(WASHINGTON, D.C.) - Eliminating yet another Two-Tier Wage System and lifting the lowest ranks of its Members out of the ranks of poverty-wage Workers are among the key goals of the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) as they opened talks on June 25th on a new contract with the U.S. Postal Service (USPS).

Any agreement, whether it is achieved through collective bargaining, as APWU hopes, or by a pact which arbitrators impose, would be the largest single contract Unions and bosses would achieve this year.

The current contract, covering 190,000 Workers, expires in September.

The two sides in the talks appeared to have a very different focus.

APWU President Mark Dimondstein emphasized raising wages, eliminating two tiers and expanding the USPS into new lines of business to increase its revenues.

He also pushed achieving safety, stability and better working conditions for Union Members, including an end to a management culture of toleration or worse of bullying and harassment on the job.

“The two-tier structure” created by a concessionary contract in 2010 during the depths of the financier-caused Great Recession “makes it harder to hire and retain Workers,” said Dimondstein. “We have to overcome some of the gaps created” then.

Other goals included “stronger safety rules” and “return of all retail sales to The Clerical Staff,” said Dimondstein.

A prior Republican-named Postmaster General had conducted a short-lived experiment to have clerks at Non-Union Staples stores sell stamps.

The APWU successfully stopped that by convincing Federal Labor Officials the Staples outsourcing violated the Union contract.

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