APWU President Mark Dimondstein Provides Contract Negotiations Update as of December 4, 2024

Full Transcript Below:

Union greetings, APWU family. I hope everyone had a very enjoyable Thanksgiving holiday. At a time of giving thanks, it is good to reflect on how fortunate we are to be unionized postal workers and to have the right to negotiate with postal management as we continue to bargain for a new union contract.

What follows is a brief update on the status of our negotiations.  As you know, our main union contract expired on September 20th. We stopped the clock, meaning that we were not done, but we felt we were making some positive progress. By stopping the clock, as we call it, it ensures that all of our benefits stay in place.

You can feel secure that our bidding in seniority, our grievance procedure, just cause protections against unjust discipline, health and safety provisions, conversions of non career to career status, Guaranteed hours of work, along with so many of the hard won benefits won over generations of struggle, remain fully in place. 

We continue to make slow but steady progress, and are meeting with management at least once a week.  We remain steadfast in our goals. We want good and fair wage increases to reflect the hard work that you do for the people of the country. We strive to end the gap between the divisive tiered pay structure.

We want to secure more career work. We want to expand postal services for the people of the country. And of course, we want to protect the great gains that have passed, such as full COLA, no layoff protections for the career workforce, guaranteed hours of work, and the 50 mile limit on accessing.  The process so far is taking a similar path to the last round of bargaining.

In 2021, we also stopped the clock. Three months later, we reached a tentative agreement that went out to a vote After approval by the Rank and File Bargaining Advisory Committee.  This round we have a new ingredient.  The NALC has recently reached a tentative agreement with Postal Management, and their ratification vote is currently underway. 

The APWU Negotiating Committee has done a deep analysis of its terms, as it potentially has an impact on our negotiations as well.  Our goal remains to achieve a good tentative agreement. If we don't get there, we'll be ready for what's called interest arbitration. We are already working on choosing a national interest arbitrator in order to keep the process moving forward. 

We will continue to give regular updates through our website, magazine, news service bulletins, social media videos like this, and podcasts.  In the meantime, stay union strong. When you wear your union gear, you were telling management we are indeed united in our demands for good new contract. Union proud.

Say it loud. Solidarity forever.