April Contract Bargaining Update
from the Members Only Portal on nalc.org.
NALC and the Postal Service have now completed six weeks of negotiations for a new collective-bargaining agreement for city letter carriers. At this point, NALC has presented and discussed more than six dozen proposals on a multitude of subjects designed to improve wages, hours and working conditions. In addition t o previously reported items, some of the proposals submitted s o far by NALC include ideas such as:
• Ensuring flexible workforce employees are utilized up to eight hours a day or 40 hours a week before assigning work t o employees who are temporarily reassigned from outside of their office.
• Equitable distribution o f work hours for flexible workforce employees.
• Improved transfer rules.
• Enhanced sick leave for dependent care benefits.
• Additional protection for letter carriers who do not want to work overtime.
• Ideas to further protect letter carriers from hazardous animals on their routes.
• Additional improvements to Article 8 - Hours o f Work.
• Improving the grievance-arbitration procedure.
NALC still has additional proposals to submit and will do so as the parties continue negotiations next week. Collective-bargaining subcommittees comprised o f each member of NALC's Executive Council and Headquarters letter carrier staff helped create our proposals from the ideas we received from rank-and-file bargaining committees, delegates at past national conventions who adopted our official bargaining positions, branch and state leaders at the 2025 national rap session, and members from all over the country who offered their feedback.
Although official negotiations with the Postal Service have only been taking place for the last six weeks, the collective-bargaining subcommittees have been in place crafting proposals and ideas to achieve our goals for the past eight months. As we continue negotiating with the Postal Service to present and discuss our work rule and economic proposals, w e are simultaneously preparing for interest arbitration in the event a negotiated agreement cannot b e reached. If an agreement cannot b e reached that rewards America's letter carriers for the hard work they do day in and day out, we will not hesitate to present our demands and argue our case in front of an arbitrator.