The Postal Service has announced an agreement to extend its deadline with two of its largest unions for new labor contact to December 7 after the parties failed reach agreements.
If USPS can’t come to terms with the National Association of Letter Carriers, which represents about 195,000 carriers in mainly urban areas, and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, which represents about 45,000 mail processing employees, a third party could become responsible for setting contact terms and work rules.
USPS noted that an arbitrator would not be required to consider the agency’s dire financial situation – and its obligations – when hammering out terms. (Postal reform legislation under consideration in Congress would change that.)
Despite trimming its workforce by 110,000 career positions in the last four years and saving, as the Postal Service estimates, $12 billion in costs through consolidations, expenses still exceed revenues by $5 billion – or $10 billion factoring in the USPS’s annual retiree health benefits prefunding obligation that has been deferred twice this autumn.
Still, USPS estimates that as part of its goal of cutting costs by $20 billion by 2015 it will need to reduce its workforce by 220,000 employees, and only 120,000 can be met through attrition. The service’s hands are tied by anti-layoff provisions in its bargaining agreements, including the one it just signed with another large union, the American Postal Workers Union.
Negotiations with the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, representing about another 100,000 employees, expired last November and have entered arbitration.
