President's Message

I would like to start off by congratulating the approximately 100 Local 302 mail handlers that accepted the Voluntary Early Retirement this April! Pictures from the various retirement celebrations are contained in this newsletter. We appreciate their membership and service and wish them all a well-deserved retirement! Our Contract expires September 20th, and our National Contract negotiating team kicked off bargaining for its successor agreement in June. The NPMHU is sending out periodic Contract Updates that you can find on the bulletin boards in your facility and on our National website: www.npmhu.org. This February, I once again served on the National Field Negotiating Committee that met in Washington DC to review and discuss contract revisions submitted by NPMHU members throughout the Nation. I can assure you that National President Hogrogian is fully committed to securing improved pay and benefits for all of our members, including getting our MHAs and newly hired mail handlers a fair living wage. Should our National team negotiate a proposed contract that they believe is fair, they will submit it to you, the members, to vote on and ratify. If not, we will go to binding arbitration to fight for what we deserve! New Postmaster General David Steiner was sworn in on July 15, and will factor into these contract negotiations. The previous PMG, Louis DeJoy, resigned his post in March 2025 amid rumored disagreements with President Trump and DOGE access to USPS. PMG Steiner has stated that he has no plans to privatize the USPS and wants to continue DeJoy’s 10 year Delivering For America plan to try to return the USPS to profitability. We will have to see how this turns out. I am proud to serve on the NPMHU Committee of the Future, where we met in June to discuss the issues facing our mail handlers throughout the Nation. We were briefed on USPS and Union finances, USPS Board of Governor changes, the Postmaster General resignation and replacement, Trump and DOGE attacks on Federal and Postal workers benefits, DFA consolidation updates, National Arbitrations and more. It is imperative that we stay educated and updated on the issues facing our members if we are going to be properly prepared to represent them and address the upcoming challenges. In this same vein, Local 302 sent representatives Wazeer Livingston, Steve Gutierrez, Chrystal Wilson and I to Washington DC to campaign for postal issues on Capitol Hill. We met with California Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla as well as Nevada Senators Jackie Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, in addition to numerous other Northern California Congressional representatives to lobby for the issues that affect mail handlers. These nationwide efforts helped contribute to the removal of the USPS-hostile policies that were originally contained in the “Big Beautiful Bill”. The bill originally called for making drastic changes to USPS employee retiree benefits (higher employee FERS employee contribution rate, change annuity calculations from high 3 to high 5, elimination of the FERS supplement prior to Social Security). While we were able to stave off these benefit reductions this time, we must be vigilant to fight these proposed cuts again in the future, if necessary. As part of the Delivering for America plan, management is creating hundreds of Sorting and Delivery Centers. These SDCs are consolidated carrier facilities, where multiple delivery stations are collocated into an existing station.These new designations come with additional mail handler
craft work, and we are fighting to get mail handlers positions in these SDCs. State Board Representative
Fernando Matta has been leading the charge on this front, and is helping train technical assistants Esteban Sanchez from San Jose, Chrystal Wilson from NDC and Elizabeth Anderson from Sacramento. Fernando has decades of experience fighting for work in these stations, and I am confident we will be able to secure additional mail handler positions soon.
State Board Rep Matta joined Treasurer Dalton, stewards Carlos Guizar, Elizabeth Anderson, NDC BP Chrystal Wilson and now retired Executive Board member Juanita Contreras at the Semi-Annual Meeting of the Local Unions in New Orleans this April. At this meeting, National President Hogrogian presented Juanita Contreras with the NPMHU Gold Card as their appreciation for her decades of Union service, including 27 years on the Local 302 Executive Board and founding membership of the NPMHU
Women’s Committee. We wish Juanita a safe and happy retirement, she will be missed!
Local 302 is creating our own Women’s Committee! NDC Branch President Chrystal Wilson has conferred with National Chairperson June Harris, and organized a Local committee with members Jennifer Escobar-Reno BP, Paula Ward-Oakland BP and Elizabeth Anderson, Sacramento Shop Steward (and recent 2025 Shop Steward of the Year award winner). See Chrystal Wilson’s article elsewhere in this newsletter for more information.
Local 302 continues to conduct numerous trainings to keep our representatives informed and ready to competently represent you. This June, we held our Local-wide shop steward training where National trainers National Executive Board members John Gibson, June Harris and Don Sneesby provided training on fighting bid reversions/abolishments and combatting hostile supervisors. Local 302 also conducted a training for new shop stewards, a QWL coordinator training and a SDC/RI399 training administered by National Article 12 task force specialist Tom Ruther. Additionally, we conducted branch steward meetings/training to keep our reps up to date. Local 302 will be holding our annual picnic at Elk Grove Park on Saturday, September 13th. More information is on your bulletin boards, the flyer in this newsletter and our website www.npmhulocal302.org. Local 302 will also be participating and providing activities and entertainment for the separate QWL day celebrations in San Francisco P&DC
and NDC on Saturday September 6th. Both facilities will have bounce houses, games and music for the whole family, check your facility bulletin boards and come out and have some fun! In April, Local 302 hosted a Kings game outing at Golden One center in downtown Sacramento. Finally, our Redding members enjoyed a BBQ picnic at Anderson park by the river in June.
I would like to congratulate our Alvin S. Gant scholarship award winners for 2025. Brian Jenkins, son of NDC member Don Jenkins, Karanvir Singh, son of Sacramento member (and shop steward) Harpreet Singh and Jacob Petros, son of Sacramento member Abraham Petros. All 3 won $1,000 to help offset their college expenses. Special congratulations to Brian Jenkins for also winning the Arthur S. Vallone scholarship awarded by the National union! If you have a child attending college in 2026, I encourage you to apply for these scholarships next year before March 15, 2026.
Despite all these activities, Local 302’s finances remain strong thanks to the efforts of our recent Treasurers (Shawn Dalton, Chrystal Wilson and I) to cut and maintain unnecessary costs. Despite having the lowest dues of any NPMHU Local in the country, we have been able to sponsor the above-mentioned events and hold annual swag giveaways to our members so they can show their Union pride. An article from Treasurer Dalton and our most recent quarterly financial report are elsewhere in this newsletter.
As always, I ask that you please join me in thanking the volunteers who serve as shop stewards representing the members of Local 302. It is a huge challenge to stay wellversed on the rules and regulations necessary to police the contract and properly represent the roughly 1,700 mail handlers in our area. This job has become progressively more difficult as management makes more and more
changes to improve efficiency. These guys do an awesome job for you, and we greatly appreciate their efforts and contributions! If you are interested in joining our team as a shop steward, let me or your Branch President know. We frequently conduct new shop steward training at the Local. We need shop stewards now more than ever!
In 2025, the USPS employees migrated to the Postal Service Health Benefit (PSHB) from the Federal Employee Health Benefit (FEHB) system as required by the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022. The Mail Handler Benefit Plan (MHBP) continues to offer three plan options (Standard, Consumer Option and Value) to meet the needs of ALL federal workers. Open season runs from November 10 through December 8, 2025, I encourage you to explore the coverage and pricing of the MHBP plans.
Thanks again for your membership and support of NPMHU Local 302!

LOCAL 302 OFFICE LOCATION: 3700 HILBORN ROAD # 200, FAIRFIELD, CA 94534