Approximately 200,000 mail carriers have reached preliminary contract agreements with the U.S. Postal Service that include historic pay increases and promises to provide workers with: air conditioned truck.
The new agreement still needs to be ratified by union members, but will be valid until November 2026. The letter carrier has been working without a contract since May 2023.
Unions and the Postal Service welcomed the agreement announced Friday.
“Neither side got everything they wanted. But by negotiating in good faith, we reached an agreement that achieves our goals and rewards our members.” National Letter Delivery Brian Renfroe, president of the People’s Association, told The Associated Press. “To make that happen, the Postal Service needed to recognize the contributions of our members to the Postal Service and the American people.”
Renfroe said the deal would, among other things, increase the maximum wage and shorten the time it takes for new employees to reach that level. He praised Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and his representatives for negotiating in good faith through a difficult process.
The Postal Service said the agreement supports its 10-year Delivering for America mission to modernize operations and adapt to changing customer needs.
“This is a fair and responsible agreement that is in the best interest of our employees, customers and the future of the Postal Service,” said Doug Turino, acting postmaster general and chief human resources officer.
As part of the agreement, all city carriers will receive three pay increases of 1.3% each by 2025, some of which will be retroactive from November 2023. Workers will also receive retroactive and future cost-of-living adjustments.
There is also a promise that the Post Office will “make every effort” to install air conditioning in mail trucks.
The Postal Service began rolling out new air-conditioned electric delivery vehicles this summer. These trucks won’t win beauty pageants, but they were praised by mail carriers accustomed to older vehicles that lacked modern safety features, were prone to breakdowns, and even caught fire.
Within a few years, the new delivery fleet will expand to 60,000 vehicles, most of them electric models, and serve as the Post Office’s primary delivery trucks from Maine to Hawaii.
Under the tentative contract agreement, the Postal Service must discuss plans with unions to purchase new mail trucks without air conditioning.
This is the second contract DeJoy has negotiated since he was appointed postmaster general in 2020. It is expected to take several weeks for union members to ratify the contract. Local mail carriers are not covered by the contract because they are represented by a different union.
