The US Postal Service and two of its major unions have once again agreed to extend labourcontract negotiations, this time until 20 January, after the parties failed to reach agreement over
new labour deals by a third deadline.USPS started separate negotiations with the National Association of Letter Carriers, AFL-CIO(NALC) and the National Postal Mail Handlers Union, AFL-CIO (NPMHU) in August with the aim ofsealing new agreements before the present ones expired on 20 November. USPS said the latestextension would allow the parties to continue to work on the important economic, health care,workplace and other contractual issues being discussed.
The NALC represents more than 195,000 employees who work as letter carriers, delivering mailprimarily in urban areas. The NPMHU represents more than 46,000 employees who work in mailprocessing plants and Post Offices. Respectively, wages and benefits for NALC- andNPMHU-represented employees exceeded $15.7 billion and $3.5 billion last year. Should negotiationsfail, a process begins which could result in a third party determining contract terms and workrules for more than 240,000 employees.
US postal employees are not permitted to strike, as a result of Congress designating the PostalService as an essential service to the nation. USPS has described the outcome of the discussions as“critical” for the future postal service, and said an arbitrator would ultimately determine thefinal outcome, which was not legally required to consider the Postal Service’s financialobligations when rendering a decision.
Cash-strapped USPS, which has described itself as ‘technically insolvent’, wants to reduceoperating costs by $20 billion by 2015 to return to profit. It is seeking to downsize its workforcesubstantially along with other major restructuring measures including closure of mail processingcentres and post offices in order to have a smaller network and workforce in future to handle muchsmaller postal volumes.
