The U.S. Postal Service’s Use of Contractors to Deliver Mail: Background and Recent Developments
Released: 2012-08-01T00:00:00

Background

Private individuals and firms, often called "contractors" and "subcontractors," have transported mail between postal facilities since at least 1792 (1 Stat. 233), and according to the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), contractors have delivered mail to homes and businesses since 1900. Today, contractors transport mail between postal facilities via land, air, water, and rail.

One type of land (i.e., "surface") mail transportation contract is the "highway contract route" (HCR). HCR contracts come in three subtypes.

"Transportation" contracts have private "suppliers" transport mail between postal facilities. "Combination" contracts require suppliers to make a small number of mail deliveries in the course of transporting mail between the USPS's facilities. "Contract delivery service" (CDS) contracts compensate suppliers for collecting and delivering mail in rural areas.

This latter subtype of contract became the focus of controversy in 2007.

The 2007 Mail Delivery Contracting Controversy

The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), the union for mail delivery persons, and the USPS signed a collective bargaining agreement in autumn 2006. The agreement covered a wide range of compensation and workplace matters. It included two memoranda of understanding (MOUs) concerning contracting letter carrier work. The MOUs established a six-month moratorium on any new contracting of mail carrier work in post offices employing city carriers. They also pledged the NALC and USPS to create a joint USPS-NALC committee to review

existing policies and practices concerning the contracting out of mail delivery. The Committee shall seek to develop a meaningful evolutionary approach to the issue of subcontracting, taking into account the legitimate interests of the parties and relevant public policy considerations.

The National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA), which represents rural delivery persons, also reached a collective bargaining agreement with the USPS in 2006. Its Article 32 carries the following language on the use of contractors to deliver mail:

The Employer will give advance notification to the Union at the national level when subcontracting which will have a significant impact on bargaining unit work is being considered and will meet to consider the Union's views on minimizing such impact. No final decision on whether or not such work will be contracted out will be made until the matter is discussed with the Union [....]No expansion of the Employer's current national policy on the use of contract service in lieu of rural carriers will be made except through the provisions of this Article, which are intended to be controlling. The parties recognize that individual problems in this area may be made the subject of a grievance.

In 2007, representatives of both NALC and NRLCA alleged that the USPS was expanding its use of CDS carriers. William Young, then-president of the NALC, called upon Congress to "stop the cancer of contracting out before it spreads." Members of the NALC picketed the USPS's national headquarters and post offices in Florida and New Jersey.

The USPS denied the unions' accusation, and argued that contract mail delivery was "not new." The USPS also stated that its contracts with the postal unions recognize the USPS's authority to use contractors. Nevertheless, the USPS further noted that "cost pressures, competition, and a changing marketplace demand cost-effective options from the Postal Service."

Subsequently, a 2008 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study found that the average annual cost of delivery by a city carrier was nearly twice that of a CDS carrier.

Congressional Action

Some Members of the 110 th Congress expressed concern about the USPS's practice of hiring contractors to collect and deliver mail.

On March 28, 2007, Representative Albio Sires introduced H.Res. 282 , which expressed "the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Postal Service should discontinue the practice of contracting out mail delivery services." H.Res. 282 was referred to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (HCOGR) and was cosponsored by 256 Members. Not quite two months later, Senator Tom Harkin introduced S. 1457 on May 23, 2007. The bill would have forbidden the USPS from entering "into any contract ... with any motor carrier or other person for the delivery of mail on any route with 1 or more families per mile." The bill would have permitted all existing CDS contracts to remain in effect and to be renewed. S. 1457 was referred to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and had 38 cosponsors.

The HCOGR's Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia considered the issue at April and July hearings. Both the NALC and the NRLCA said that contractors should not be trusted to deliver the mail. Three Members present at the July hearing spoke of contractors delivering mail in suburban and city locations, including the Bronx of New York. The NALC stated that private employers—unlike the USPS—are not required to give preference to veterans in hiring. The USPS testified that it was not replacing career carriers with contractors, and that it assigned only new delivery routes to contractors. John Potter, then-Postmaster General, declared that the USPS had "made a commitment for the life of this agreement [with the NALC] not to contract out any city delivery in big cities" and to work with both unions on the use of contractors in suburban and rural areas. The use of contractors to deliver mail also was discussed at a Senate hearing.

After lengthy negotiations, the NALC and the USPS signed an MOU in October 2008. This agreement extended through the life of the collective bargaining agreement the moratorium against new CDS contracts in post offices employing city carriers. Additionally, the MOU required any new deliveries to be assigned according to geographic boundaries agreed upon by the NALC, NRLCA, and USPS. That same year, the NRLCA and the USPS worked out their differences over the use of private mail delivery contractors via the grievance process set forth in the NRLCA-USPS collective bargaining agreement.

Recent Developments

In November 2010, the NRLCA-USPS collective bargaining agreement expired. A year later, the NALC-USPS contract expired. Whether the mail contracting MOUs remain in force is unclear.

The USPS and the two unions had negotiations and entered mediation. Unable to settle their differences, the parties went to binding arbitration.

The USPS and the NRLCA completed binding arbitration in July 2012. The previous collective bargaining agreement's language regarding the hiring of private contractors to deliver mail was not altered, leaving it unclear whether the USPS and NRLCA have come to a working agreement on this particular issue.

The USPS and the NALC entered binding arbitration in June 2012. Arbitration of the USPS-NALC agreement likely will be completed in the coming months.

