute resolution procedures to be used, but he vowed "to make the best damn case possible to get what we deserve – a contract that is fair to us and fair to the people we serve every day, the American people."

Tentative agreement reached on contract
NALC-USPS negotiators settle on five-year national contract

July 12: The National Association of Letter Carriers reached tentative agreement today with the U.S. Postal Service on a new five-year National Agreement for all 222,000 city delivery letter carriers throughout the nation. The pact, which includes new limits on contracting out of city letter carrier work along with provisions covering wages, benefits, and working conditions, will be submitted to the NALC membership for rank-and-file ratification.

The agreement, retroactive to November 21, 2006, provides general wage increases of 8.85 percent over five years along with regular cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) and a single lump-sum COLA payment of $686 for the period between July 2006 and May 2007.

The proposed contract includes new limits on contracting out of city letter carrier work in more than 3,000 city delivery installations and establishes a six-month moratorium on contracting out city carrier delivery services elsewhere across the country. During the moratorium, a union-management task force will seek to develop an “evolutionary approach to the issue of subcontracting, taking into account the legitimate interests of the parties and relevant public policy considerations.”

The tentative 2006-2011 National Agreement also abolishes the use of low-wage temporary employees known as “casuals” and replaces them with bargaining unit “transitional employees” under terms and conditions established by the contract. It also includes negotiated resolutions to several long-standing issues involving automated sorting of large flat mail, adjustment of carrier routes and other operational matters.

Consistent with trends in the private sector, the proposed accord also provides the Postal Service relief on health care costs by increasing the share of health care premiums paid by city letter carriers by five percentage points over the five-year duration of the contract.

NALC President William H. Young said the tentative agreement is a ‘win-win’ contract for both unionized letter carriers and the Postal Service, and especially the American public that still relies on universal mail delivery for much of its critical personal and business communication.

“This agreement is fair to hard-working letter carriers by taking necessary steps toward protecting their jobs now and well into the future, along with financial compensation that takes into account increases in the cost of living and the difficult task carriers often face in delivering mail to our nation’s growing population,” Young said. “At the same time, it helps the U.S. Postal Service to build on its record as the most efficient and affordable postal service in the world.”

The agreement provides a 1.4 percent wage increase retroactive to November 25, 2006; and wage increases of 1.8 percent on November 24, 2007; 1.9 percent on November 22, 2008; 1.9 percent on November 21, 2009; and 1.85 percent on November 20, 2010.

The proposed agreement, which would expire on November 20, 2011, was approved unanimously today by the NALC Executive Council following negotiations over the past several days by bargaining teams led by Young and Postmaster General John E. Potter.

Click here to see the Tentative Agreement Highlights.

Ratification ballot deadline August 27
Extension for members affected by computer glitch

August 6: Votes in the rank-and-file ballot referendum on ratification of the tentative agreement for a new five-year contract must be received by the Ballot Committee by 11:59 p.m. on August 27 in order to be counted.

However, the deadline is being extended to 11:59 p.m. on September 6 for 16,630 members whose ballots were misaddressed due to a problem in the mailing software, as explained in the latest NALC Bulletin.

A list of affected members and their branch numbers is posted here. If you are on the list, a new ballot has been mailed and you will be given extra time to vote. The August 20 deadline has passed for other members to request a replacement ballot.

NALC President William H. Young has urged all eligible members to vote on the contract and all 28 members of the NALC Executive Council have endorsed the tentative agreement.

All ballots received by September 6 to be counted
Mailing delay and returning military reservists cited

All ballots received by 11:59 p.m. Thursday, September 6, 2007, will be counted in the pending ratification vote on the tentative contract for 2006-2011. The original deadline of 11:59 p.m., Monday August 27, 2007, has been extended for all outstanding ballots due to the delayed mailing of ballots to thousands of members. As indicated by the August 16 Bulletin, the later deadline was initially intended to apply only to the 16,600 eligible members affected by the delayed mailing. However, Ballot Committee Chairman Joe DeRossi of Brooklyn, New York Branch 41 announced August 24 that the September 6 deadline will apply to all outstanding ballots.

