Flushing Letter Carriers - Branch 294

Today, NALC and the Postal Service formally opened negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement.

Click here to watch NALC President Brian L. Renfroe's opening statement or read it below.

Good morning, everyone. Thank you Postmaster General DeJoy and Deputy Postmaster General Tulino for hosting this opening ceremony for NALC’s sixteenth round of collective bargaining with the Postal Service. I am honored to be here today representing the nation’s city letter carriers for the first time as NALC President. We are eager to work in good faith to reach a new contract. As we look forward to the negotiations ahead, I see opportunities for both sides of this table.

We meet at a crucial time for the city letter carrier craft. Almost three years ago, the world as we knew it started shutting down due to the rapidly spreading COVID-19 virus. While millions of Americans worked from home and sheltered in place across the country, our work became a lifeline for millions of homes and businesses.

Letter carriers seamlessly kept the economy and our communities running by delivering essential goods and medications, school supplies, stimulus checks, at-home COVID tests, and everything else that the American people needed. For months, we enabled our customers to safely shelter at home, a luxury that essential workers like letter carriers did not have. We proudly rose to the occasion, just like we always have.

We also helped to uphold American democracy in two national elections by working directly and successfully with the Postal Service to ensure that American voters could safely and confidently cast their ballots at home during a time of intense polarization and heightened Congressional scrutiny. During the pandemic, vote-by-mail skyrocketed, and letter carriers and the NALC were proud to play a crucial role in getting tens of millions of ballots delivered securely and on time.

Through all of this, our union and letter carriers across the country led a 12-year effort to finally enact bipartisan postal reform that protected this invaluable network by repealing the pre-funding mandate, which had burdened the Postal Service for over a decade. By achieving this goal, working in concert with you and the other postal unions, we not only put the Postal Service on more solid financial footing, we also demonstrated that productive collaboration is essential to the continued success of our union and the Postal Service.

As everyone knows, our country’s economic landscape is drastically different than it was in 2019 when we last sat at a negotiating table. Unemployment rates are at a 50-year low, and we face the increasingly difficult challenge of attracting sufficient applicants for letter carrier jobs at today’s starting wages. This has significantly affected our ability to properly staff post offices and ultimately deliver the nation’s mail.

Today, letter carriers are working harder and longer hours than at any other point in our history. The staffing shortages, coupled with the influx of parcel volumes, changing technology and heightened customer expectations, have made our jobs more challenging and demanding.

But that’s not all. Too often, we still struggle with the lack of management’s contract compliance at the local level. This leads to complications on the workroom floor, which affect morale and productivity, while needlessly costing the Postal Service money.

And perhaps most importantly, crime against letter carriers is on the rise. These repeated attacks against our members are horrific, unacceptable and must be addressed through action. No letter carrier should fear for their life or safety while on the job. Candidly, crime is a deterrent in an already difficult environment to attract letter carriers to join the Postal Service.

In this round of collective bargaining, letter carriers have the chance to be recognized, and rewarded, for being the backbone of this beloved American institution, the United States Postal Service. Letter carriers are the face of the Postal Service. We are the ones customers see delivering to their homes and businesses. They know us and rely on us for dependable, consistent service. We are indispensable and directly carry out the Postal Service’s mission.

Through a fair agreement, the Postal Service has the opportunity to strengthen the letter carrier workforce, and in turn, bolster the Postal Service’s ability to achieve the goals in its 10-year plan. One of the goals of the 10-year plan is to invest in and empower employees to create a stable workforce. Other key portions of the plan, like the implementation of Sorting and Delivery Centers, will only be successful if we use these negotiations to build a stronger city letter carrier craft.

As we seek a new agreement, we will aim to preserve and improve the standard of living for the nation’s city letter carriers, as we always have. It is our expectation that we will be able to reach voluntary agreement; however, we will not hesitate to pursue a fair agreement through binding interest arbitration if necessary.

Our goals are simple.

First and foremost, we must address the staffing issue that is debilitating our craft. Nationwide, letter carriers are overworked, and post offices are understaffed. One obvious solution that we seek is increased wages. If the Postal Service wants to recruit and retain letter carriers, it starts with a competitive wage —plain and simple.

The staffing crisis can also be addressed by shifting to an all-career workforce and abolishing the City Carrier Assistant position. The CCA position, in its current form, no longer serves the Postal Service or our craft.

Overwhelming turnover is seriously undermining service.  While we have made positive strides in our recent agreements to convert certain installations across the country to the all-career model, NALC seeks to convert all CCAs to career positions and make the all-career model the standard nationwide.

