A Bit About Us
What is the National Rural Letter Carriers Association?
From the NRLCA website:
​The NRLCA is a union within the U.S. Postal Service representing around 131,000 bargaining unit members in rural and suburban areas. The association was established in 1903 to “improve the methods used by rural letter carriers, to benefit their conditions of labor with the United States Postal Service (USPS), and to promote a fraternal spirit among its members.” Rural letter carriers serve roughly 78,500 routes throughout the United States. Of those, rural letter carriers use their own vehicles on more than 36,900 routes. Rural carriers deliver to 44.8 million delivery points for a total of 3.7 million miles per day. The average distance driven for a rural route is 47 miles per day but can range anywhere from 1 mile to 185 miles.
Overview of the USPS 10-Year Plan
The USPS began a process to make the Postal Service sustainable and profitable. The plan was over a 10 year period, with two particular catagories.
"The first category of changes, those within management control, could reduce our projected gap by $123 billion. By themselves, these changes are not enough. The remaining $115 billion gap can be closed only through legislative, regulatory, and labor changes that would afford the Postal Service sufficient flexibility to continue to fulfill its mission to the American people without additional cost to taxpayers.
This second critically important category of changes includes: (1) Restructuring the Postal Service’s unique obligation to pre-fund retiree health benefits, particularly given overfunding of CSRS and FERS pensions; (2) Adjusting delivery days to better reflect current mail volumes and customer usage; (3) Modernizing our existing retail network so that customers can access postal products and service where they are; (4) Establishing a more flexible workforce that is better positioned to respond to changing demand patterns; (5) Ensuring adequate pricing to respond to market demand and help cover costs; (6) Permitting the Postal Service to better respond to changing customer needs through the expansion of product and service offerings, and (7) Reinforcing these changes with more clearly defined, appropriate, agile oversight roles and more streamlined processes."
- Overview of the 10-year plan, about.usps.com