Rob is a letter carrier and member of NALC Branch 2902 in Los Angeles (writing in personal capacity).

Letter carriers working for the USPS are at a crossroads. In our most recent contract negotiations from May 2023 to March 2025, a reform movement sprouted up to oppose a sellout deal that would have given us a paltry 1.3% wage increase, coupled with a host of speed up and other pro-management policies. Build a Fighting NALC (BFN), a reform caucus within the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) union, is led by members of Socialist Alternative and others who support a class struggle approach.

In response to this contract, BFN organized the first “Vote No” campaign in decades within the union, bringing hundreds of rank-and-file letter carriers into national zoom calls to organize democratic “Vote No” discussions in workplaces across the country. As a result, more letter carriers voted down this tentative agreement than had voted at all in the last contract! But as per the current contract rules, the matter then proceeded to an arbitration process wherein unelected representatives from the union, USPS management, and a federally appointed “neutral” arbiter decided on all contractual issues. Unsurprisingly, this undemocratic procedure produced the same tentative agreement that over 60,000 letter carriers had rejected, which was then imposed on our union.

This highlighted a demand letter carriers organized in BFN have insisted upon since the beginning; without the right to strike, letter carriers, as well as federal workers more broadly, will not be able to win better wages and benefits. Since 1955, federal workers have been legally prohibited from striking. BFN is waging a new campaign to change that.

In this new era of Trump, the need for the right to strike is more than just a fundamental right that all workers should have, but one even more critical than before as a defensive weapon. Approximately 640,000 people work at the Post Office, as letter carriers, clerks, mechanics, and janitorial staff. The current administration continues on its warpath against federal workers, including the new government shutdown and Trump’s threats of further mass layoffs. Trump himself has made his position on USPS privatization clear. He would bring the Post Office under the executive branch and privatize it piece by piece. The USPS provides a crucial public service in providing a publicly regulated postal network where everyone, regardless of their zip code or the remoteness of where they live, is guaranteed mail delivery six days a week at reasonable prices. The right to strike will be key to ensuring it survives.

BFN officially launched our Right to Strike Campaign on October 12th, with letter carriers from more than 20 NALC branches attending the launch meeting. From here, we intend to help letter carriers bring forward resolutions in their branches demanding the right to strike, building up to our 2026 NALC National Convention where we will propose the whole union take up this fight. We understand that this fight is not limited within the walls of the Post Office. Unfortunately, the labor movement’s existing leadership has failed to stand up to the Trump administration by organizing mass collective action, whether on this or a litany of other issues. Instead, the primary way our current union leaders have responded has been to rely on the drawn out legal battles to parry the blows of the Trump administration, which hasn’t worked and won’t work.

Trump and the bosses who are backing him intend to bring us back to the legal framework of the Gilded Age, when workers and the oppressed had no legal recourse to form unions, and when they were regularly killed by privately organized goons for trying. BFN’s campaign for the right to strike is an important example of a larger fight that must be had inside organized labor, to not only effectively fight Trump, but to go on the offensive and ensure working people have a standard of living they deserve.