Lastly, we will insist on practical solutions to address the increasing crime against letter carriers. The safety of letter carriers is our number one priority. We must work together to ensure that letter carriers are safe from the moment they arrive at their stations until the moment they park their vehicles after delivery. We cannot allow these crimes to persist.

If we work together, I wholeheartedly believe that we can achieve these goals and that doing so will ultimately benefit both parties. Together, we have implemented several successful initiatives since our last agreement, including numerous COVID-related Memorandums of Understanding, the development of the New Employee Experience and Retention Program, the conversion to the all-career model in hundreds of installations across the country, and the Technology Integrated Alternate Route Evaluation and Adjustment Process, just to name a few.

We commend your willingness to work with us on these key initiatives. We have long been involved in the bargaining process with Deputy Postmaster General Tulino. I appreciate your commitment and look forward to what we will continue to accomplish together.

Similarly, after years and years of declining service quality, it is refreshing to have leadership that is willing to sit down and maintain regular, substantive engagement to address this problem while promoting the work letter carriers do proudly six-and-sometimes-seven-days-a-week. Your leadership, Postmaster General DeJoy, has fostered that engagement that we look forward to continuing in the future.

I will close by saying, during these negotiations, I believe both parties have a unique opportunity to build something transformative for the nation’s letter carrier workforce and the entire agency. If we can increase wages, appropriately staff our craft, address safety concerns, and enforce managerial contract compliance, letter carriers, in turn, can ensure that the Postal Service remains strong and competitive.

City letter carriers deserve a contract that will enable them to have a dignified, safe, and dependable job that provides a comfortable middle-class working life and retirement. It is my privilege to lead the nation’s city letter carriers in our pursuit of these goals.

Again, NALC is committed to doing all we can to swiftly reach agreement on a mutually beneficial contract. I look forward to working with all of you in the weeks and months ahead. Thank you.

The seventh and final regular cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) for career letter carriers under the 2019-2023 National Agreement was $208 annually following the release of the January consumer price index (CPI). This increase was added to every step in Table 1 and Step P in Table 2, and then applied proportionately to Steps A through O in Table 2. The increase has been applied to the pay chart. The increase will take effect March 11.

NALC President Brian L. Renfroe issued the following statement after President Biden’s State of the Union address:

“NALC applauds President Biden for recognizing that unions are the strength of the American workforce. We appreciate his support of organized labor, and we commend him for calling on Congress to pass the PRO Act, which would give all workers the ability to organize and negotiate higher wages, better healthcare and retirement benefits, and safer working conditions.

“NALC also recognizes President Biden’s commitment to working with Speaker McCarthy on addressing the debt limit crisis. As we have seen in the past, federal employees, including letter carriers, have been an easy target in these types of negotiations. We urge the President to reject any proposals that seek to reduce or eliminate federal retirement benefits, or that would require public servants to pay a larger share for negotiated benefits that NALC members depend on.

“We are committed to continuing working with the Administration and all members of Congress on policies that will improve the work and lives of our members and all working people.”

On Jan. 15, in response to some Postal Service employees unknowingly providing their LiteBlue login credentials to fraudulent and criminal websites, USPS implemented multifactor authentication (MFA) when logging in. As previously reported, MFA provides an extra layer of security and may already be familiar to most through online accounts at financial institutions by confirming a code received via text message or through an app.

To further protect employee’s accounts, the Postal Service also temporarily disabled allotment and net-to-bank changes in LiteBlue. As of Feb. 1, the Postal Service reported that only 62 percent of all postal employees had set up MFA and at that time the ability to make allotment and net-to-bank changes remained disabled until a greater number of employees did so.

As of Monday, Feb. 6, the implementation of MFA reached a participation threshold across the organization warranting reactivation of net-to-bank and allotment transactions within PostalEASE for all employees. To make changes to current net-to-bank or allotment settings, employees can visit LiteBlue.usps.gov, verify their identity via MFA, and navigate to PostalEASE.

For awareness, the ability for employees to make changes to their net-to-bank or allotment settings via the PostalEASE interactive voice response (IVR) system has been disabled, effective immediately. The IVR system for other employee actions can still be used.

Employees who have not set up their MFA preferences on LiteBlue, should visit the MFA LiteBlue site by navigating to LiteBlue.usps.gov and clicking on Multifactor Authentication under the login. If you identify any activity with your account that looks suspicious, contact ISCCU@usps.gov. For additional information about MFA and related topics, visit the MFA LiteBlue site by clicking on the MFA banner on the LiteBlue login page.

