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Take a photo or screenshot of the QR code. Ask your nonmember coworkers to join the union today by scanning the image on your phone.

Next union negotiated raises will be in paychecks dated December 8, 2023

APWU-represented career postal employees will receive a union-won general wage increase (GWI) equal to 1.3 percent of base pay, effective Nov. 18. Non-career APWU-represented employees will receive an additional 1 percent, or a 2.3 percent GWI, as they do not receive COLA.

The raise will appear in paychecks dated Dec. 8, 2023. This latest wage increase caps off two years of strong raises secured in the 2021-2024 contract and follows record-breaking cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for career employees, which totaled $2.39 per hour, or $4,971 annually. COLAs are added to the base pay schedule, so PSEs will recoup these increases when they convert to career status.

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DeJoy’s steps for more postal cuts draw flak

August 11, 2023 10:12 AM CDT  BY MARK GRUENBERG

WASHINGTON—The latest steps by Trump-named Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to cut Postal Service costs by cutting service have drawn bipartisan flak from Capitol Hill and prior protests from USPS workers from Medford, Ore., to Newburgh, N.Y.

And from the Postal Rate Commission, too. DeJoy told the regulators last month his cuts are—in so many words—none of their business and to sit down and shut up. The panel, whose usual work is to consider and vote on postal rate hikes, refused. They plan to review his “reorganization.”

But then, such behavior is to be expected from DeJoy, a Republican big giver and denizen of the corporate class. Trump Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a banker known for wrongful foreclosures during the pandemic, forced DeJoy on USPS as part of the price for sidelining right-wing attempts to privatize the U.S. mail. DeJoy’s sneered at congressional and other oversight ever since.

The latest saga has its origins in DeJoy’s ten-year plan to put the USPS on a sound financial footing. Past parts of the plan include slowing mail deliveries, closing smaller sorting centers in favor of mega-facilities, forcing workers to move or quit, and incessantly raising prices.

And, in one area where DeJoy and the nation’s postal unions agreed, both lobbied successfully for the section of a postal reform law which ended the $6 billion yearly pre-payment a prior GOP-run Congress and GOP President George W. Bush imposed on the Postal Service, to prepay future retirees’ health care costs.

Under DeJoy’s plan, the USPS was to break even this year, on paper, for the first time in at least 15 years. But DeJoy reported a $1.7 billion loss from April-June and forecast a $5.2 billion loss for fiscal 2023, which ends Sept. 30.

His latest cost-cutting move, launched last year in a test run in Georgia, closes “back office” functions in hundreds of post offices and forces Letter Carriers to drive dozens, if not hundreds, of round-trip miles to regional “Sort and Delivery Centers,” to pick up the mail they now sort in post office back rooms before heading out to deliver it.

Most individual post offices would stay open, but only to sell stamps and provide similar services. But not all: A post office in the rural Baltimore County, Md., town of Fort Howard, whose residents are mostly elderly and without cars, is scheduled to close by Sept. 30. Their postmaster told them about it. Now, residents walk to the post office—Fort Howard’s that small—to get their mail.

There’s no Letter Carrier route. They’d have to drive 14 miles roundtrip to Dundalk to get mail. They came out in 96-degree heat to sign a petition to keep the post office open, WMAR TV reported. Their congressman, Rep. Kwesi Mfume, D-Md., sought a meeting with DeJoy about it. No answer yet.

DeJoy’s also made it impossible to mail anything other than small first-class letters from the blue mailboxes on street corners. In 2020, he yanked out sorting machines for first-class flat mail. And new blue mailboxes have small letter slits at the top, not the pull-down doors able to take large flat envelopes and small packages.

As typical of a corporate chieftain, which is what DeJoy was in the private sector before becoming Postmaster General, his excuse is to cut costs and his method is to load the burden on workers. DeJoy said the move to the central sorting plants would save money and be more efficient.

Have to navigate distance

But distances to the sorting centers which Letter Carriers would have to navigate before even starting their routes would further slow down the mail. That prospect led to workers’ demonstrations in May in Medford, Ore., and elsewhere—and to separate objections from Reps. Paul Ryan, D-N.Y., and Pete Huizenga, R-Mich., whose mostly rural district includes Kalamazoo.

The Medford workers feared their jobs would be moved to Portland, 274 miles away. Kalamazoo residents fear being overwhelmed by mail trucks coming all at once to pick up pre-sorted letters from all over Southwest Michigan, Huizenga wrote DeJoy.

“Consolidating our area’s postal operations to a Sort and Delivery Center” there “threatens to disrupt the current standard of delivery experienced by Southwest Michigan residents,” Huizenga, who represents Kalamazoo and surrounding rural counties, explained.

“Mail carriers would be required to divert to this single center to pick up the mail before proceeding on their route. The workforce would be stretched thin, having to travel much farther to reach communities they serve.

“Residents, including the many older households, rely on prompt mail delivery for time-sensitive materials like medical bills and financial documents.” Besides, masses of vehicles from all over Southwest Michigan converging on one center would cause daily traffic jams, vexing residents.

Huizenga also told DeJoy local citizens and governments have been left in the dark about his plans: No timeline for back-office closures or for opening the sorting center, and no notice to local governments and citizens, much less consultation with them, as last year’s postal law mandates.

Ryan, who represents the Hudson Valley, not only wrote DeJoy, but took his protest public on May 17 in Rock Tavern, N.Y., joined by members of the Letter Carriers, the Postal Workers and the Rural Letter Carriers, three of USPS workers’ five unions. DeJoy wants to close the back-office operations in favor of a big sorting center in Newburgh, N.Y.

