Viewpoint: After Resounding ‘No’ Vote, Letter Carriers Should Go on Offense

Members of the National Association of Letter Carriers have rejected a sellout tentative agreement by 71 percent, in a 63,680 to 26,304 vote.

That’s a turnout of 48.4 percent—and more “no” votes than the total turnout of 63,452 votes for the last contract. This result is a rejection of the current national leadership and its approach.

Hundreds of letter carriers joined the new network Build a Fighting NALC (BFN) in organizing the first real vote-no campaign in the NALC since 1978, working alongside the Concerned Letter Carriers and the Mike Caref for President campaign in a broad reform movement.

The issue of pay has been central. General inflation has increased more than 20 percent since 2020. Letter carriers were lauded for essential work through the Covid pandemic, and we received no hazard pay. But our national union leadership promised that this contract, at last, would include “record wage increases” and eliminate the tiers, moving to an all-career workforce.

Letter carriers had to wait for more than 500 days, since the contract expired in May 2023, to hear anything from our national leadership about the process of negotiations. While we were being left in the dark, we saw the Auto Workers wage their Stand-Up Strike, the Teamsters at UPS build a real contract campaign and prepare for a strike, and Boeing workers wage a 53-day strike—all winning record contracts with huge raises.

Yet when our tentative agreement was finally unveiled last October, it included an insulting 1.3 percent general wage increase per year, maintained all the existing wage tiers, and did nothing to address contract compliance. We decided not to just accept the crumbs we were offered.

A BRAVE VOTE-NO CAMPAIGN

BFN took the lead in organizing a national “vote no” campaign. Despite the widespread anger over the bad deal, we knew we had to bring letter carriers together to build their confidence to reject it.

Our national Zoom meeting launching the campaign drew more than 700 members. We provided materials and a strategy to get the wider membership involved. The main activities of the campaign were organizing parking lot meetings and rallies to discuss the offer, and “Vote NO” group photos in stations and parking lots.

Members also brought forward and passed “vote no” resolutions at general membership meetings in 55 branches including Branch 9 in Minneapolis, Branch 41 in Brooklyn-Staten Island, Branch 79 in Seattle, and Branch 34 in Boston.

Carriers organizing for a no vote met significant resistance within the union. Executive boards from the wing of leadership that backs President Brian Renfroe argued that a resolution encouraging a no vote would deprive members of the right to make up their own minds.

When the NALC endorsed Harris/Walz, no one was concerned it would be interpreted as a binding mandate on NALC members to vote for Harris. But when the issue was our own contract, BFN supporters were painted as interfering with democracy. We will have to keep fighting for the right to genuine discussion and debate inside our union.

Postal Service management also tried to intimidate members who participated in the vote no campaign. Many letter carriers passing out fliers on public sidewalks had supervisors come out and threaten them—and the carriers they were talking to—with discipline. In several instances, management even threatened to call police on them!

But despite these obstacles, hundreds of brave letter carriers took action to ensure their co-workers heard the vote-no arguments.

WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

Now that the offer has been voted down, the union and management have until February 18 to negotiate further. If a new contract is not agreed upon, the process will most likely move to “binding interest arbitration,” where arbitrators decide the details of the contract without any input from members. We cannot simply wait while this process plays out.

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We must also recognize the broader political context in which our contract struggle is playing out. President Trump and his new Department of Government Efficiency, directed by Elon Musk, have promised to cut trillions of dollars of federal spending. They have begun dismantling USAID, gained access to the Treasury Department’s financial information, and designated the Department of Education and Department of Labor as upcoming targets.

While the U.S. Postal Service is not funded directly by the government, we should expect Trump and DOGE to get involved in our contract struggle. They will raise a hue and cry about recent USPS deficits and do everything they can to deny us the wage and benefit increases we deserve. And if Trump and DOGE succeed in firing hundreds of thousands of federal workers, it will encourage them to push for postal privatization.

Our national union leadership has called a “Fight Like Hell” kickoff event at its headquarters on Thursday, February 13, and President Renfroe has indicated over social media that several events around the country are in the works to put pressure on the Postal Service to come to an agreement. He recently spoke on the state of contract negotiations, claiming the union was negotiating to increase cost-of-living adjustments and to end the Table 2 and City Carrier Assistant wage tiers, which would raise starting pay to $30 an hour.

We should be under no illusions that Renfroe and his supporters have had a genuine change of heart. The bottom-up organizing and the resounding no vote are what pushed them to take up campaigning for aspects of BFN’s program. However, we should welcome this change in direction, support it, and try to expand it.

DRASTIC TIMES…

Branch 9 in Minneapolis and Branch 1100 in Los Angeles will be holding contract rallies during the 15-day window when NALC and USPS can renegotiate the contract. BFN calls on NALC’s national leadership to join with these branches and encourage national contract rallies to win the public to our side and show the arbitrator why we voted no. Our strength is our 290,000 members and the millions of ordinary Americans who support us, and we need to demonstrate that strength.

We should not wait for Trump and Musk to strike first. Our national union leadership should link our contract struggle to the struggle against DOGE’s reckless campaign to smash parts of the federal government that working people rely on. If they’re so concerned with the public debt, they can start by taxing the billionaires.

As a first step, the NALC should reach out to other federal employee unions to organize joint action. We have to stand together to confront this threat effectively.

Our union constitution provides that, if a new tentative agreement is voted down, our national leadership can call for an immediate work stoppage or a “designated job action,” rather than simply proceeding to binding arbitration. To defend against the threat posed by DOGE, the national leadership should instruct all NALC locals to prepare for job action, up to and including a strike.

As federal employees we are limited by law from striking. But Trump’s DOGE has not limited itself to the law, and we cannot afford to either.

Such a step cannot be taken lightly, and must be endorsed by the national leadership. Many letter carriers will feel justifiably concerned about the idea. But it is the rash and careless behavior of DOGE which brings us to discuss it. Any attempt to cut or privatize the post office must be met by collective action. Weakness invites aggression, and bullies respond only to strength.

RANK-AND-FILE CAUCUS

Build a Fighting NALC is holding a public meeting on Sunday, February 16, to discuss organizing rallies as part of a national day of action in conjunction with the union leadership’s call. Union members can register for the meeting here.

It will take more than this contract to transform the NALC into the fighting union we need. It will take organizing to fight the daily fights in every station, which is why we have launched Build a Fighting NALC as a national rank-and-file reform caucus.

We’re now organizing BFN chapters across the country to build our power on the workroom floor. Join here.

Rob Darakjian is a letter carrier in Branch 2902 and a member of Build a Fighting NALC.