Recently, NALC reported that some Postal Service employees were unknowingly providing their LiteBlue login credentials to fraudulent and criminal websites that appeared in popular search engines with similar names and web addresses to LiteBlue. Unfortunately, as a result some postal employees had their entire paychecks rerouted to criminals’ bank accounts instead of being deposited into their own.

To improve the security of LiteBlue, on Jan. 15, the Postal Service implemented multifactor authentication (MFA) when logging in. MFA provides an extra layer of security and may already be familiar to most through online accounts at financial institutions by confirming a code received via text message or through an app. Now, unless already done so since MFA was implemented, when employees sign in to LiteBlue they will be required to reset their Self-Service Profile (SSP) password, verify the last four digits of their Social Security Number (SSN), and set up their MFA preferences. On Jan. 17, a mandatory stand-up talk about multifactor authentication for LiteBlue should have been given in all stations and offices throughout the country. That stand-up talk can be found here. Additionally, instructions and videos to help set up MFA can be found here.

To further protect employees' accounts, the Postal Service temporarily disabled allotment and net-to-bank changes. Although many have secured their account by setting up MFA, the Postal Service reports that 38 percent of all postal employees have yet to do so. The ability to make allotment and net-to-bank changes will remain disabled until a greater number of employees have protected their accounts. In the meantime, employees can still use a postal computer to access PostalEASE to make allotment and net-to-bank changes. All letter carriers should set up MFA on their accounts as soon as possible.

On. Jan. 9, Reps. Garrett Graves (R-LA) and Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) reintroduced the Social Security Fairness Act of 2023 (H.R. 82). This bill would repeal the Government Pension Offset (GPO) and the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP), which are parts of Social Security law that unfairly reduce or sometimes eliminate Social Security benefits for millions of federal annuitants, including former Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) letter carriers.

WEP reduces earned Social Security benefits for CSRS employees and for Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) employees, who also receive a public pension from another job not covered by Social Security. In addition, WEP affects employees who move from a job in which they earn Social Security to a job where they do not earn the Social Security benefit.

GPO affects CSRS employees and spousal benefits of people who work as federal, state or local government employees if the job is not covered by Social Security. GPO currently reduces by two-thirds the benefit received by surviving spouses who also collect a government pension.

The bill, which received a supermajority of cosponsors in the 117th Congress, already has 59 cosponsors. Despite consistent bipartisan support, the legislation has proved difficult to pass due to the price tag.

NALC will continue actively working to gain support for this bill so letter carriers can receive the full benefits they earned.

Click here for NALC's fact sheet on H.R. 82.

NALC and USPS have agreed to memorandum of agreement (M-01988) pursuant to the May 24, 2022, Memorandum of Understanding Re: City Delivery Staffing Adjustment – Hiring Part-Time Flexible City Letter Carriers (M-01986), providing an additional 2 installations in which the Postal Service will convert all city carrier assistants to part-time flexible (PTF) career status as well as hire new PTF city letter carriers in these installations in order to reach and maintain an identified number of PTF city letter carriers on the rolls for each installation. The Postal Service is required to convert all city carrier assistants in the identified installations to part-time flexible career status as soon as practicable, but no later than the first day of the second full pay period following the date of the respective agreement.

USPS has confirmed that some Postal Service employees are unknowingly providing their usernames and passwords to criminal websites, while attempting to access PostalEase.

It is reported that employees are using Google and attempting to access PostalEase. Over several recent days, approximately 119 postal employees attempted accessing PostalEase using Google; however, Google’s routers redirected their searches to third-party criminally run websites that mirror the look and access of PostalEase.  Unfortunately, their logon credentials were hacked, and some accounts were compromised.

The USPS Corporate Information Security Office (CISO) is working with the Postal Inspection Service to facilitate notice to the impacted employees. Formal notification to all postal employees is forthcoming. 

USPS reports that representations have been made at the district level confirming Postal Inspectors are contacting impacted employees, as well as employees who may have unknowingly been compromised, and requesting their EINs and passwords.

Postal Inspectors have not contacted postal employees and requested their EINs and/or passwords. Employees should never provide usernames and/or passwords to anyone.

USPS has informed NALC that PostalEase has not been breached by any third party. Employees accessing PostalEase via the official postal website have not experienced security breaches.

Specific banking industry standards require financial institutions to provide relief in certain situations. However, several third-party websites were criminal scams, and likely, some of the lost monies will not be returned.  USPS does not have the total dollar loss currently available. USPS states liability for the hacking, bank account breaches and lost monies remains with Google.

