Word: postally
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WASHINGTON-The U.S. Postal Service reportedly reached agreement last night with the union representing hundreds of thousands of postal works, who had threatened to strike at midnight...
...postal and railway settlements are certain to have an impact on next year's round of wage talks. There are no other big union contracts expiring this year, but several important ones come up for renewal in 1979. Among them are the United Auto Workers (with 800,000 members), the Teamsters (900,000 members), the International Union of Electrical Workers (200,000 members), and some 80,000 rubber, cork, linoleum and plastic workers. These unions have three-year contracts that now provide an average of 10% in annual pay increases, and White House officials hope to see the yearly...
Though the Postal Service is a quasi-Government organization, the union leadership is infuriated by the Administration's blunt intrusion into the contract talks. Instead of quietly urging the chiefs to hold down wage demands, the White House has publicly and repeatedly insisted that they settle for no more than 5.5% a year-the same raise that Carter has said he will approve later this summer for 1,350,000 civil service workers. In fact, postal workers already earn an average wage of $15,423 a year, nearly 50% more than the national average for private nonfarm workers...
White House officials had predicted that the postal workers would cooperate, but the demands that the union placed on the table last week were not exactly encouraging. In addition to an increase in a cost-of-living escalator that offsets 65% of the prevailing inflation rate, the union called for a 7% wage increase in the first year and 5% in the second-all in all, a good bit more than the Administration had been hoping for. Said James LaPenta, a key postal union negotiator: "What the Administration has done is self-defeating. Management now feels that it is backed...
...talks become deadlocked, the mailmen may strike next month. That would be illegal, but the Postal Service is so worried that it has drawn up crisis plans to have important mail such as Social Security checks sorted and delivered by the military, including the ROTC. There is also a somewhat remote possibility of a railway strike early this autumn if a new contract cannot be achieved by the time the federal mediation period expires...