The American Postal Workers Union's members approved an agreement Friday extending the union's collective bargaining pact by a vote of 79,932 to 10,568.
The U.S. Postal Service and union reached a tentative deal last month on a two-year extension of their labor agreement, which would expire Nov. 20, 2003. The extension is the first of its kind in APWU history.
The deal calls for a 1.3 percent wage increase effective Nov. 15, 2003, and a 1.3 percent increase effective Nov. 27, 2004. It also calls for four cost-of-living boosts by late 2005 and the creation of a joint task force to discuss the repositioning of employees.
The deal also includes a pledge by the USPS that it won't reassign employees whose jobs are eliminated to a position more than 50 miles from their current location. The union also won a two-year extension of no-layoff protections for most full-time postal service workers.
The union represents the 366,000 USPS employees who are clerks, maintenance workers, motor vehicle operators and non-mail-processing professional employees. The world's largest postal union, APWU is also the 15th-largest union in the AFL-CIO.
