September 10, 2022 

In accordance with the 2021-2024 Collective Bar­gaining Agreement (union contract), career employees represented by the APWU will receive a $1.18 per hour Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA), effective August 27, 2022.

The adjustment is the result of a rise in the Consum­er Price Index (CPI-W) – one of the federal government’s measures of inflation. It will appear in paychecks dated September 16, 2022 (Pay Period 19-2022). This new COLA represents an annual increase in pay of $2,455 for all full-time career employees.

The COLAs are in addition to general wage and step increases. This is the second COLA  under the 2021 union contract. The first, effective February 2022, amounted to $0.63 per hour or $1,310 annually. The first two COLAs received as a result of our new union contract equal $1.81/hour for career employees (  $3,765.00 a year for Full-Time Regulars.)

Postal Support Employees (PSEs) do not receive cost-of-living increases, but upon conversion to career will receive the COLA adjustments as part of their base wages.

Soaring inflation is hurting working people with rising prices on basic necessities including gasoline, food, transportation, and housing. Inflation is largely being driven by an economy concentrated in the hands of a few powerful and greedy corporate monopolies that have the power to raise prices, with little fear of competition.

This rising inflation underscores just how important the continuation of our negotiated COLA is in the outstanding new union contract. By mobilizing together, we secured this important safety-net against rising prices: union power in action.

The COLA is our best protection against inflation. Postal Workers are some of the few U.S. workers who receive COLA increases. Even in the postal world, we are the only postal union that has maintained full COLA in our union contract.

And even If the prices of goods decrease, with fuel for example, workers still keep our COLA increases. Those gains are locked in and become part of our base salary going forward.

“At times of high inflation, our union-won COLA is invaluable to ourselves and to our families,” said APWU President Mark Dimondstein. “It’s always a struggle to keep these COLA provisions. In every national contract bargaining round, management wants to put a stop to it or downgrade it to a ‘partial COLA-formula.’ Every postal worker should be proud that we fought hard and prevailed to keep full COLA in our latest contract, approved with a 94 percent ‘yes’ vote. It pays to be union!”

Go to apwu.org/pay-information to view pay scales.

September 10, 2022 

As the APWU was preparing collective actions in response to the unacceptable delay in retroactive payments won in the 2021-2024 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), postal management finally provided the union with firm dates the payments will be received by postal workers in APWU represented crafts.

The retroactive payments will appear as a pay adjustment on paychecks received October 28, 2022. “Those in management responsible for overseeing these payroll changes had so little respect for postal workers that they apparently thought a May 2023 date for the retroactive payments would somehow be acceptable. This was outrageous,” said APWU President Mark Dimondstein. “Postal workers earned this pay, we deserve it, and we’re not in the business of giving management interest-free loans on the back of our labor. While we’re still unsatisfied with the delay, we sent a message and have gotten firm dates months in advance of management’s plan.”

“This delay in retroactive payments was unacceptable to everyone in our union,” said APWU Director of Industrial Relations Charlie Cash. “While we’re glad to have dates to look forward to, we will still file a national-level grievance seeking an appropriate remedy for all affected postal employees.”

The CBA included the following pay adjustments:

• Effective November 20, 2021: General wage increases of 1.3 percent
• Effective Nov. 20, 2021: Additional 1 percent pay raise for PSEs (who do not receive COLA)
• Effective September 25, 2021: New pay scale for Grade 11
• Effective Feb 26, 2022: Sixty-three cents/hour COLA, for career employees
• Effective April 9, 2022: Fifty cents/hour increase for the PSEs effective

Each of the above adjustments were programmed and included in our wages on June 4, 2022, with the exception of the 50 cents/hour due to the PSEs. That management error was corrected and included in pay from July 30, 2022.

The retroactive payments due to workers consists of the above adjustments on hours worked from June 4, 2022 going back to their respective effective dates, and between April 9 and July 30 for the PSE fifty-cent increase.

We will keep members updated on the grievance process regarding this unacceptable delay.