Financially impacted employees should immediately contact the Eagan ASC Helpdesk at 866-974-2733. Staff members are available to assist.

If you become aware of any employee experiencing access issues to PostalEase, they should immediately contact 877-477-3273 to request assistance.

Additionally, to assist USPS with identifying our affected members, NALC has created a section on the NALC Members Only portal of the NALC website that will allow affected individuals to identify themselves as victims of this scam. NALC members, after logging into the Members Only portal, will see in the upper right-hand portion of their Member Information page a check box with the words “Check here if you have been a victim of the fraudulent PostalEase Access” in red lettering.

NALC will then provide this information to USPS to assist in identifying those who may have been affected.

Today, the Postal Service announced its plan to purchase 66,000 electric delivery vehicles starting now and lasting until 2028. The agency will acquire a total of 106,000 delivery vehicles, replacing nearly half of its 220,000 vehicle fleet.

The 60,000 Next Generation Vehicles (NGDV) to be purchased from U.S. defense contractor Oshkosh include 45,000 electric NGDVs—meaning that 75 percent of the NGDVs will be electric. That figure is notably higher than the 10 percent that the Postal Service had previously announced in February of this year. The agency also announced that 100 percent of NGDVs purchased after 2028 are expected to be electric.

The remaining 46,000 will be commercial off-the-shelf vehicles. The Postal Service will prioritize domestic manufacturing with these purchases, and at least 21,000 of these vehicles will be electric.

All new vehicles, regardless of electrification, will include air conditioning and advanced safety technology.

The Postal Service will invest $9.6 billion dollars, including $3 billion from the Inflation Reduction Act, in these vehicles.

“NALC is pleased that the Postal Service is leading the way in electrifying the federal vehicle fleet,” NALC President Brian Renfroe said. “With these delivery vehicles, letter carriers will deliver in much-needed safer and more reliable vehicles, while the Postal Service lowers its carbon footprint.”

President Renfroe attended an announcement event at Postal Service Headquarters in Washington, DC today. Postmaster General Louis Dejoy, Senior Advisor to the President for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation John Podesta, Chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality Brenda Mallory, and Assistant to the President and National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi delivered remarks.

The NALC Shop Steward’s Guide along with many Grievance Starters are now available on the members only portal. The NALC Shop Steward’s Guide is written for every NALC member who handles grievances at the Informal Step A and/or Formal Step A of the grievance procedure.

Any other versions of the Shop Stewards Guide or Toolkit are obsolete and will no longer be available. The guide will only be available through the members only portal. This will allow NALC to update the guide in real time and ensure all stewards, activists and members have access.

To access the guide, from the NALC website log on to the “MEMBERS ONLY” portal, and click the “MEMBERS  DOCUMENTS” button where you will find the Shop Steward’s Guide and the available Grievance Starters in a drop down menu.

NALC and the Postal Service have agreed to several memorandums of understanding (MOUs) to establish an alternate route evaluation and adjustment process for the remainder of 2022 and all of 2023. 

MOU Re: Technology Integrated Alternate Route Evaluation and Adjustment Process 2022 – 2023 (TIAREAP) establishes a process that utilizes information made available using Digital Street Review (DSR) technology as the primary means to evaluate and adjust city delivery routes. As in previous alternate route evaluation and adjustment processes, TIAREAP will involve multiple teams established throughout the country, comprised of one NALC representative and one USPS representative, who will jointly evaluate and adjust routes in select zones. Once the joint teams have been selected, training and zone selection will take place shortly afterward, with evaluations beginning in September.  This MOU (M-01982) can be found in NALC’s Materials Reference System.

A jointly developed supplemental document (M-01983) provides the mutual understanding of the national parties on issues related to the MOU Re: Technology Integrated Alternate Route Evaluation and Adjustment Process 2022-2023. It is intended for use by the parties at all levels in properly applying the terms of TIAREAP.

Also, as in the previous alternate route adjustment process, an MOU was agreed upon that allows local parties to jointly submit for consideration a locally developed alternate route evaluation and adjustment process to the NALC National President and the Postal Service Vice President, Labor Relations. This MOU, Re: Alternate Evaluation and Adjustment Processes (M-01984) requires a proposal for such alternate process to be submitted by the NALC Branch President and the Postal Service Installation Head and must provide a detailed explanation of the process. If the proposal is jointly agreed to by the national parties, the local parties will be notified regarding implementation.

