Local U.S. Postal Service carriers are not happy with a contract they’ve been offered, so they are planning a public protest in downtown Kent at noon Nov. 11.
Organizer Jason Wolfe, a Kent mail carrier himself, said colleagues from Streetsboro, Stow, Cuyahoga Falls, Medina and Boardman will be present, as will USPS clerks and possibly truck drivers.
The protest, meant to raise public awareness about what Wolfe characterized as a poor contract offer, will take place at the intersection of Main Street and Franklin Avenue in Kent.
Participants are being asked not to wear their uniforms because USPS employees are not permitted to protest in their uniforms.
Wolfe said postal carriers across the country have joined a grassroots movement they’ve named Concerned Letter Carriers. They are opposed to the USPS’s Oct. 19 contract offer and are encouraging members to vote no when it is mailed to them at the end of the month.
Should the no votes prevail, Wolfe said the letter carriers have been told the matter will go straight to arbitration.
The Portager reached out to the U.S. Postal Service for comment, but was met with an email that stated, “We respectfully decline your interview request.”
Describing himself as a rank-and-file employee, Wolfe said he cannot be punished or disciplined for organizing local protests.
“We’re not allowed to speak negatively about the post office, but we can protest this contract,” he said.
Wolfe said USPS letter carriers are being asked to accept 1.3% in annual raises and other contractual concessions, including a 13-minute cut to the allotted time letter carriers have each morning to sort their mail so it is ready for delivery.
That, combined with the contract’s unequally distributed raise offers, could well exacerbate the high turnover rate already evident in the mail carrier division, he said. The proposed contract also eliminates compensation options employees may receive after filing grievances.
That means it would be management’s word against the carrier’s as to whether the employee actually volunteered to or was made to work more than 12 hours a day or 60 hours in a week, Wolfe said.
The mail carriers also want to eliminate the USPS practice of only awarding full cost-of-living adjustments to those at the top of the pay scale.
“We feel that every carrier should get a full cost of living, not a portion,” he said.
Non-career employees are also at issue. Wolfe said mail carriers are not considered career employees until they have accrued approximately two years of service. Until then, their time does not count toward pension benefits. Wolfe would like to see a contract where eligibility starts on day one.
Since mail carriers deal with all kinds of weather, the contract’s uniform allowance offer is also insufficient, he said.
“We get in the neighborhood of $500 a year for uniform allowance,” Wolfe said. “They’re only offering us 40 more dollars a year for uniforms. At that rate, it takes about four years to get the whole package of what you would need to be out in these elements. The winter gear alone would eat up an entire uniform allowance for a year.”
Also absent in the tentative contract are consequences if management violates it.
“No language was included,” Wolfe said. “Management will continue to violate the contract and disregard grievance settlements.”
All the letter carriers want is a contract that is in step with other union employees who do similar jobs, including UPS workers, he said.
“All the labor unions in the country in the last couple years have gotten significantly more. Railroad workers, longshoremen, the Boeing workers. Even UPS got a nice contract last summer. That is really applicable because they do a similar job as us, and people who do similar work should be paid similarly,” Wolfe said.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.