2024-2027 Tentative Agreement Ratified

(This article appeared in the July/August 2025 issue of The American Postal Worker magazine)

We have a contract! You, the members of the APWU, voted 95% in the affirmative to approve the Tentative Agreement. The contract is now in effect and the work of implementation begins. Unless otherwise indicated in the contract, all provisions and Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) went into effect upon ratification of the contract.

But when will the new pay provisions be implemented? Per the contract, one general wage increase of 1.3% of your salary, in place on Sept. 20, 2024, went into effect on Nov. 16, 2024. For Postal Support Employees (PSEs), this is a 2.3% pay increase. The first cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) under this contract, in the amount of $395, went into effect on March 8, 2025, for career employees. All other pay increases and night differential changes have future effective dates listed in the contract.

For these pay provisions to be implemented and show in your paychecks, our union family members in Information Technology/Accounting Services (IT/AS) must program the changes into the payroll system. This takes time and hard work. This programming is referred to as the “stopgap” programming by the parties (the “parties” refers to the APWU and the USPS). Once the stopgap is programmed, the new pay amounts will be reflected in your paychecks. To give you an idea of how long this takes, when the contract was settled in 2022, it took 14 weeks to program the stopgap. I am not saying it will take that amount of time, but I am sharing the information that it simply takes work and time to get it done. Once the stopgap is programmed, future pay increases should be automatic and without delay.

This brings us to the retroactive payments. These are payments that must be made for the period from Nov. 16, 2024, to the date the stopgap programming is implemented. This period is commonly called either retro pay or the backpay period. This too must be programmed by our APWU-represented union family in IT/AS. However, this programming normally does not begin until the retro pay period is established. At this time, I do not know what the full retro pay period will be. As soon as the stopgap is programmed, the APWU will communicate what the retro pay period will be through our normal communications channels. For informational purposes only, in the last contract where retro pay was owed, it took 238 days to program and pay the retro payments. Over the last five contracts that required these payments, payments were completed 160 days after the date of ratification. Again, we do not know how long it will take, but I can guarantee you that my department will remain in contact with the Postal Service on the pay implementation process and push postal leadership to get these payments completed as soon as possible.

There are other provisions of the agreement that go into effect “the first full pay period 180 days after contract ratification.” These provisions include:

• Upgrade of Grade 3 to Grade 4
• Elimination of Step JJ in Grade 4
• New top steps for employees who are in the post- 2010 (new/lower tier) pay scales (Grade 4 to Step J, Grade 5 to Step L, Grades 6 and 7 to Step M)
• Elimination of entry Step-GG for PSEs who are automatically converted to career after 24 months
• Additional Pay/New Steps for PSEs and PSEs in Remotely Managed Post Offices (RMPOs)

Based on the date of ratification, the date of implementation for these provisions will be the start of pay period three of 2026 (PP03-2026), which starts on Jan. 10, 2026.

My department is working on getting the official version of the Collective Bargaining Agreement finalized for print. We are working closely with the craft directors and the Secretary-Treasurer’s office to get this done, as well as the updated version of the Joint Contract Interpretation Manual (JCIM).

Solidarity! ■