The City Delivery and Workplace Improvement Task Force in the 2019-2023 National Agreement tasked the national parties with jointly exploring the use of technology, data, advanced analytics and machine learning to improve operations, route evaluation, adjust­ment and optimization. Agreement to implement the Technology Integrated Alternate Route Evaluation and Adjustment process comes after more than 14 months of joint exploration and testing of the utilization of DSR technology to evaluate and adjust routes. 

The NALC and the Postal Service have agreed to a memorandum of understanding (M-01979) that increases the maximum allowable annual leave carryover amounts outlined in the Employee and Labor Relations Manual (ELM). For leave year 2023, regular work force career employees covered by the USPS-NALC National Agreement may carry over 520 hours of accumulated annual leave from leave year 2022 to leave year 2023. Provisions in the Employee and Labor Relations Manual (ELM) regarding payment of accumulated leave are not changed as a result of this MOU, which expires December 31, 2023.

This MOU can be found in NALC’s Materials Reference System on the NALC website.

NALC strives to keep letter carriers informed and as safe as possible. To help letter carriers navigate the COVID-19 pandemic, a new COVID-19 guide that includes current tools and procedures is now available.

This guide is designed to keep letter carriers safe in the workplace. It is a compilation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendations and Postal Service policies, which the USPS states are based on CDC guidance. Recommendations and policies are subject to change as the pandemic evolves. The guide will be updated online as necessary.

Each year, the leave year begins with the first day of the first complete pay period in a calendar year and ends on the day before the first day of the first complete pay period in the following calendar year. For 2022, the leave year began Jan. 1, 2022 (Pay Period 02-22) and ends Jan. 13, 2023 (Pay Period 02-23) for a total of 27 pay periods.

Therefore, employees may earn one additional pay period’s worth of annual leave during the 2022 leave year as compared to the typical 26 pay period leave year. For a full-time employee, the extra pay period amount will be 4, 6, or 8 hours, depending on the employee’s leave earning category. Part-time letter carriers earn leave based on the number of work hours during the pay period up to the same amount of leave earned by full-time employees. CCAs are credited with one hour of annual leave for each twenty hours spent in a pay status during each biweekly pay period.

Although employees may earn one additional pay period’s worth of annual leave during leave year 2022, the annual leave carryover maximums will not increase because of it. Employees must use any annual leave in excess of the carryover limit that applies to them by the end of leave year 2022 (Jan. 13, 2023) or they will forfeit the hours of annual leave that are in excess of their carryover limit. Any additional leave earned by CCAs will be paid out when they take their mandatory break in service between appointments. 

NALC has filed an interpretive dispute over the Postal Service’s method of calculating overtime pay, Sunday premium pay, general wage increases, and cost of living adjustments (COLAs) for part-time flexible employees in Step AA. This dispute centers around Article 9 Section 8 and Article 11 Section 7 of the 2019 National Agreement and how they interact with each other.

Article 9 Section 8 states “[t]he Step AA Hourly Basic Rate will be equal to Step A of the Full-Time/Part-Time Regular Employees Hourly Basic Rate in Table Two.”  Although, at the start of the term of the current collective bargaining agreement, the Postal Service paid this amount to Step AA PTFs for straight time, NALC discovered that it used a lower hourly rate to calculate overtime and Sunday premiums. 

NALC’s position is that their overtime, and Sunday premium pay should be the same as FTR/PTR Step A. 

When PTF Step AA went into effect, the hourly basic rate was $19.88.  However, the Postal Service manufactured a new lower annual rate which generated a lower hourly rate of $19.12 as a base for calculating the overtime and Sunday premium for carriers in PTF Step AA. This resulted in PTFs in Step AA to be under paid by $1.15 for each hour of regular overtime and $0.19 for each straight time hour worked on a Sunday.  This error has been compounded over time and now sits at $1.21 for regular overtime and $0.20 for Sunday premium after the release of the January COLA effective February 26.

Additionally, the Postal Service is calculating general wage increases and COLAs for PTFs in Step AA using its manufactured lower annual rate. This includes falsely creating and using a lower proportion of COLA.  This has resulted in an hourly rate for PTF Step AA which no longer equals FTR/PTR Step A.  This deviation will continue to compound over time as more general wage increases and COLAs are received.

Furthermore, with the addition of the Juneteenth National Independence Day holiday, the Postal Service’s misapplication of Article 11.7 is creating an even larger straight time hourly rate deviation between PTF Step AA and FTR/PTR Step A.

The grievance is currently scheduled for national arbitration before Arbitrator Dennis Nolan on April 21.