DeRossi cited two reasons for extending the deadline: the heavy volume of phone calls from members expressing confusion about the two deadlines, and the concern that dozens of members who recently returned to work after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan had not received ballots.

“Before we begin the process of tallying the votes,” he said, “we want to make sure that every eligible member has a chance to cast a ballot, but we especially want to make sure that those of us who have bravely served the country overseas are not put at a disadvantage.”

Chairman DeRossi also announced that the process of tallying the votes would also be delayed until September 7, 2007. As a result, there will be no interim results to announce in August.

President Bill Young applauded the decisions taken by the Ballot Committee. “Every active member who is eligible to vote has a right to vote for or against the tentative contract based on his or her views. I am especially pleased that there will be no interim results to report—as a long-time voter in California, I always objected to learning the results of national elections before I cast my ballot.”

Members of the Ballot Committee will begin counting the votes for and against the tentative agreement September 7, 2007, and will announce the results as soon as possible the following week, once the tallies are certified.

Contract ratified!

Sept. 14: Active NALC members from across the country gave their enthusiastic support to the tentative agreement on a new five-year contract with the Postal Service, ratifying the pact by almost a 9-to-1 margin.

The vote for ratification was 104,346 to 11,895, according to Joseph DeRossi of NALC Branch 41, Brooklyn, New York, chairman of a special Ballot Committee that supervised the tabulation by Peake DeLancey Printers of Cheverly, Maryland, and certified the results.

The settlement, reached by negotiators on July 12, had been endorsed unanimously by the NALC Executive Council.

The contract includes general wage increases of 8.85 percent over the term of the agreement, along with semi-annual cost-of-living adjustments, and new protections against contracting out of letter carrier work by the Postal Service to private firms and individuals.

Further information on the contract implementation appears here, from the October issue of The Postal Record.

NALC President William H. Young applauded the 89.8 percent approval vote by the union
membership.

“I am extremely pleased that members of this union agree that this is a good settlement that meets the interests and needs of both letter carriers and the Postal Service,” Young said.

The agreement provides a 1.4 percent wage increase retroactive to November 25, 2006; a 1.8
percent increase in November 2007; 1.9 percent in November 2008; 1.9 percent in November 2009, and 1.85 percent in November 2010.

The contract runs until November 20, 2011.

Contract implementation dates set
1.4 percent general increase and $686 cash payment on Oct. 19,
back pay on Nov. 30

President William Young announced on September 26 the implementation dates of the new contract’s first-year wage provisions:

• The lump sum payment of $686 to cash out the COLA from November 2006 through May 2007 will be paid in Pay Period 21. It will be included in carriers’ October 19th paychecks. Non-probationary carriers who are in a pay status during Pay Period 20 (September 15-28) are eligible to receive the payments. Active part-time carriers (hourly rate employees) with fewer than 2,000 paid hours over the 26 pay periods ending with Pay Period 20 will receive pro-rata shares of the $686 lump sum according to the following schedule:
  

  Number of Paid Hours	Percent of Lump Sum
  Less than 500	25%
  500 - Under 1,000	50%
  1,000 to Under 1,500	75%
  1,500 or Over	100%

  The cash payment will not become part of carriers' basic salaries and no deductions will be made for CSRS or FERS benefits. However, the cash payments will be subject to federal FICA withholding.

• The 1.4% general wage increase called for by the contract to take effect on November 25, 2006 will be implemented in Pay Period 21 and will be reflected in active carriers’ October 19th paychecks.

• Back pay for active carriers related to the 1.4% general wage increase covering the period between November 25, 2006 and the end of Pay Period 20 (September 28) will be paid in their regular paychecks on November 30th, the pay date for Pay Period 24.

• Carriers who retired after November 25, 2006 will be entitled to back pay and a recalculation of their annuity benefits. These payments and adjustments will be made as soon as practicable, but no dates have been set at this time.

President Young also announced on September 26 that the additional allotment for payroll deductions called for by the contract will become available in Pay Period 24 (Nov. 10 - 23). The third allotment should make it easier for carriers to make payroll contributions to COLCPE and boost the NALC’s “Gimme 5" campaign.