City letter carriers finally got to see the headlines of the tentative agreement Letter Carriers (NALC) President Brian Renfroe has negotiated—after more than 500 days of working without a contract and being kept completely in the dark about the state of bargaining.
In that time, a groundswell of enthusiasm and organizing for “Open Bargaining”—the right to be informed about the real state of negotiations—has swept through the union and became the Build a Fighting NALC movement. More than 40 union branches and a few state associations passed resolutions calling for this democratic right.
In August at the national convention, we won passage of an open bargaining resolution—but only after much ballyhoo from union leaders about how transparency could only hurt negotiations. In their view, letter carriers should just sit back and wait for the “historic” contract that was about to be delivered to us from on high.
Now we see the results of their approach to bargaining. Renfroe has lied about many things, but with this contract he may have inadvertently told the truth for once. This is a historic contract—a historically bad contract.