The USPS's Authority to Contract vs. Employee Compensation

The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 (PRA; P.L. 91-375; 84 Stat. 725) replaced the U.S. Post Office Department with the USPS, an independent establishment of the executive branch (39 U.S.C. 201). The PRA requires the USPS to "maintain an efficient system of collection, sorting, and delivery of the mail nationwide" (39 U.S.C. 403(b)(1)). To this end, the PRA provides the USPS with considerable discretion over its operations. 39 U.S.C. 5005 authorizes the USPS to "obtain mail transportation service ... by contract from any person or carrier for surface and water transportation under such terms and conditions as it deems appropriate." Additionally, Congress provided the USPS with the authorities to (1) "enter into and perform contracts" (39 U.S.C. 401); (2) "provide for the collection, handling, transportation, delivery, forwarding, returning, and holding of mail" (39 U.S.C. 404(a)(1)); and (3) "establish mail routes and authorize mail transportation service thereon" (39 U.S.C. 5203(a)).

However, the PRA also carries provisions relating to USPS employee compensation. For one, the PRA sets a compensation and benefits floor:

It shall be the policy of the Postal Service to maintain compensation and benefits for all officers and employees on a standard of comparability to the compensation and benefits paid for comparable levels of work in the private sector of the economy (39 U.S.C. 1003(a)).

Additionally, letter carriers are civil servants and, under the PRA, are entitled to wages established through contracts collectively bargained by the USPS and postal unions (39 U.S.C. 1001(b) and 39 U.S.C. 1201 et seq.). The NALC has contended that the USPS's use of CDS carriers instead of USPS mail carriers "violates the spirit of the nation's basic postal law." Using contractors, the union has said, circumvents the collective bargaining process and opens the door for the USPS to replace all career mail carriers with contractors.

Hence, the PRA's provisions regarding the USPS's authority to contract and operate an "efficient" system of mail may be at tension with the statute's provision on USPS employee compensation.

The Extent of the USPS's Use of Contractors to Deliver Mail

Between 1998 and 2012, the number of carrier routes served by CDS carriers increased from 5,424 to 9,991, or 84.2% ( Table 1 ). Similarly, over the past 15 years the number of delivery points served by CDS carriers has increased from 1,828,257 to 2,680,140, or 46.6% ( Table 3 ).

However, throughout this period, the USPS career city and rural carriers delivered mail on the vast majority of postal carrier routes—not less than 95.6% ( Table 2 ). City and rural carriers also have served at least 98% of the nation's delivery points ( Table 4 ).

Thus, although the USPS has increased its use of CDS carriers to deliver mail, these contractors serve on 4.4% of all routes and deliver mail at 2% of all delivery points.

Additionally, the data show a shift between the portions of the total routes and deliveries handled by city and rural letter carriers. The percentage of routes served by rural carriers has grown from 26.5% to 32.4%, while the percentage of routes served by city carriers has declined from 71.2% to 63.2%. Additionally, the percentage of delivery points served by rural carriers has increased from 25.4% to 30.7%; whereas the percentage of delivery points served by city carriers has decreased from 73.0% to 67.3%.

Concluding Observations

Current postal law requires the USPS to operate an "efficient" system of mail and provides the USPS with various authorities to achieve this objective. However, the law also sets a pay and compensation floor for USPS employees and requires the USPS to collectively bargain with its employees.

These aspects of postal law come into conflict in the matter of the USPS using private persons or firms to deliver mail. The data above indicate that the USPS has increased its use of contractors over the past 15 years. Yet, the data also indicate that contractors serve only a very small percentage of carrier routes and deliver to very few homes and businesses.

Whether the use of private persons and firms to deliver mail will arise as an issue of interest to Congress is unclear. The USPS, NALC, and NRLCA may settle the matter through arbitration and ensuing memoranda of understanding.

In the event that the use of contractors cannot be settled through the parties themselves, there are at least two broad perspectives that might be taken on the situation.

First, it might be argued that Congress should take no action. Historically, Congress has not enacted specific policies concerning the extent of the USPS's use of contractors to deliver mail. It has left the matter to be decided by the Postal Service and its letter carrier unions through collective bargaining and the grievance process. Congress may continue this practice, reasoning that the USPS has legitimate grounds to pursue cost-savings via the use of contractors. Indeed, it might be further contended that the use of contractors to deliver mail is in keeping with long-time USPS practices. Contractors have been used to collect, transport, sort, and deliver mail; and machines built by private firms do much of the mail sorting work once performed by USPS employees. Letter carriage would not appear to be an inherently governmental function under current procurement policy, so the USPS should be free to outsource this work as it deems proper.

Second and alternately, Congress may choose to intervene, viewing the issue as involving an unintended conflict arising out of two national policies—USPS operational efficiency and the rights of unionized, federal employees. From this perspective, it could be argued that the USPS is supposed to be a self-supporting agency; but that does not necessitate that the USPS should be permitted to outsource however much postal work it chooses. It might be further argued that there is a positive societal benefit in the federal government hiring individuals (often minorities and veterans) and compensating them well. Thus, Congress might either ban the practice of using contractors to deliver mail (or perform other mail-movement activities); or it could limit the amount of mail delivery work performed by contractors—perhaps by capping the percentage of routes served by non-USPS employees. Were Congress either to ban or limit the use of contractors, it might wish to consider helping the USPS recoup any lost savings by providing it with additional authorities to increase its revenues or decrease its operating costs.