Most rural mail carriers may be getting a pay cut; some may opt to quit or retire; USPS says cut driven by union contract

Photo by Timothy Eberly on Unsplash

Who goes where Amazon and FedEx fear to tread? Rural mail carriers trod over hill and dale to get mail to their customers, and it may come as an unhappy surprise to those customers that their carrier's pay may be cut. "A new payment system that is estimated to reduce base pay for most rural letter carriers, for some by thousands of dollars, has led to widespread threats of quitting and concern about whether the mail will get delivered in rural America," reports David Dayen of The American Prospect. "The U.S. Postal Service intended to begin implementing the new system, known as the Rural Route Evaluated Compensation System [RRECS], on Saturday, despite a grievance filed by the National Rural Letter Carriers' Association union seeking a 60-day delay and a release of the data that went into it. 'We know, and the USPS knows that there are errors that need to be corrected,' the NRLCA stated last week in a message to members. . . . 'The USPS's position is to implement and correct the errors later' (emphasis in original)."

The change has been planned for years, but the information given to carriers has been inconsistent, and implementation has faced delays, Dayen reports: "Two years ago, as RRECS was getting finalized, workers were told that most carriers would see modest changes at most," Dayen writes. "But losing four hours a week can translate into an annual salary cut of $8,000, according to letter carriers who spoke on condition of anonymity. . . . Two weeks ago, the NRLCA said it was working to resolve disputes over implementation. RRECS' implementation was recently delayed. . . . There are rumors that it has been delayed again for one more pay period, but since it was established by a binding arbitration ruling, RRECS will eventually govern rural letter-carrier pay."

"The inner workings of the RRECS algorithm and the calculations that went into it remain a closely guarded secret. But rural letter carriers have been told what the new evaluation means for them, and message boards, private Facebook groups, and other social media sites have lit up in the past few weeks as a result." Dayden reports. "A TikTok video from a carrier, who claims he will lose $12,000 per year, cited the threats to the postal system from the changes. 'A lot of you may not be getting mail today. We've had some people walk out.'. . . . In a statement, a USPS spokesperson said, 'The compensation system for rural letter carriers is a nationally negotiated pay system codified in the parties' national agreement. . . . Parties worked jointly for years to implement these new provisions.'. . . The agency did not respond to questions about how it will ensure mail delivery if walkouts increase."

Rural carriers are not paid like their urban counterparts, "who are paid by the hour," Dayen notes. "Those who work in rural areas are paid based on an evaluation of how many hours per week it takes to complete their route. Some of these areas have an enormous footprint and require lots of driving. But under federal law, USPS must serve all mailboxes, regardless of whether they cost more money for delivery than the revenue they bring in. . . . For many years, an official mail count evaluated how long the route took to complete. . . .There were tensions between the union and USPS over whether the mail count could be manipulated to reduce pay. This became a point of contention in bargaining sessions."