by James Parks, May 12, 2011
By a margin of more than three-to-one, members of the Postal Workers (APWU) ratified a new four-and-one-half-year contract with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) that calls for increasing wages by 3.5 percent over term, creates new positions and provides job security.
APWU President Cliff Guffey said that as a result of the new contract, the Postal Service will begin hiring again for the first time in many years. In addition, he said, the union was “able to retain protection against layoffs, bring back thousands of jobs in each craft, and limit excessing.”
New positions for non-career postal support employees will be created under the agreement, Guffey said. These employees will have the opportunity to join the permanent, career workforce by seniority, he said, explaining that they will be part of the APWU bargaining unit and will receive regular salary raises, health benefits, and leave.
The agreement also includes protections against layoffs for career employees on the rolls as of Nov. 20, 2010, and calls for 1,100 call center jobs that had been contracted out to return to the APWU bargaining unit.
New contracting out provisions will give the union the opportunity to develop proposals to compete with contractors for work. If APWU-represented employees can perform the work less expensively than contractors, the work must be performed by the APWU-represented employees, according to the union’s summary of the contract.
The contract covers some 176,000 USPS employees. More than 90,000 APWU members returned mail ballots in the month-long vote.
