Moline letter carrier rally highlights 500+ workdays with no contract

ILLINOIS (WHBF) — Letter carrier unions across the nation held informational rallies Monday to bring awareness to their nearly two-year long struggle to agree on a new contract.

Ross Thorpe, a member of the NALC (National Association of Letter Carriers) branch 318 in Moline spoke with Our Quad Cities News via Zoom to discuss why union members across the nation, including in the Quad Cities, held rallies.

The union held a rally at the post office in Moline on Monday morning. Thorpe says they’ve been working without a contract for nearly two years.

“Today would be 512 days. We do have a provision that allows us to work under the old contract,” he said. “But under the old contract, the pay raises and the COLAs and all of that stopped 512 days ago. I think our last kind of any kind of COLA was in January of 2023 and then our last general wage increase was like November of 2022.”

He says union members are frustrated because neither the post office nor the union is talking with them. “One of the reasons why we had the rally is we don’t really know,” Thorpe said. “We know they’re meeting, or both sides tell us they’re meeting, but we don’t know what they’re meeting on, and we don’t know what issues are holding up the process. So, we don’t have any information from either side. Nobody’s saying, ‘hey, we’re waiting on the post office to be okay with increasing the pay,’ or the union saying, ‘We’re okay only doing this or we don’t know.’  A lot of U.S. letter carriers throughout the country are sick of no information.”

The letter carriers’ union is different from ones at companies like FedEx or John Deere because they don’t have the same ability to go on strike. “We’re not allowed to strike,” Thorpe said. “In the 1970s, we held a wildcat strike . I think Nixon was in office, and that is the last time, and probably only time letter carriers will be able to strike. We had rank-and-file members in New York City who walked out on the job and held a strike, and then it went nationwide .”

While letters to friends and family may not be as popular as they once were, Thorpe says the post office is still a vital part of life. “We are very much still essential, just what we deliver is different. If I want to call Grandma, I can call Grandma now. She’s got a cell phone. I’ve got a cell phone; I can call Grandma. You’re not writing letters to Grandma anymore, but what is essential is Grandma’s still getting prescriptions through the mail, Amazon packages. We’re doing ballots now. This is a busy time of the year for political mailers and everything like that. We are essential. During Covid, guess who you saw every day? Wasn’t your coworker, wasn’t your neighbors, it was us, right?”

Thorpe hopes today’s nationwide rallies aren’t repeated. “I hope that we don’t need any more. I hope that the USPS and the NALC see the nationwide day of action and get in gear and sit down and say, ‘look, okay, we need to do something now.’’’

Supporters can contact their local elected officials to give their support to the union. “What we’ve been asking people to do is get in touch with their politicians,” he said. “I think in our area, we have a very strong pro-union representation. All of our local people are very supportive of us as letter carriers, and so anytime we call or write a message, they’ll pick up the phone or send us a text.”

“Right now, the big push, obviously, is the election,” Thorpe said. ‘You want to see a fair election. You want to see the ballots (but) we don’t have the staff. We do what we’re doing right, and mail gets delivered every day, but we’re working long hours. It’s only going to get colder. It’s not going to get any warmer. I just encourage everyone to reach out to their politicians, send them a letter. They have social media. We elect them for a reason. Let’s put them to work.”

Thorpe says the pay discrepancy is hitting some letter carriers especially hard. “With inflation being what it is, and the cost of everything going up, we haven’t had a pay raise, in essentially two years. What kind of stinks is the cost of living, and inflation doesn’t stop just because we don’t get our pay raise. We’ve got carriers across the country that qualify for food stamps because they’ve got kids. They have to shower at a Y because they don’t have a house, or they’re living in a car, like, can’t afford clean clothes, they can’t afford to do laundry. Imagine living in New York, where the cost of living is outrageous, and you’re living on the same pay scale that you had two years ago. I mean, it just doesn’t work.”

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