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Reaching
a Pay Deal the Tried and True Way Dec. 13, 2000--Even as their union demands the legal right to strike, the nation's 300,000 postal clerks are likely to win pay raises and an upgrade the easy way, via the arbitration process. Arbitration can be described as a crapshoot with a conscience. In theory, anything can happen when labor and management--in this case the Postal Service and the American Postal Workers Union--go to arbitration. But in fact arbitrators look at recent decisions in similar cases. And they have an excellent, almost identical model to study: the arbitration award granted to the National Association of Letter Carriers. That decision gave the city letter carriers a 1.2 percent pay raise, plus a one-grade increase. Carriers who had been at Level 5 (earning an average of $40,472) were moved up to Level 6, which has been redesignated City Carrier Grade 1 (with an average salary of $41,949). Those who were already at Level 6 were moved up to the new City Carrier Grade 2, which, with the 1.2 percent pay raise, averages $42,974. The arbitration award to the letter carriers was effective in mid-November, and employees got the raises last Friday. APWU members hope to get a similar deal from the arbitration panel. After it hears both sides, the panel's decision is likely in late spring or early summer. Meantime, the failure of the negotiation process has prompted APWU President Moe Biller to call for the legal right to strike for postal employees. Without it, he says, there is no incentive for postal management to bargain in good faith. Congress would have to approve the right to strike, and that isn't in the cards. |