News

Moratorium on Contracting Out Extended 3 more years!

The campaign of UNI Postal affiliate NALC to stop the use of contract workers to deliver mail the United States advanced dramatically this fall when a new agreement to prohibit outsourcing in letter carrier workplaces was reached with the United States Postal Service.



NALC President William H. Young announced in November that National Association of Letter Carriers and the Postal Service had signed a Memorandum of Understanding that bans new Contract Delivery Service routes in all offices where city letter carriers work. The prohibition will remain in force for at least the remainder of the union’s 2006-2011 contract. The MOU also assigns new deliveries to career letter carriers rather than to contractors.



“In 2006, we set out to confront the threat of Contract Delivery Service -- we have now successfully done that,” Young said. “We have closed the low-road of poorly paid, non-union contractors to the Postal Service and stand ready to work together with postal management to provide high-quality, affordable service to all.”



Contract delivery became the fastest growing type of delivery in 2005 as the number of outsourced delivery routes more than doubled between 2003 and 2006, costing the NALC some 5,000 jobs. NALC launched a three-pronged campaign to combat outsourcing in January 2006 – taking legal action to stop the practice, making an outsourcing ban a top priority in contract negotiations, and seeking a legislative ban in Congress. This approach, combined with a grassroots program of protests and informational picketing involving tens of thousands of members in dozens of cities across the country, resulted in a new labor agreement that initially banned outsourcing for six months. The new agreement reached this fall extends the moratorium on contracting out through the end of the union’s current contract.



“We have saved thousands of good union jobs with decent pay and conditions by using all the tools available to our union,” Young told his members in November. “Thanks to our tens of thousands of e-Activists and the solidarity of our membership, we not only rallied the public and the Congress to our side, we also helped protect the quality and integrity of our nation’s postal service,” he added. (The Postal Service agreed to negotiate a ban after a majority of Congress endorsed a legislative ban.)



In addition to stopping the expansion of Contract Delivery Service, NALC has also secured new delivery work for unionized city carriers. Although the growth in the number of new deliveries has moderated in recent months due to the severity of the nation’s housing and mortgage crises, NALC members will finally win a significant share of new deliveries -- deliveries that in recent years have been outsourced. This will become an increasingly important source of jobs as the economy recovers.



Neil Anderson, Head of UNI Telecom said this is great news and a beacon of hope to other unions that they can fight outsourcing and win.



A video on the NALC’s campaign was prepared for the union’s national convention in August. Other information is available on the union’s website at www.nalc.org or by contacting Jim Sauber at sauber@nalc.org.