Jacqueline Dormer/Republican-Herald via AP
Letter carrier Greg Andregic loads his truck for the day in Pottsville, Pennsylvania, March 1, 2022.
A new payment system that is estimated to reduce base pay for most rural letter carriers, for some by thousands of dollars, has led to widespread threats of quitting and concern about whether the mail will get delivered in rural America.
The U.S. Postal Service intended to begin implementing the new system, known as the Rural Route Evaluated Compensation System, or RRECS, on Saturday, despite a grievance filed by the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association union (NRLCA) seeking a 60-day delay and a release of the data that went into it. “We know and the USPS knows that there are errors that need to be corrected,” the NRLCA stated last week in a message to members. “The USPS’s position is to implement and correct the errors later” (emphasis in original).
The effective date for RRECS, which has been in the making for more than a decade, was recently delayed to April 8 and then to April 22. There are rumors that it has been delayed again for one more pay period, but since it was established by a binding arbitration ruling, at some point RRECS will govern rural letter carrier pay. Schedules were posted in some post offices with the new changes this week.
A preliminary review of the new system from the NRLCA found that two-thirds of all rural letter carriers are on track to lose at least one hour per week, and 44 percent will lose four hours or more. About 14 percent of carriers would gain hours. The changes can add to days worked while reducing hours on those days, which can reduce opportunities for overtime.
Two years ago, as RRECS was getting finalized, workers were told that most carriers would see modest changes at most. But losing four hours a week can translate into an annual salary cut of $8,000, according to letter carriers who spoke to the Prospect on condition of anonymity. Others have claimed pay cuts of 25 percent. One letter carrier estimated that the reductions sum to nine million man-hours per year, which translates to $270 million in savings for USPS.
Two weeks ago, the NRLCA said it was working to resolve disputes over implementation. The union has neglected to respond to multiple requests for comment.
Thus far, the inner workings of the RRECS algorithm and the calculations that went into it remain a closely guarded secret. But rural letter carriers have been told what the new evaluation means for them, and message boards, private Facebook groups, and other social media sites have lit up in the past few weeks as a result.
“I have an 80 mile rt. with 700 plus boxes … bare minimum, its a 5 hour rt. on a standard day, 6 hour rt on a heavy day. This is NOT right!!!!” wrote one letter carrier, who claimed to lose four hours per week, at a messaging site called Rural Mail Talk. “Just another tool to steal from their workers. When we have been short staffed for as long as we have i think they have lost hope on all new hires and now going to torture everyone that has stayed,” wrote another on Reddit.
Two-thirds of all rural letter carriers are on track to lose at least one hour per week, and 44 percent will lose four hours or more.
A TikTok video from another carrier, who claims he will lose $12,000 per year, cited the threats to the postal system from the changes. “A lot of you may not be getting mail today,” he says in the video. “We’ve had some people walk out.”
In a statement, USPS spokesperson David Coleman said, “The compensation system for rural letter carriers is a nationally negotiated pay system codified in the parties’ National Agreement. The current modifications to the compensation system were the result of a previous interest arbitration proceeding and mandated by an interest arbitrator. The parties worked jointly for years to implement these new provisions and will continue to share data and information throughout the implementation process.”
The agency did not respond to questions about how it will ensure mail delivery if walkouts increase.
UNLIKE OTHER LETTER CARRIERS who are paid by the hour, those who work in rural areas are paid based on an evaluation of how many hours per week it takes to complete their route. Some of these areas have an enormous footprint and require lots of driving. But under federal law, USPS must serve all mailboxes, regardless of whether they cost more money for delivery than the revenue they bring in.
For many years, an official mail count evaluated how long the route took to complete. For two to three weeks a year, every parcel, letter, and flat was counted and put into a formula. The subsequent number of hours, with a per-hour pay rate based on seniority, became a rural letter carrier’s base pay. If carriers get a route done in five hours that is supposed to take seven, they don’t have to move over to help with someone else’s route.
There were tensions between the union and USPS over whether the mail count could be manipulated to reduce pay. This became a point of contention in bargaining sessions, and after 2010 contract negotiations went to arbitration, the arbitrator ruled that a new formula was needed to determine routes. Both sides appointed engineers, along with an independent engineer, who designed RRECS. According to the arbitrator, the system was initially supposed to be in place by May 2015. But while there have been a series of delays, RRECS is mandated under a memorandum of understanding between the NRLCA and USPS.
To put RRECS together, rural letter carriers have been surveilled and tracked for the time it takes to perform all of their tasks, not for a couple of weeks but for an entire year. Workers also had to manually input “scans” of their work. The intricate list of what is getting tracked goes well beyond the old mail count.
Lower mail volumes and a reduction in Amazon packages, either through lighter post-pandemic demand or Amazon using its own drivers for last-mile service, could be potential reasons for the cuts. But without the data, it’s hard to say what prompted such a widespread shift. And there are reports of erroneous calculations.
A Texas-based letter carrier named Shelon Williams told KVUE in Austin that RRECS estimated only 71 percent of her route was covered on an average day. She claimed that she covered it in full.
“I urge you all to consider grieving any discrepancies you may have noticed in the new system,” said one letter carrier on Rural Mail Talk. “By doing so, we can bring attention to these issues and work towards finding a solution.” The carrier alleged that things like GPS signal loss and other calculation problems were prevalent.
Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said in remarks to the American Enterprise Institute last year that USPS plans to reduce the workforce by 50,000 over the next several years through attrition. The agency has suffered significant losses in recent years and is losing more money than expected this year. The 50,000 number would help the Postal Service break even, DeJoy said.
Some letter carriers who spoke to the Prospect suspected that RRECS was part of this plan, given that it could lead to significant resignations.
In addition, when package deliveries spiked during the pandemic, rural letter carriers were paid under the old evaluation system, and saw no bonus for those years. This has intensified the anger over losing hours.
There was a protest in Washington last week over the issue. And uncertainty over when the new pay rates will be implemented has frayed the nerves of many rural letter carriers. “Why don’t they just admit it’s flawed and delay indefinitely until they figure how to tweak it,” asked one user on Rural Mail Talk.
