USPS continues talks with its largest union

The U.S. Postal Service will continue negotiating with one of its largest unions about a new multi-year contract until Dec. 1, officials said Tuesday.

A Postal Service spokesman and officials with the American Postal Workers Union confirmed that the talks will continue but declined to provide details. A four-year contract between USPS and APWU expired Saturday, but both sides agreed to keep negotiating.

A separate deal with the National Rural Letter Carriers Association ended in an impasse and is expected to be considered soon by a third-party arbitrator.

APWU represents 220,000 postal clerks, mechanics, drivers, custodians and some administrative workers.

The Postal Service is seeking greater concessions from both unions on wages, health benefits and working conditions after suffering $8.5 billion in losses during the fiscal year that ended in September. The Postal Service can no longer guarantee eight-hour shifts for clerks, mail handlers and other workers, officials said when negotiations began in September.

"Should APWU negotiations fail as they have with the NRLCA, a process begins which could result in a third party determining contract terms and work rules for more than 324,000 employees whose wages and benefits exceeded $20 billion last year," the Postal Service said in a statement e-mailed early Sunday.

"There is still potential to negotiate an agreement," APWU President Cliff Guffey said Sunday.

"Throughout the collective bargaining process, the APWU has sought to protect our members' jobs and to strengthen the Postal Service. Every proposal we have made to preserve jobs for our members will also benefit the USPS, because APWU members can perform the work more efficiently and less expensively than subcontractors," Guffey said in a statement.

The NRLCA represents more than 100,000 rural letter carriers. In a statement, the union said the Postal Service had proposed "wage freezes and significant benefit cuts for current career employees, including the abolishment of cost-of-living adjustments and a new salary schedule with a lower wage scale for new hires."

The Postal Service also sought to eliminate a no-layoff clause for all but the most senior NRLCA workers, the union said.

By law, postal workers are not permitted to strike, and workers represented by the two unions will continue working under their old agreements until new deals are struck.