“Hudson Valley families deserve only the best service from their post office, but DeJoy is threatening reduced customer service, increased wait times, and post office closures,” Ryan said. “This is completely unacceptable for both postal workers and residents. I will keep fighting alongside my friends in labor to make sure every post office stays open, our postal workers are protected, and there are not any service delays.”

“The APWU is extremely concerned about the proposed transfer of the S&DC” to Newburgh, “specifically as it relates to diminished customer services, increased safety issues, and the possibility of selling and relocating post offices,” added Postal Workers Local 3722 President Diana Cline.

Specifically, a sorting center at Stewart Airport in the town of Newburgh would force Letter Carriers from counties on both banks of the Hudson River to come there to pick up their pre-sorted mail before delivering it. Those coming from the east bank would have to battle their way across the incessantly jammed Newburgh-Beacon Bridge—in morning rush hour—to get it.

Ryan said his constituents “emphatically oppose this change. Moving mail sorting away from our local post offices would surely lead to downsizing and reassignment which risks the wholesale closure of a branch. That is a disservice to Hudson Valley residents, and it is a disservice to hard-working union members across the region.

“Mail carriers from my district are also particularly concerned about the delays to service, added hours in commute time, and the destabilizing effects this plan will have,” Ryan said. It will add to carrier stress and burnout, he warned. He’s gotten no answer from DeJoy.

Greater New Jersey P&DC in Kearny to close in February

August 31, 2023

The Postal Service has announced that the Greater New Jersey P&DC in Kearny, NJ, will be closed early next year. The discontinuance is targeted for February 24, 2024.

The package volume processed in the P&DC will be moved to Jersey City’s Network Distribution Center (NDC), which will become the Regional Processing & Distribution Center (RPDC) for the region.

A town hall was conducted on August 24th with all non-bargaining employees. Impacted employees received a Specific RIF Notice dated August 29, 2023, with a RIF separation effective date of February 9, 2024.

The townhall presentation says the Greater Newark P&DC resides in a leased building, and the primary package equipment is outdated. Some equipment was damaged during the roof collapse that occurred in September 2021.

In 2022, the plant may have employed as many as 800 mail handlers, mail processing clerks, equipment operators, and other workers and supervisors

A LABOR DAY STORY

by Joe Cannavo

THE STRIKE THAT STUNNED THE NATION

BIRTH OF A UNION:  APWU

The year was 1970.  Congress just increased its salary by 41%. Postal Workers were furious.  Full-time Postal Workers were being hired in at $118.76 a week while those working 21 years could earn no more than $162.34 a week. These salaries qualified Postal Workers for food stamps!!!! Postal Workers were not permitted to engage in collective bargaining and felt that benefits were poor and working conditions were unhealthy and unsafe.  Moe Biller, who became the first APWU president said at the time that:  “...post offices are like dungeons, dirty, stifling, too hot in the summer and too cold in winter.” At the time, Postal Workers were separated into eight (8) craft unions with no right to bargain collectively over wages and were forbidden to strike. After years of debating but not acting, the Senate in March 1970 voted a 5.4% increase for Postal Workers which was less than the rate of inflation.  But the House said it would delay action on the wage increase.  Again, Postal Workers were furious!  On March 17, Letter Carriers defied the law in New York City, took a vote and went on strike.  Clerks and other Postal Workers refused to cross the picket lines.  Then, like wildfire, wildcat strikes among Postal Workers spread across the country.  Within a week, over 200,000 Postal Workers from New England to California walked off the job.  President Nixon vowed to “crush” the Postal Workers and called 23,000 Armed Forces personnel to NYC to process the mail without training or success.  Courts were issuing injunctions and imposing fines and threatening jail time and discipline  for strikers and   Union leaders.  But the strike continued.  This strike shut down New York's financial district, it kept 9000 young men from receiving draft notices to serve in the Vietnam War, delayed tax refunds and the census.  The Postal Strike of 1970 disrupted communication in the United States.  And the Postal Workers defied the President of the United States who said there would be no negotiations until Postal Workers returned to work.  They did not return to work. As a result, the  Secretary of Labor entered into negotiations that brought the strike to an end after two weeks.  And as a result of this strike, no Postal Worker was disciplined and the government agreed to a 6% wage increase retroactive to 1969 with an additional 8% with the enactment of the Postal Reorganization Act in April 1970.  This Act allowed Postal Workers to reach the top of the pay scale in 8 years instead of 21 years.  This Act gave Postal Workers' Unions full collective bargaining rights to negotiate wages, benefits and working conditions  and significantly for Postal Workers today binding arbitration over wages and other national collective bargaining issues was included in the Act in lieu of the right to strike.     And in July 1971,  with this new formation of the Postal Service, five distinct unions of postal clerks, mail processors, maintenance, special delivery  and motor vehicle workers merged into a new AMERICAN POSTAL WORKERS UNION.  The APWU, with the merger of these crafts along with the Carriers, Mail Handlers and Rural Letter Carriers were now able to provide one strong unified voice  in matters of collective bargaining negotiations and the nations political agenda regarding government , and most importantly, Postal Workers' rights. 

          Today, Postal Workers, probably more than any other group of organized workers,  participate in the collective bargaining process by filing grievances; and they do so knowing they are well represented at every step of the grievance procedure.  And any Postal Worker, reluctant to file a grievance, must look back at those Postal Workers in 1971 who: 

• defied the federal government;
• risked losing their jobs;
• risked  being fined;  and
• faced imprisoned. 

           So what do we say of these brave Postal Workers?

          THANK YOU MY  BROTHERS & SISTERS!!!!!!!!!!

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