Tyler is a shop steward with the National Association of Letter Carriers Branch 9, and on the coordinating committee of Build a Fighting NALC. Written in a personal capacity.
Workers who get involved in the struggle to change their union can often be asked by other workers: Why Don’t You Run for President? And if you are arguing for a change in how the union is run, that question makes total sense. However, the key to transforming a union is not just about changing the faces at the top. The deeper change that is required is for the members as a whole to take over the leadership with ideas that can take the union movement away from its past mistakes and into the realm of winning what union members need.
Over 290,000 letter carriers making up the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) have been working for a year and a half without a union contract. Following the Great Postal Workers Strike of 1970, working for the post office was associated with strong union wages and benefits. The 1970 strike was a moment of heroic militancy by all postal workers who took a stand against their bosses, top down union leaders, and even the excess of the US government. Leadership came from below with rank-and-file letter carriers organizing their coworkers to support the strike and go to the picket lines across the country. The result was postal workers winning the right to collective bargaining, record wage increases, and importantly showed that the union’s power ultimately lies with workers organizing and the power to shut deliveries down.
The NALC leadership under President Renfroe today has moved away from the best traditions of 1970. Like all workers, we’ve felt the brunt of inflation eating away at our paychecks. We were called “essential workers” during the pandemic, yet, this has never been reflected in pay raises, eliminating the CCA category (non-career highly exploited workforce), or ending mandatory overtime to have a reasonable work-life balance. Instead of offering real leadership and a strategy to win a strong contract for letter carriers. Renfroe instead chose to spend his time arguing why he doesn’t owe the membership real updates on bargaining (until rank-and-file carriers forced him to reverse this position at the convention).
Frustration with the Renfroe leadership is boiling over and opening the doors to building a real movement to reform the NALC into a worker led, fighting union. Renfroe is facing serious challengers in the upcoming 2026 election. An opposition slate is being organized by the reform group Concerned Letter Carriers (CLC), and Region 3 national business agent Mike Caref is challenging for the presidential election as well. Transforming the NALC into a militant union will require more than just replacing leaders at the top. Build a Fighting NALC (BFN), of which I’m a member, won a huge victory for open bargaining at the convention and will continue to organize around BFN’s Program: (1) Open Bargaining, (2) $30/hour Starting Wage, (3) End Mandatory Overtime, (4) Workers’ Wage For Union Officers, and (5) Right To Strike.
In recent months, myself and other members of the BFN Coordinating Committee have been approached by coworkers who support BFN’s program about running for president in our branches. To truly transform the NALC into a democratic, fighting union, BFN should consider supporting campaigns for local and national union positions. However, the strike of 1970 shows our power ultimately comes from organizing as letter carriers in support of a common program along with a militant strategy to win against the bosses, including going on strike.
Where Does Union Power Come From?
Letter carriers are, in fact, essential workers. Massive corporations like Amazon rely on us to deliver a large chunk of their packages, UPS and FedEx use the postal service for their “last mile” deliveries, and many working people rely on a public, affordable postal service every day. The work of all letter carriers produces massive profits for corporations like Amazon, and we play an indispensable role within the US economy. Yet, many of us working at USPS have never seen a real raise. In reality, we’ve only ever received pay cuts in our entire careers when you account for rising inflation.
The Renfroe leadership may try to justify a giveaway contract by telling us that negotiations are a give and take with the postal service. Anything we gain must be taken out of something else. Actually, negotiations are a question of power, a struggle between workers and the bosses. The question about what gains we are able to make for letter carriers is a question of how much power we have built as a union on the workroom floor and in the streets.
Organizing actions like public rallies and practice pickets bring the membership directly into the fight, and build leverage for our position at the negotiating table. The strongest unions use this to build up towards taking strike action which places serious pressure on the bosses to give into even our boldest demands. The centrality of the postal service to the US economy gives us an incredible amount of power to withhold our labor. Strong union leaders understand this and mobilize the power of the membership rather than hold us back like Renfroe chooses to do.
But we are seeing a revival of the US labor movement in recent years. UPS workers threatened to go on strike, held practice pickets, and were able to win record contracts. UAW workers at the Big Three automakers heroically went on strike and won record contracts, including 25% wage increases over the course of the contract and top pay of $40/hour. Public school teachers across Massachusetts have staged a series of strikes and won big gains in recent years despite it being illegal for teachers in the state to strike. The greatest power all workers have comes from organizing and taking workplace and strike action. UPS and the Big Three recognized they were facing a serious loss in profits and were forced to concede far more than they wanted to.
Build a Fighting NALC
Unfortunately for us, the Renfroe leadership today prefers backroom negotiations with management and a demobilized union membership. But unfortunately for them, many NALC letter carriers today are fed up of working without a contract, sell-out deals, and are eager to transform our union.
It is very positive that the Concerned Letter Carriers (CLC) group and Mike Caref are both challenging the Renfroe leadership in the 2026 national union elections, and many committed union activists are running for positions in local branches across the country. One part of transforming our union will be electing new leaderships that are accountable to the letter carriers they represent, but the lessons of 1970 show us that only a rank and file movement organized around a clear program including the right to strike can deliver a strong contract.
BFN is encouraged that Caref and CLC are calling for and supporting organizing contract rallies for October 14th, and this should only be the start. By then, we will be over 500 days working without a contract with no substantive updates to show for it. Both Caref and CLC should organize rallies in all branches where they hold elected positions and have support from rank and file letter carriers. BFN is committed to doing the same and encourages any letter carrier interested in organizing a rally in your branch to contact us. These rallies will show management our collective strength during negotiations and that we are undeterred. It will also show the way forward for what rebuilding a fighting NALC should look like for years to come.
Branch presidents have an important role to play in mobilizing the membership during a contract battle. The strongest presidents are ones who rely on the power of the membership to win a strong contract and then enforce it on the shopfloor. Running for local president or other positions is absolutely something BFN members will consider now and moving forward as one way we can begin transforming the NALC into a more fighting, democratic union.
There are absolutely examples of local leaderships that mobilize and organize alongside rank and file letter carriers like Dave Grosskopf with Buffalo’s Branch 3, and many more. When considering whether to run for these positions we need to ask ourselves some crucial questions. Is there a sufficient base of rank and file letter carriers organizing together that can hold union leaders accountable to fighting the bosses? Speaking for myself, I will be running on a slate in Branch 9 for the editor position to turn our newsletter into a real organizing tool for NALC members and help build support for the ideas BFN thinks are needed to transform the union.
BFN is organizing in branches across the country around our program, to fight for a contract that has an all career workforce, and fights against Postmaster DeJoy’s plan to undermine, and ultimately privatize the postal service. To do this, we need to build a movement of letter carriers, including by building chapters of BFN in local branches. Similar to how postal workers in New York’s Branch 36 organized together in 1970 in advance of the strike, and built a rank and file movement afterwards that won serious internal reforms in NALC and won big wage gains during contract fights in the years following the strike. Just like then, today’s BFN chapters should be the rank and file backbone of building strong NALC branches across the country and part of a national movement within the union. For myself, the best use of my limited free time will be spent doing exactly this in Minneapolis Branch 9, as well as helping others do the same in their branches, rather than running for president.