Boston letter carriers launch contract campaign

Neither snow nor frigid cold nor the gloom of the union-busting Trump administration could hold back the spirited members of Boston’s Branch 34 of the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) and their allies. They rallied Feb. 22, marching on the main South Station U.S. Post Office to launch NALC’s campaign for Contract 2026.

Solidarity between the largely young, rank-and-file organizers and veterans of the decades-long attacks by consecutive Democratic and Republican administrations on postal workers’ jobs and living standards was on powerful display at what speakers termed the launching and dress rehearsal for a contract campaign to overcome past concessions.

Workers’ signs reading “1.3% Doesn’t Keep Up!” referred to what speakers at today’s rally — youth and seniors — called a substandard retroactive agreement. Now expired, this agreement was awarded by a government arbitrator a year ago, but has not kept up with the cost of living. Since last year’s agreement, workers described attacks on their rights and working conditions on the shop floor as relentless.

Speakers upheld the workers’ broad-ranging demands of a $30 per hour living wage, an end to privatization of the U.S. Postal Service, an eight-hour workday (instead of the 50-80 hour workweeks forced on new hires), an end to the multiple pay tiers of recent years that pit senior workers against those recently hired and a focus on letter carriers’ essential services, not on bloated management.

Boston’s action was one of dozens nationwide called by NALC. The actions were called to gear up for what will be a critical street fight against the Trump administration’s unprecedented mass layoffs and unilateral abrogation of union contracts for over a million federal workers in the billionaire regime’s first year of attacks.