The head of the union representing rural mail carriers nationwide says the number of unfilled positions at the U.S. Postal Service is at an all-time high and low wages are the main culprit.
“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen in my career,” said Don Maston, the president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association, when asked about the number of open jobs. “They’re just not paying enough money. It’s by far our No. 1 issue.”
Maston said that with the challenging labor market that the country is in right now, employees are incentivized to pick and choose which job suits them best.
“(The USPS) is not paying what it needs to be and rural carrier associates are getting worked to death,” he explained. “Management is hard on them, they’re not getting the treatment we believe they deserve. So they just quit. It’s the worst staffing shortage we’ve ever had in the rural craft and frankly it’s going to take the Postal Service paying higher wages to make the job attractive and get quality applicants to come into work.”
We will have to see what the NRLCA can negotiate in this next contract.
It’s not just rcas quitting it’s regulars quitting and retiring. I recently retired after forty years as a rural carrier. With the results of the April rrecs I lost six thousand dollars a year and was required to work six days a week. I took it as a slap in the face. I’ve given the postal service two thirds of my life and this is how they thank me. I wanted to work a couple more years but I was fed up with being treated this way. I Was always the first to volunteer when they were short handed and never was late and never called off. I told my coworkers over ten years ago that I would live to see the end of the postal service and if things don’t change I will.
When does the next contract get ratified?
Spot on, Greg.
Everyone needs to GTFO of this ? show.
Took a $14,000 pay cut when I got RREC’ed.
Subs are quitting left & right.
DO NOT JOIN THE WORTHLESS UNION!
How about not capping our charts at 48K and actually paying us what we are OWED! Im frozen at a 63 hr eval!
OpenPayrolls.com – everyone! Type in the name of the postmaster you work for, or better yet, type in the name of your local district manager and, soberingly, see how much they are making to crack the whip on us this past Holiday season, and nickel and dime us all into exhaustion and continued injuries, and more importantly, to try to get as much work out of us as they can off the clock, which would be so completely and totally illegal for any other company in the U.S. So many other companies have been tried in court and have paid huge fines for doing this to their employees, yet USPS has made a thriving business out of it,with their rural carriers, at least. And, somehow we have ended up with the most useless union representing us,on the planet. You can even view the top 100 highest paid employees, within USPS, on OpenPayrolls.com and consider the announcement that USPS just made,on December 22, 2023, to raise all salaries, for managers, supervisors, and postmasters, in 2024, by 4.7%. It’s great to see that there is a union, within USPS that actually does negotiates higher pay increases,for it’s members, and doesn’t just take some type of kickbacks to do nothing for the super hard workers it’s accepting dues from.
When members of the general public, in the small communities I deliver to,ask me what is wrong with USPS, I’ve taken to simply telling them that all I can figure out, from how badly we are uniformly treated across the board as rural carriers, by district managers, post masters, clerks, etc. – as in, I feel like we are treated like robots, who are expected to perform for inordinate hours, often in rather bad weather, getting chased by dogs, and any variety of other animals, and sometimes people, deal with dangerous traffic that often doesn’t slow up for us, lift huge packages day after day with the amount of packages continuing to increase, co-workers continuing to disappear, or retire, because they, understandably, can’t handle this either, and the number of complaints we have to deal with from annoying clerks and weirdos on our routes, and all I can tell them when they ask me that, is that USPS ultimately wants people,even elderly people, to have to drive to their local, rural post office and pick up their own mail and packages, because this is a silent epidemic that will continue to get worse and, obviously, USPS managers and postmasters don’t care. We also have a Postmaster General who doesn’t care, and our own rural carriers union who doesn’t care, or, otherwise, rural carriers would be valued and treated well (even just actually treated and paid better). And, yet, so many rural mail carriers and RCAs/ARCs carry on day after day, and bear up under the load of dangerously long routes, with way too many packages, and that usual smile on their faces, even after their super long days, with a happy greeting for most everyone on their route and a wave.