Hello, everybody. It's Friday, December 20th. It's me, Will, here. And I've got a bonus interview for you today. It's obviously the holiday season. And as such, people are more concerned than ever with their packages. Will they arrive? How will they arrive? And in what condition? But rather than focus on you, the people wanting to get a package, we thought we would do an episode talking about the issues facing some of the people delivering these packages. And a contract issue that's going on right now with the United States Postal Service and postal workers. So it's my pleasure to introduce our guest for

this episode, Tyler Vassar, who is a shop steward with the National Association of Letter Carriers,

Branch 9. Tyler, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. Good to be here.

Tyler, I want to talk about the state of this deal that you've been offered and what your effort is right now to

sort of get a perhaps get a better deal for your members. But I'd like to begin with just talking

a little bit about your union, your branch nine. Could you just tell us where do you work?

What's your job? And just a little bit about the National Association of Letter Carriers.

Yeah. So just to add to the introduction, like you said, well, I'm Tyler Vassar. I'm a letter

carrier, but I'm also in the shopster with NELC Branch 9, but I'm also the chair of the coordinating

committee for Build a Fighting NELC, BFN, which is a growing national and developing national rank of

file reform caucus in NELC.

It grew out of the fight for the open bargaining resolution this past year.

Now we're organizing for a no vote on this sellout TA, and we're getting organized to

transform the union going forward, especially around things like fighting for the right to strike.

And so NELC itself, the National Association of Letter Carriers, represents 280,000 city letter carriers at USPS.

Around 200,000 of those are active working members, and there's about 80,000, give or take, retiree members.

And I'm sorry,

you asked, like, what are the other unions there? Yeah, I mean, I know the NALC is but one of four unions that represent all postal workers in the United States, which taken together represents

the largest unionized workforce in this country. That's right. Yeah. So how does your union, how does that relate to the other three unions and who

do they represent? That's right. Yeah. So NELC is the largest with 280,000 members. And then there's

three others, as you said, the APWU, the American Postal Workers Union is the second largest.

They represent clerks, janitors, maintenance.

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